By Shaina Abrams-Kornblum, Eastern Community Manager and Jonah Rothstein, Jewish Education Retreats Manager

As our friends of Jewbelong write, “Passover is a big food holiday, with many traditional foods and one big ‘don’t.’ The don’t is bread or any leavened food.” This means that a lot of Jews clean their houses thoroughly to eliminate any trace of chametz, foods that are made with dough that rises, or leavens. 

This Passover we want to challenge you to not only think about cleaning the chametz from your homes, but also from your minds. While we all cope with the new realities of today’s world, we wanted to provide you with some ideas to look at Passover cleaning in new ways and to inspire your communities to do so, too. We hope that these programming ideas help you to prepare for Passover with intention and excitement!

Program Idea 1- Setting the Intention

For this program you may only need a 20-30 minute Zoom call. This would be a great program to offer as a lunch and learn or a short reprieve for those community members looking for a way to break up their day a little. Before anyone starts cleaning for Passover, encourage your community to start by setting their intentions. Use the following quote to begin your discussion.

The book A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind will change your perspective on how, but mostly why, to clean your house. In this book, Japanese Buddhist monk Shoukei Matsumoto explains: 

“Japanese people have always regarded cleaning as more than a common chore. It’s normal here for elementary and junior high school students to clean their classrooms together; although I heard that this isn’t done in schools abroad.(…) Cleaning is carried out not because there is dirt, but because it’s an ascetic practice to cultivate the mind.” (p.3)

Explore the text above and dive into the following questions:

  1. What will you be cleaning for Passover?
  2. Why will you be cleaning for Passover?
  3. Does cleaning your space free you to be able to focus your attention inwards?
  4. What would Marie Kondo think of the Jewish tradition of Passover cleaning?
  5. Ask participants to share items that are meaningful to them but are not always on display. What are these objects? How will these items help inspire you this Passover?

Program Idea 2 – Clearing Your Mind through Meditation

Guided meditations are a great way to clear your mind of the “chametz” before Passover. RitualWell created a great resource for a guided meditation that is inspired by the ritual of cleaning for Passover: “Every year, before Pesach, we are commanded to prepare our homes by getting rid of all the chametz, to start fresh and clean, to sweep out all the gunk and crumbs. We can do the same thing with the homes called our bodies, where we store a lot of aches, pains, annoyances, disturbances, stresses, maladaptive habits, etc.”

Use this resource as a word-for-word guide to help you lead your own guided meditation. The meditation will take you through 4 rounds of “cleaning” that symbolically represent the way you would traditionally clean for Passover in your home. 

  • Round 1 – Physical body scan – broom
  • Round 2 – Mind/Thoughts – dust rag
  • Round 3 – Emotions – water
  • Round 4 – Spirit/ Essence – feather

The Passover story is very powerful. Each of us is asked to imagine ourselves as if we are coming out of Egypt. Before engaging with the Passover story with your community, invite your community to join your guided meditation over Zoom where they can get their minds ready for Passover. Make sure each person joins the call from their own computer and have your participants set the mood by lighting candles or dimming lights and turning off notifications and other distractions.

Program Idea 3 – Acknowledging This Moment in Time

We are in a particular moment in time where our routines have been upended, and our normal structures for expressing ourselves may be temporarily unavailable. Many of us are working from home, taking care of other family members, and doing all that we can to ensure we stay healthy. While the lack of control can feel draining, 

The Hebrew word seder means order; the Passover seder is a structured event. In creating a virtual gathering space for Passover, think about what you have control over that can elevate this collective experience. 

Start by sharing this quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“We are closer to G-d when we are asking questions than when we think we have answers.”

Ask your community members to bring questions to the Seder. Here are a few to get you started:

  1. How do we acknowledge that this Passover is different than all other Passovers? 
  2. How do we make space for hearing people’s thoughts and feelings without it taking up the entire gathering? 
  3. How do we make time for meaning in the midst of a crisis?
  4. How can we use Passover and other Jewish traditions to anchor us in an uncertain world?
  5. Invite your community to think of adding something special to the seder plate to represent all of the Jews in the world who are not able to be with their community. Everyone can bring something different that they already have on hand.
  6. Ask your community to bring a short text, poem, or quote to the Seder to share 

Asking questions can help you to frame your for Passover seder, acknowledge that this year is going to be different, and explore the possibilities of how your Seder can have some sense of normalcy. If you are gathering on Zoom, you can utilize breakout groups to form smaller, more intimate discussion groups. Welcoming new people on Zoom can be a challenging task while trying to facilitate a discussion. Designate one friend or roommate as the “welcoming committee” and have them send a private Zoom message to anyone new who joins your Seder. This will enable you to truly create a welcoming “space” on Zoom.

Program Idea 4 – Let’s Clean Some Chametz!

For Passover our focus will shift to removing all of the physical chametz from our homes. In this time of physical separation from our communities, the ritual of cleaning can be healing. Putting order to your house, whether you remove every crumb of chametz or not, may make you feel a little better. The act of cleaning can also spark an internal process of introspection.  Here’s a user-friendly guide on how to do this in the halachic (i.e. Jewishly legal) way. 

We may not have control over a lot of things right now in our world, so putting effort into cleaning your home, even if it’s just you, is a way to add value to you Passover!

Create a music playlist for you community members to use while they clean. Though you will clean by yourself or with your roommates, you can make this a collaborative event by engaging in a post cleaning discussion and celebration afterwards to share what you gained from the experience. 

Here are some discussion questions to ask your community:

  1. What experiences stand out to you about your experience of cleaning for Passover?
  2. How did the process of searching for chametz or cleaning impact your experience of the holiday.
  3. What associations do you have with cleaning for Passover? Or is this something completely new for you?
  4. How do you think the process of searching for chametz or cleaning impacted your spiritual preparation for Passover.

Conclusion
The cleaning and preparation that we do before Passover allows us to turn our focus to the story of Passover and the freedom that we felt after the Exodus from Egypt. There are so many ways to think about preparing for Passover. While you work on the physical preparations of shopping, cooking, and cleaning we invite you to clear the chametz from your minds as well. Through mindful intention setting, guided meditation, acknowledging this moment in time, or reflecting on the physical cleaning, we hope that you will be fully prepared for Passover both physically and mentally. We invite you, the community builders, to take these ideas and use them, pieces of them, or ideas from them to help create a meaningful Passover for you and your community.