Mayim Bialik's Passover Prep

[2xx1xy1JD]

www.kveller.com/mayim-bialik/inside-may ... ver-plans/

I'm not really snarking, but wanted to post this:

1. To show what I was talking about when I mentioned taking a break to clean and cook and mentioned that Passover is a bit of an OCD holiday.

2. To point out that at least one couple on the planet seems to be able to say, "yes, we're divorced, but we will always be parents to our kids and it's important for our kids to see that we respect each other." I have no idea how this plays out in real life, but it's refreshing to see someone in Hollywood talk about this instead of getting their reps to bash each other in the gossip mags every week. Some of my clients should also take notes.

[lascuba]

Have you heard of Robert Sapolsky? He's a primatologist who's speaks a lot about various aspects of human behavior, and in one of his lectures on mental illness he goes into how a lot of the Jewish laws on on cleanliness were probably started because a leader had OCD (Sapolsky grew up Orthodox). I can't remember which lecture it was--there are several on youtube.

OT: my favorite of his is this one:

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsk ... _of_humans

It's long, but so worth it.

[Bubblewand]

I love the comment of the person who called her the Jewish female Sheldon. :lol:

[RachelB]

Have you heard of Robert Sapolsky? He's a primatologist who's speaks a lot about various aspects of human behavior, and in one of his lectures on mental illness he goes into how a lot of the Jewish laws on on cleanliness were probably started because a leader had OCD (Sapolsky grew up Orthodox). I can't remember which lecture it was--there are several on youtube.

OT: my favorite of his is this one:

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsk ... _of_humans

It's long, but so worth it.

Cool! I love his work. (True facts: During one of the Occupy-related events I attended, the poster I designed and carried cited Sapolsky's research on the stressors of social inequality within chimpanzee groups.) Thanks for posting this link.

[lagenialester]

This actually sounds a lot like my Passover prep this year...BUT I moved into a new house a week ago. It was TOTALLY necessary!

[lipstickgoalie]

Ok. I feel like a total idiot asking this but what exactly is involved in getting ready for Passover? Why are the counters covered with paper? I have only known a handful of Jewish people in my life and none were particularly devout. Small town Midwest isn't exactly a hotbed of diversity. It somehow makes me feel like an oaf not knowing.

[divadivine]

Ok. I feel like a total idiot asking this but what exactly is involved in getting ready for Passover? Why are the counters covered with paper? I have only known a handful of Jewish people in my life and none were particularly devout. Small town Midwest isn't exactly a hotbed of diversity. It somehow makes me feel like an oaf not knowing.

Yes, please explain more about Passover! I'd love to hear more!! I'm Catholic (previously Baptist) and my biggest thing to remember during this final week of Lent & as we enter the Tridium & finally Easter is which days I can't eat meat, which days I have to fast & abstain & what times I need to be at church to sing.

Thanks in advance for sharing!

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Given that Passover has started in North America, those with the best knowledge probably won't reply for a bit, but I'll give it a shot. Just a garden variety heathen who reads about this stuff lurking on internet boards. :)

The main rule of Passover is, you can't eat leavened bread. Leavened bread means grains mixed with water for a certain amount of time, so they rise. Fermented grains. All this is referred to as "chametz."

Ok. So, unleavened bread (which you MUST eat, as a symbol of the holiday) is matzah, which is flour and water but carefully timed to not have sat around longer than the required time (18 minutes, IIRC) so it doesn't officially rise.

Basically, that's it.

BUT! You have to be careful, not to eat any minutest specks of chametz. And you shouldn't even OWN any chametz over the holiday. So, you clean the house top to bottom, to get rid of all those minute crumbs. Those 6-month old Cheerios your baby left in a shoe way in the back of the hall closet? Gotta go.

Those expensive cookies that you don't want to just throw out, but yet you can't eat them all before the holiday starts? You can seal those up in a closet and formally sell them to your (non-Jewish) neighbor for the duration of the holiday, then buy them back afterward.

Don't want to have the minutest specks of anything on the dishes, so you use a special set of dishes.

Don't want to have the minutest specks anywhere in the kitchen. Some people will re-kasher their kitchen (re-make it 100% started over fresh reboot kosher), but a lot of people just cover up all the countertops and table or whatever with clean fresh covering, often tinfoil or plastic tablecloths or similar. People cover the stove-top with foil too.

As you can imagine, this can be quite the pain in the ass, though people combine it with a regular "spring cleaning" too. A lot of people (at least on the internet) refer to the process of making the kitchen passover-ready as "turning over the kitchen."

