From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

For those of you hearty enough to come to shul on the seventh day of Pesach, I want to share with you a love story—in fact a Pesach double love story.  But to appreciate this double love story, we need first to talk about halakha, Jewish law.  When was the last time that happened in a sermon?  The Torah commands us to have no chametz in our possession during the holiday of Pesach.  Chametz is  defined as five species of grain: wheat, barley, spelt, rye, and oats.  It is not just that we can’t eat chametz.  It is also that we cannot have chametz, cannot own chametz.  Our homes have to be chametz-free. Now we have all had the experience, when cleaning our house for Pesach, of finding in the back of the food pantry a stale box of crackers with the expiration date of February 2020.  We happily dispose of the stale crackers grateful for the impetus Pesach gives us to do a deep cleaning of our kitchen once a year. But what do we do with all the chametz that is fresh, the fresh boxes of pasta and crackers?  It would