The women of my extended Persian family, even the ones well into their sixties, could double for the Kardashians should some righteous members of their crew stage a violent coup, and de-throne TV’s Armenian royalty. They are almost uniformly tanned, expertly groomed, and by all tastes, gorgeous. Yet nearing Passover they become so unrecognizably domestic looking that I would, were I so bold, warn them against spending time in the parking lot of Home Depot, lest La Migra think that they are illegal hired help. This is in small part due to their complexions, but also due to the fact that bebe hasn’t yet come out with a line of aprons (I don’t think).
I have heard it said in Israel, where knowledge of the Ashkenazi/Mizrachi rift is bounds ahead of us in The States, that Sephardi/Mizrachi women are fanatic about Pesach cleaning. I have heard it also said that Hashem judges a woman’s righteousness by the fervor with which she cleans for Pesach. If the Israeli school of thought on this matter is correct, then ipso facto, Hashem loves Mizrachi/Sephardi women more than Ashkenziot.
There is no empirical evidence to prove this. I have mere anecdotes that I hope my readers, of which I believe there to be a good 6, will come through with in kind. I anticipate a good turnout in the comments page; there is always interest in discussing who Hashem loves more, albeit usually between Jewish denomination rather than ethnicity.
In my mother’s hay-day as a balabusta, she used to shriek at us kids like Judge Judy on the rag if we were caught outside the kitchen with chametz. Dad did not have immunity. This wouldn’t start the week before. Oh no, this would begin and only intensify starting from three months before Pesach. I have a faint memory of such a happening on New Year’s day once, though I don’t remember of which year.
Every year she would use rolls of aluminum foil to quarantine off chametz sections of the kitchen. Were it World War II my mother could have halted the entire war effort with the amount of tin foil she used. There were usually just dishes in those sections in any case; no actual chametz ever survived the great purge. Her rationale for this was that she did not want us to confuse chametz dishes with Pesach dishes. The Pesach dishes, of which there are three sets (dairy, meat, and fancy meat), are more impressive than the dishes we use the whole rest of the year.
Most families have the minhag of hiding a bit of chametz the day before Pesach, and ritually hunting and burning it. My mother could not risk contamination for this tomfoolery, even through the protective sheath of a ziplock bag.
The other women on her side are similarly fervent.
When I moved to Israel, and spent my first Pesach without my family, I was adopted by a couple in their early thirties. He was Persian, and she, I’ll call her Nancy, half Ashkenazi, half Moroccan. Nancy, like me, is technically Ashkenazi from her paternal line. She considers marriage to a Persian, which makes her now Sephardi by minhag, a fine fit. These factors, I think, make her an anthropological wonder. She was my on-call person for Halakhic advice throughout the cleaning season. I was invited to her home for the Shabbat of Pesach chol, when she, a charedi woman, outright refused to allow her husband to learn from his sfarim; she was as frightened as a sheep on shear day that there might be crumbs stuck between the pages. And you know what? That actually made great sense to me.
In wrapping up, I am compelled to quote one of my favorite bloggers, and writers in general, Michael, of KosherEucharist.com:
The Cleaning: There are two major schools of thought when it comes to Passover cleaning: there’s the school that gives the floors a good sweep, locks up the plates, pots and pans, buys some paper plates and plastic forks, and goes and does something meaningful with its life; then there’s the school that throws out any food item or utensil ever suspected of having come into contact with leaven or legume, including ovens, sinks and children, and attacks with Lysol and Q-tips the devious chametz hiding, ready for unwitting consumption, in the cracks between the ceilings and floors. As with most things, I belong to a third school: the school that motivates itself to perform a thorough house cleaning through the use of amphetamines. By the end of thirty-some straight hours of awake, jittery and obsessively thorough housecleaning, your fingertips bleeding from the combined action of the rough side of the sponge and the bleach, you will rest content in the knowledge that you have performed a mitzvah - because you have actually heard the voice of God in your head commending you for it. Obviously, this school is not for everyone; I recommend that the faint-hearted among you use a sponge without a rough side.
So where do I live in this mad territory? I’m an interesting case study too. As I’ve hinted at, I take after my mother. When it came time to clean my own apartment for Passover I more closely resembled a dumpster woman than a Long Island Jewess. My four roommates had all scattered on home and left me with an entire apartment to clean. I called Michael, and may or may not have hinted that if he came over I would help him find Adderoll for his snorting pleasure. Michael, by bus or foot, was over within half an hour, and at my service.
Nancy had told me that an alternative to boiling water to purify kitchen surfaces was using bleach. We went through two bottles, and I insisted on going to the neighbor’s to borrow some more. Michael was inspired to write the above piece, thanks in no small part I’m sure, to that unending night he had in my apartment. By five A.M. the place looked like a space station, and the bleach had permanently scrambled our fingerprints. It was, in all earnestness, great seasonal fun.