Different sub-groups have slightly different rules about just what they can eat over the holiday, too, due to previous religious legal rulings over what might either qualify as a sort of "extra type of grain" (because it maybe rises similarly) or else possibly could get contaminated with just powder of other grains that were processed on the same equipment or often stored together back in medieval times.

So Sefardi people will eat legumes, while Ashkenazi people won't. Some people are so strict as to only eat vegetables they can peel (and peel them, during the holiday). Some people will eat matzah mixed/cooked in with liquid foods, some won't. Etc.

Then the holiday itself has the big traditional meal read around the story of Passover/Exodus, it's the big "family gets together once a year" big party feast. People travelling and whatever else (before the holiday starts).

[mostlylurk]

The tiny Post-Its on the calendar remind me of a MOTH schedule.

[SoybeanQueen]

I really love what she said about the Passover cleaning prep being a time to work through cleaning one's own mind/soul, too. That may have been in a different Passover article, now that I say it. I got on a reading roll there....

Anyway, I love that idea, and I think I'll try to incorporate it into my own spring cleaning plans. Not for a religious purpose, but just because it's nice to schedule a time each year to reconsider the state of one's heart and intentions.

[salex]

http://www.kveller.com/mayim-bialik/inside-mayim-bialiks-amazingly-organized-passover-plans/

I'm not really snarking, but wanted to post this:

1. To show what I was talking about when I mentioned taking a break to clean and cook and mentioned that Passover is a bit of an OCD holiday.

2. To point out that at least one couple on the planet seems to be able to say, "yes, we're divorced, but we will always be parents to our kids and it's important for our kids to see that we respect each other." I have no idea how this plays out in real life, but it's refreshing to see someone in Hollywood talk about this instead of getting their reps to bash each other in the gossip mags every week. Some of my clients should also take notes.

OK, finally read this.

RE/ her shopping list/master list and shopping trip discussion --I thought that was how everyone made shopping and task lists for parties/events. And, her task list-- ok, I don't use the sticky notes as I find them messy/cluttery and annoying, but I create a waterfall list of tasks that include any task order where needed.

I suspect a lot of people do more of it in their heads but how else do people get everything the need to buy and everything done in prep without doing this same thing, more or less?

[Idolatry]

WTF. She's rich and in Hollywood. Can't she just hire people to do this shit? If I had actually done this shit, I NEVER would have put it on the Internet for everyone to see, along with my little post-its about boiling beets.

[keen23]

WTF. She's rich and in Hollywood. Can't she just hire people to do this shit? If I had actually done this shit, I NEVER would have put it on the Internet for everyone to see, along with my little post-its about boiling beets.

I think that's part of what makes her such an interesting person. She's a responsible mother who actually does things with her kids (ahem Michelle "Milk Cow" Duggar). These parts of the Passover ritual are important to her.

[lascuba]

Mayim can be pretty...not fanatical, exactly, but man, I don't know how the cognitive dissonance hasn't made her head explode yet. She's a scientist who routinely uses shoddy science to back up a lot of her beliefs. I often find her disingenuous at best. She romanticizes the hell out of Orthodoxy, and for those rules she conveniently chooses not to follow herself, well, she has a perfectly valid interpretation of Jewish law that allows her to get away with it. The laws she likes to follow because they're things she likes to do, like obsessively clean, THOSE are totally necessary. She gets hyper defensive about her parenting choices--she can never just say she does something, there's always a this...tone to how she says it.

In short, she's the perfect example of why one shouldn't seek out information on celebrities one likes. She RUINED Blossom for me! :lol:

[SunnyAndrsn]

Not that this really has anything to do with anything, just a funny story. One of my co-workers is really into her diet right now, and was trying to get me on board. She's a doctor, so she thought she could just lay out all the rules. The first was NO GRAINS, and she was telling me I HAD to clean out the house, get rid of all the grain in the house, all the bread, etc. I said "What, are you getting ready for Passover?", and she stopped cold and yelled at me "YOU KNOW I'M MUSLIM!!" I didn't REALLY offend her, but she stopped dead and hollered back at me.

In my defense, you'll take my bread from my cold dead hands. I could never be Jewish--way too many rules that require active participation.

[mystikchick17]

Right, so the first thing to know is that not everyone goes crazy over Passover prep. I am an observant Reform Jew (something the Orthodox would say is an oxymoron, but not my problem). At it's core, Passover is about giving up leavened products/wheat that isn't matzah for the duration of the eight days of Passover in remembrance of the Exodus. Therefore, you clean your house of chametz, leavened products/things containing wheat, barley, oats, rye or spelt.

