The Torah prohibits ownership of Hametz during Pesach. Hametz is any product of food which contains one of five types of grain – wheat, oat, barley, spelt, or rye – which is mixed with water and allowed to leaven (or has the potential to leaven). Matzah is composed of one of these grains BUT baked through before the grain has a chance to leaven.

We are required to clean out all the hametz from our homes. Since we are not allowed to have in our possession even a minute amount, including crumbs, on the night before Passover we check the house, mainly the kitchen and eating areas, for a final sweep (literally). We then recite a formula renouncing possession of anything that we might have missed. On the morning before the Seder we destroy whatever hametz we might have found. A final renunciation is recited and we are ready for Pesach.

But what if we have bottles of alcohol? Or ten boxes of pasta we found on sale two weeks before Pesach? We can’t own it so we sell it to a person who can own hametz during Pesach. That is why we arrange a sale of Hametz to non-Jews. In our community, I act as the agent who takes responsibility to sell any and all hametz in our possession to a non-Jew who agrees to purchase it. That person agrees to buy the hametz but does not take possession himself until a fair assessment of the cost can be determined. Immediately after the 8 day holiday, he can decide not to carry through on the assessment and the agreement to purchase is terminated. But for the eight days the hametz belongs to him. He has yet to complete the sale.

Hametz to be sold should be placed in a distinct location in the house and closed off for us during the week.

Some dismiss this sale as a fiction and think it is silly. Let me offer a spiritual response. During Pesach, hametz represents the negative traits we wish to remove from within ourselves. The rabbis identified the puffed up hametz as arrogance. But it can be seen as any negative trait within us. Passover is liberation from the slavery of our impulses, our bad choices, our negative inclinations. Cleaning the house of hametz is a concretization of our desire to clean ourselves spiritually. But we can never clean every speck out. Selling our hametz is a spiritual exercise of imagining what we would be like if we were cleaned of our negative traits.

It is most appropriate to use this as an opportunity to do tzedakah. A donation to the Rabbi’s Discretionary fund of $18 is encouraged, but any amount is acceptable. All funds go to organizations fighting hunger and the small cost in arranging the sale itself.

To be recited after the search for Hametz on the night before Pesach –
All hametz in my possession which I have not seen and have not removed shall be nullified and be ownerless as the dust of the earth.

To be recited the next morning after ridding the house of all leftover hametz –
All hametz in my possession, whether I have seen it or not and whether I have removed it or not, shall be nullified and be ownerless as the dust of the earth.

Shalom,

Rabbi Michael Friedland

Download Hametz Agreement

I don’t know if there was ever a case where the Torah was referencing the headlines from the news more accurately then this: Don’t touch the boy was a message that should have been sounded in College Station, in South Bend and in too many communities in the United States.

When I first heard on sports talk radio about the events at Penn State University I was a bit cynical. The hosts of these shows spend their days attacking the reputations of sports figures based on nothing more than innuendo and whispers. Many are quite vicious and don’t care what damage they do in speaking about public figures. So when they get on their moral high horses about someone else’s behavior, I react skeptically. But then I read the grand jury investigation’s report on the website of one of the more obnoxious sports talk jockeys. And their opprobrium towards the offender and the authority figures in the University was not overstated.

The investigation report is quite disturbing. There is no need to discuss the molestations here, you can read the report yourself if you are so inclined. But what struck me most after reading it was the alleged perpetrator knew what he was doing was wrong. The abused boys were all between 8-12 years old and one of the mother suspecting something untoward was going on called the coach and told him he could no longer see her son. He told her, “I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness…I wish I were dead.” And the authorities, from Joe Paterno to the University President to the campus police never tried to stop him. They forcibly retired him in order to create an air of plausible deniability but never lifted a finger to stop him and save kids’ lives. And one comes away from the report confused as to whose crime was worse, or who is more culpable – the sexual predator or those who let him abuse his prey.

This is really the moral question for us here. It is almost too easy to condemn the abuser. The difficult issue is we bystanders, how do we respond to abuse when we see it or hear about it or even tougher when we suspect but have no evidence. Or when we are familiar with the alleged abuser and have trouble believing what our eyes are seeing.

