AZJL_Mar13

Lifeon the Other Side
by Anne Kleinberg
Ah, the joys of Passover preparation.
For anyone celebrating this
holiday with some semblance of
observance, the arrangements
required to ready the house often
seem like an additional plague.
As I scan my brain for early
recollections, I can feel the
backaches coming on. Not to
speak of the aching feet and
steel-wooled hands. Ladies,
this is not the time
to consider a manicure!
e preparations
always start
with shopping.
Huge
quantities of
stu invade the house – and they stay in their bags, away from
the chametz products of everyday life. In my home it started with
cleaning products, shelving paper, aluminum foil and potatoes –
don’t ask me what the potatoes were for.
If you want to do it right, counters have to be scrubbed,
re-scrubbed and then totally covered with aluminum foil. Range
burners have to be disinfected to the point of nearly burning down
the house. en you have to cover them with tinfoil too. Ovens
have to be stripped bare, down to the primary coat of enamel.
Refrigerators have to be totally emptied. (Ah, so that’s where I left
the sun-dried tomatoes!) And they too have to be scrubbed down
– best if you just throw it out and buy a new fridge.
Every crumb that has ever entered your home must be searched
out and zapped. Nuke ’em if you can – just get them out of there.
Because then, on the eve of the rst night of Pesach when you
conduct the Bedikat Chametz ceremony, there must not be even
microscopic evidence of the nasty leavened products. Except, of
course, for the big chunks that you hide and then have to nd with
a feather and a candle. (I love that hide-and-seek adventure.)
Every shelf you intend to use during the holiday has to be
covered. Wax paper was the covering of choice in my youth. And
every shelf that you don’t intend to use must be covered, wrapped,
hermetically sealed – whatever – just so long as you don’t see
what’s sitting on it.
And then, after you’ve schlepped up hundreds of heavy cartons
from the basement – all illegibly marked – and unwrapped all the
dishes, cutlery, pots, pans, utensils, etcetera that you will use for
exactly one week, you get to relocate it all in the newly covered
drawers, cabinets and shelves. I am telling you right now – anyone
who wants to disagree with me is welcome to, however wrong she
may be – this is the hardest holiday of all, and it always falls on a
woman’s shoulders. Do you think that God decided he would test
every modern-day woman to see how devoted she is – by making
her shlep, scrub, shop, cover, wrap and unpack?
But there’s good news. You get to buy new lipstick. at was
the treat in my home, new lipstick (I was always considered too
young to wear it, but Pesach brought an opportunity to enjoy
Yardley Happy Pink). You also get new toothpaste (kosher of
course), new toothbrushes and, best of all, new clothes. at meant
a trip to New York’s Lower East Side to Berent & Smith – every
Jewish girl’s favorite clothing store, where you were nobody if you
didn’t get to pick up a few designer numbers for a great discounted
(of course) price. And new patent leather shoes. Ooh, I loved these
parts of the holiday preparations.
ere were lots of fun food products that I adored (even
though we were supposed to be making do with less during these
times). ere were Horowitz-Margareten chocolate chip cookies,
for instance. I think the main ingredient was some sort of talc,
but I loved them. And there was chocolate-covered matzah and
Barton’s chocolates and ice cream (that was a really special treat).
And almond kisses, and macaroons and chocolate-covered jellies
and chocolate-covered orange rinds (still don’t get why people like
those). Now that I think of it, Pesach is a chocoholic’s dream of a
holiday.
On the one hand I can’t stand the thought of so many women/
people having to go through the dicult preparations this holiday
requires. Isn’t the fact that one has to eat matzah for an entire
week enough? If you’re Sephardic, at least you get to eat rice and
legumes (and I have it on good authority from a converted Ashkenazi
woman that in general Sephardic food, especially on Pesach,
is better). But perhaps all the fuss and hellish preparations make
the holiday feel like a more special time.
And maybe all this food one is “forced” to eat is really an enjoyable
part of the ritual. And maybe
that refrigerator really did need
cleaning out.
Good luck – I’m thinking
of you.
Anne Kleinberg, author of Menopause
in Manhattan and several cookbooks,
left a cushy life in Manhattan to begin a
new one in Israel. Now she’s opened a
boutique bed and breakfast in her home
on the golf course in Caesarea. For
details, visit www.annekleinberg.com
and www.casacaesarea.com.
[ISRAEL]
ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | MARCH 2013 55