However, if you are an Ashkenazic Jew, you will also forego corn, lentils, rice, and legumes over Passover. And let me tell you, though I don't observe this tradition (more on that in a moment), cleansing an American home of ALL products containing wheat, soy AND corn? Is a pain in the ass. I follow the Sephardic tradition, which allows these foods (known as kitniyot) to be consumed on Passover, and as a result, my prep was not that bad. Apparently I don't have much wheat-based stuff in the house (and I was cautious and put aside things that may contain wheat, too).

So, you're meant to remove/lock up/faux-sell these leavened products (chametz) and your kitniyot (if Ashkenazic) for Passover. And then, you clean.

Me? I cleaned out my cabinets, vacuumed wherever I could, and separated out my forbidden stuff from my Kosher for Passover stuff.

Orthodox Passover, like Mayim Bialik observes, is an entirely, entirely different beast. If you want just a flavor of the crazy-making, I advise you to check out imamother.com. Here's what I've learned from that site over the time I've lurked there:

Countertops must be covered with tinfoil to prevent accidental transmission of chametz particles (this is also why Orthodox Jews won't eat from meat dishes that have been washed with dairy dishes in the dishwasher - transmutative properties cause contamination, thus rendering the dishes treif, or not kosher).

All nooks, crannies, corners and holes must be cleansed of chametz.

You must clean your entire house, room by room, bathrooms, toilets, closets, pockets, [link=http://www.imamother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8962]toys[/link], etc. to prevent any accidental chametz from remaining.

It's advisable to use pre-filtered water during Passover to [link=http://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/6630/tap-water-on-pesach]avoid chametz-infected water[/link].

[link=http://www.crcweb.org/Passover/2014/medicine_cosmetic_guide-2014.pdf]Makeup, mouthwash, toothpaste, perfume, etc., must be kosher for Passover. Same with medications.[/link]Even if it's something essential like thyroid medication or mental health medication (no, seriously. My mind boggled.)

[link=http://www.crcweb.org/Passover/2014/pet_food_guide-2014.pdf]Fido's pet food must be KLP.[/link]

Your ovens must be self-cleaned to burn off any chametz inside.

Your stovetops must be either wrapped in tinfoil, blowtorched, or washed in boiling water to 'kasher' them. Here's [link=http://www.star-k.org/kashrus/kk-passover-kashering.htm]how to kasher a kitchen[/link].

And so on, and so forth. I would find it crazy-making if I practiced this kind of Judaism. Lucky for me, I don't ;).

[lipstickgoalie]

What does Kosher for Passover mean exactly? Isn't Kosher Kosher?

[dawbs]

story, while we're on the topic...(I am far from knowledgeable about this sort of stuff, FWIW. :)

My coworker was explaining that she always found the selling a bit...disingenuous, so she boxes up everything and didn't bother this year.

Apparently her rabbi told her that her pets' food is also chametz--which makes sense I suppose (pets can't change foods easily in her world or mine--stupid restrictive pet diets for ailing pets--so can't change to kosher).

So *technically* she's supposed to faux-sell the pets and their food as well as all of her leavened food.

She told me if she did the selling thing to me and I went to her door and asked for cookies, she'd hand them to me--because they were mine. She'd think it was silly, but she'd hand them over.

If I asked for her cat, she'd slam the door in my face -she decided she was *NOT* OK faux-selling family members who happen to not be human.

Made complete sense to me.

[mystikchick17]

What does Kosher for Passover mean exactly? Isn't Kosher Kosher?

No, Kosher for Passover is a separate type of Kosher. It's confusing! So for instance, Manischewitz wine is always kosher wine, but they come out with a special run that is specifically Kosher for Passover. The regular Manischewitz won't cut it during this week. KLP is a much stricter standard of kosher because you must ensure that absolutely no chametz has come into contact with the equipment made to manufacture a product or the product itself at any stage of the process.

Kosher for Passover food would be kosher year round, but Kosher food would not be KLP.

Also, I found pictures of an Orthodox kitchen prepped for Passover!

http://www.me-ander.blogspot.co.il/2014 ... paper.html

I didn't box my things up (last year they went in the attic, this year I just separated them out into the top shelf and bottom shelf in my pantry, with my Passover food in the middle) - but I did "sell" them for free via Chabad.org. Apparently some Rabbi somewhere sold my chametz for me yesterday morning, and at the end of Passover, he will "buy" them back for me.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Yep, they'll completely reboot the equipment 100% ritually clean and then run a special line, for some stuff (i.e. general making sure there's absolutely no chance for any chametz to have gotten in), for other stuff it's about not using any corn syrup.