A couple of years ago a rabbi in Arizona’s life was destroyed when he was arrested for child rape on the accusations of young woman who 10 years earlier had known the man when he was a rabbinical student. She and his daughter played together regularly in the family’s apartment when they were seven. As a seventeen year old her psychologist helped unlock her supposedly repressed memories and she remembered the rabbi had raped her repeatedly. It took him hundreds of thousands of dollars, a lost job and a destroyed reputation to finally have the case thrown of court on lack of evidence.

While being cautious in accusing people of abuse, the cases in the news this week at Penn State and locally regarding Tremelle Sturgis point to situations in which it was obvious that reporting and official investigations were warranted.

In this morning’s Torah reading we read of the infamy of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not only are the men of Sodom sexually violent, threatening to rape the visitors to Lot’s house, but the response of Lot offering his daughters in place of the dignity of the male visitors is appalling. But they are not the only cases of sexual abuse in the parasha. Later after the birth of Isaac, Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing. And immediately She said to Abraham, “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

The Hebrew term translated here as ‘playing’ always has a sexual connotation, and often licentious connection. The midrash picks up on this and assumes that Ishmael was being sexually abusive to Isaac.

These two situations offer different responses to the act of sexual abuse.

In the case of Sarah, it is easy to dismiss her demand to expel Ishmael and his mother as an act of jealousy, protectiveness and pettiness. Ishmael is by rights the first born of Abraham and should be given pride of place. However Sarah is the primary wife and she wants to protect her child’s position. And she seems to give herself away by stating, “the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac”.

But what if she, like the grad assistant on Penn State’s staff, witnessed an act of gross sexual abuse, whether to her child or someone else’s child as indicated by the term Mitzahayk. One can imagine a conversation in which Abraham is frustrated – Look I promised you and God promised you that Isaac will be the bearer of blessings. Let’s not make a federal case out of this, Ishmael is a good kid. He helped out with the cooking when the visitors came to the house, he agreed to getting circumcised without complaint. Let’s just watch him or let’s just keep him away from Isaac.” Sarah comes out looking very surly and unkind but she understands that one can’t coddle a sexual predator. The most important thing is protecting the victims and future potential victims not giving the perpetrator a second chance.

Now what does Lot do? In Christian and Muslim traditions, Lot is considered very righteous because he sought to live among the wicked and teach them the true path. Sometimes decent people can influence wicked ones by dint of their good behavior; but influence works the other way as well. Lot appears to be as hospitable and as kind as Abraham when the visitors appear. Maybe even more hospitable – he, like Abraham, offers food and an opportunity to wash and begs them to come and stay in his home, for he knows the neighborhood and fears for the outsiders’ safety if they stay on the streets. What he does not do though is inform the visitors as to what goes on in Sodom and how outsiders are treated. He appears to want to protect both the visitors from harm and the community from discovery of its sordidness. Perhaps he was afraid for his safety as that graduate assistant coach was clearly concerned for his football future. Or perhaps he was concerned that his vast agricultural holdings were at stake, like Joe Paterno and the athletic director and the Penn State President were concerned about their program and the money it brought in. But instead of protecting the visitors by steering them away from Sodom, he was even willing to sacrifice his daughters to keep a lid on the prurient goings on in Sodom. And in the end, Lot loses everything, is pulled into the vortex of sexual deviancy he tried to remain apart from when he ends up committing incense with his daughters, just like Joe Paterno and his great football program will now come crashing down in shame.

The message for us is that the swift action of Sarah is to be preferred and dismissive approach of Lot must be rejected. Now in both of these cases Sarah and Lot had visual evidence of wrongdoing so in such cases the responsibility is clear. When we only suspect child or sexual abuse, or if the victim tells us of the abuse it is not always so obvious what to do. That is why I photocopied copies of a help guide in reporting child abuse for you to take and also a copy of information about recognizing signs of child abuse for you to peruse. It is also important to know that despite the earlier story I told about the young woman who falsely charged a rabbi with rape, authorities state that children rarely come forward about abuse unless it occurred.

The Torah mitzvah of “Lo L’hitalem” not to turn aside is never more true than in the case of abuse especially child abuse. While the perpetrators of abuse are clearly responsible and culpable for their sins, let us make sure that unlike the officials at Penn State, we not become culpable ourselves by turning aside from child abuse.