Interesting fact: It used to be a thing for non-Jewish people to look forward to Passover just so they could buy KLP pop in the US, because that was the one time it's made with sugar rather than corn syrup and so has the "old original taste." Now it's probably not such a thing since they're selling "throwback" versions year round.

The other good source for sugar Coke in California was the Mexican-bottled version, it too always used sugar where the US-side stuff had corn syrup in it.

[Arete]

Waving at all the other non Jews who secured several bottles of Kosher for Passover Coke this year. High five. :D. Pepsi throwback has been unavailable in my area for at least a year.

When I was growing up, the Jewish mothers just gave away their chametz to non Jews. No ritual selling involved. I am assuming that this was a...shortcut...they were taking that is really not allowed. But as the daughter of a Greek man who was hardcore against buying any type of "junk" food, I looked forward to getting a few bags of Doritos or pretzels or chips every year and doing my small part to help usher in Passover in my neck of the woods. ;)

[darkplumaged]

Mayim can be pretty...not fanatical, exactly, but man, I don't know how the cognitive dissonance hasn't made her head explode yet. She's a scientist who routinely uses shoddy science to back up a lot of her beliefs. I often find her disingenuous at best. She romanticizes the hell out of Orthodoxy, and for those rules she conveniently chooses not to follow herself, well, she has a perfectly valid interpretation of Jewish law that allows her to get away with it. The laws she likes to follow because they're things she likes to do, like obsessively clean, THOSE are totally necessary. She gets hyper defensive about her parenting choices--she can never just say she does something, there's always a this...tone to how she says it.

In short, she's the perfect example of why one shouldn't seek out information on celebrities one likes. She RUINED Blossom for me! :lol:

I've met Mayim, and she's totally down-to-earth, self-deprecating, and likable in person. But yes, I completely disagree with her parenting choices, or rather the fanaticism with which she writes about them. There is definitely a tone about it that rubs me the wrong way.

WRT Passover prep, my headship and I don't do much--no cleaning, no selling or even hiding chametz. He has always observed Passover; I only have since our marriage, and not even strictly. Neither of us have ever abstained from corn, beans, or rice--I didn't even know that was a "thing" until I was an adult. (Clearly, I grew up in a very lax home.)

[SoybeanQueen]

I agree about the tone affecting how one feels about the actor. I can't even remember which parenting topic it was now, but every time I see her on Big Bang Theory I get this little pang of "I don't like her," and it's all because of her tone when she wrote about that one thing. And I loved Blossom!

The faux-selling of grains is kind of like the fundie tradition of trunk or treat. I'm sure God won't notice that you're pretending to sell food to a neighbor or walk around asking for candy from random cars in the church parking lot instead of out in the neighborhood! Or, as it goes around here in the Amish community, God won't notice that you're driving your church-approved tractor as though it were a car, to go to the grocery store.

Sometimes it's nice to count the ways various faiths are the same. Apparently we all like to find a way around the official rules! ;)

[lagenialester]

Re: kitniyot in the US- One of the things I do find really refreshing about Passover is the fact that I'm forced to make everything from scratch! It's really refreshing as long as I cook a few freezable dishes in advance so that I'm not running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I actually don't find her prep that crazy because it helps to enjoy the holiday when you do adhere to those rules. I'm not saying it's for everyone though!

I also agree about her inherent contradictions in her discussion of religion and parenting, although I do really enjoy her writing in general. It's just that every once in awhile she says something that really rubs me the wrong way. ( ex: I must not have tried hard enough/had the right resources to breastfeed if I only lasted 5 months with my preemie, allergy-ridden, slowly gaining baby)

[sparkles]

WRT Passover prep, my headship and I don't do much--no cleaning, no selling or even hiding chametz. He has always observed Passover; I only have since our marriage, and not even strictly. Neither of us have ever abstained from corn, beans, or rice--I didn't even know that was a "thing" until I was an adult. (Clearly, I grew up in a very lax home.)

You and me both. It wasn't until I was well into adulthood that I learned that it wasn't just leavened bread that was a Passover no-no, but a whole host of other things as well. And it was only when I started doing freelance design work for synagogues that I found out about the cleaning rituals and chametz-selling. I was actually quite surprised given that my maternal grandparents were (sort of) Orthodox and my family belonged to a conservative synagogue when I was growing up (not that we were--we were your typical 3-day-a-year observant Jews--but the reform temple was much further away and all of my parents' friends belong to the conservative temple). I have to admit that while I get the whole unleavened bread thing, the rest of it escapes me.

P.S. I was clearly rebelling against religion at a very early age. Nearly 50 years later my family still talks about the time I made my school lunch during Passover. A matzoh sandwich. With ham.