Stringencies and Enhancements for Pesach - Rabbi Boruch Boaz Yurkovitz shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 The subject we’re discussing today is the stringencies of Pesach. On Pesach, we observe stringencies far beyond what we do the rest of the year. Throughout the year, there’s halacha: if a question arises, we may follow the majority, and there are various ways to arrive at a ruling. But on Pesach, we’re much more stringent, especially in Chabad. Why? People cite the Arizal, as the Alter Rebbe also did. The Arizal says that on Pesach we should observe every possible stringency. His explanation is that anyone who is careful to avoid even the slightest trace of chametz on Pesach is assured that he will not sin all year. Okay, many commentators discuss what “assured” means. How can you promise that? It depends on a person’s free choice. It’s not an absolute guarantee: if a person wants to sin, he will. Among the answers given is that this refers to unintentional sins. Or, as we chassidim understand it, he is assured that this care will help him not want to sin. Sometimes there are especially favorable moments, times of divine favor, when something shines upon a person and he genuinely doesn’t even want to sin. But we still need to understand why the Arizal says this specifically about Pesach and not other times. One explanation is that we see that Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself was very stringent here: “It shall not be seen”—no chametz may be seen in your possession, and no chametz may be found in your possession. Not only must you not eat it; it must not be seen or found.

02:47 Speaker 2 There’s another point: this was the first mitzvah the Jewish people received before the giving of the Torah. According to Kabbalah and Chassidus, we say that this was a birth—the birth of the Jewish people, as the verse also describes it. A birth. In Kabbalah, the whole matter of eating matzah and the entire Seder is understood in that light: at birth, you begin small and need to grow. That’s why we say this is such an auspicious time. It isn’t only a time for Pesach; it’s a time that helps us throughout the year, and that gives it special importance. And when we speak of birth, there’s another important point. Parents protect a small child much more carefully than an older child—from contamination in the air outside and all sorts of other things. The food may all be kosher and permissible, but they choose specifically what’s best, easiest to digest, and most beneficial for the child. It’s the same with the stringencies of Pesach. Other foods are kosher too. So why avoid them? It’s not, G-d forbid, that there’s any concern about them. But the analogy helps us understand: with a newborn—or with someone who needs to watch his health—you’re careful not to give him foods that aren’t good for him, with lots of fat or cholesterol and things like that. Those foods are fine; he’s allowed to eat them. But for him, it’s better to avoid this and that and the other thing. The same is true spiritually. On Pesach, the Festival of Matzos, there are particular things about which we’re stringent, even though you can’t say there’s anything wrong with someone who eats them. G-d forbid that we should say there’s something wrong with people who don’t observe those stringencies. But we do

05:14 Speaker 2 observe them because we understand and know that they’ll help us in our service of Hashem throughout the year. One area where we have many stringencies is the matzos themselves. We know that matzah on Pesach is called michla demeheimnusa, the food of faith. It’s the one thing a person eats all year—a physical food—that helps his faith. It is food of faith. Just hearing those words helps us appreciate how precious matzah is: it strengthens faith. It’s also called michla de’asvasa, food of healing, which heals the sick. To return to the earlier analogy, we’re all sick. Being sick means that we have a yetzer hara that tempts us and we stumble. That’s what this illness is. We’re sick. And the strongest, best medicine is matzah. Matzah is powerful; it’s medicine. That’s why it’s called michla de’asvasa. So, naturally, we want to eat the most mehudar matzah possible. If matzah has these very special properties—it helps faith and also healing—then we want it to be as pure as possible. That’s why you see many people forming groups and coming themselves to oversee the matzah baking. They make that effort even though it costs much more money—much more. It isn’t the usual price. With matzah, we don’t look at the money, and we don’t stop at whether it’s kosher. We look for the most mehudar matzah possible. In Chabad, we know of stringencies beyond all those written in Shulchan Aruch. Shulchan Aruch mentions several things. It discusses dried fruit, for example: there used to be concerns because people would dry fruit using flour, and that created a problem. Dried fruit. And regarding kitniyos, Shulchan Aruch says that Ashkenazim don’t eat kitniyos. Of course, we observe all those stringencies that are written there in Shulchan Aruch. We also have stringencies that became known to us mainly through the students of Tomchei Temimim during the time of the Rebbe Rashab. Rebbetzin Rivkah was very involved in the kitchen there, watching to make sure everything was done properly. From her, they learned what the Chabad stringencies were and how we were to conduct ourselves. That’s where all those customs come from. There are some customs we also heard from the Alter Rebbe—not from him directly, but from his brother. But many of these practices were learned from the bochurim who ate there. Before that, everyone ate at home; people didn’t know what went on in the Rebbes’ homes. But once there was a yeshiva, Rebbetzin Rivkah was there and told the bochurim many things: what to do and what not to do. One of the most significant stringencies concerns gebrokts—matzah that has come into contact with liquid. This is also something the Alter Rebbe discusses in his responsa. He says that someone who is concerned about gebrokts has a basis for it, and so on. The Alter Rebbe explains the history of matzah and when this practice began. Concerns arose in the time of the Maggid of Mezritch or the Baal Shem Tov. They were very stringent about gebrokts, whereas the wider Jewish world was not. So even today, other chassidim are careful about gebrokts, and in Chabad we’re somewhat more careful than the other chassidim. But that’s the source. He

08:01 Speaker 2 The fruit with flour, and that’s a problem. Ah, dried fruit. As for kitniyos, the Shulchan Aruch says that Ashkenazim do not eat kitniyos. That’s in addition to all these stringencies that are written in the Shulchan Aruch, which we certainly observe. We have stringencies that we learned about mainly from the students of Tomchei Temimim in the time of the Rebbe Rashab. The Rebbe Rashab’s Rebbetzin Rivkah spent a lot of time in the kitchen, making sure everything was as it should be. So from her they learned what the Chabad stringencies were and how we should conduct ourselves. That’s where all the customs come from. There are also a few customs we heard about from the Alter Rebbe—not from him personally, but from the Alter Rebbe’s brother. But many of the special stringencies were learned from the students who ate there. Before that, everyone ate in his own home; people didn’t know what went on in the Rebbeim’s homes. But once there was a yeshivah, Rebbetzin Rivkah was there and told the students many things: what to do and what not to do. One of the most stringent practices concerns matzah sheruyah. Matzah sheruyah is also something the Alter Rebbe discusses in his responsa. He brings it up and says that someone who is concerned about matzah sheruyah has a basis for it, and so on. The Alter Rebbe explains the history of matzos and when this practice arose, because concerns began in the time of the Maggid of Mezritch or the Baal Shem Tov. They were very stringent about matzah sheruyah, whereas the rest of the world was not. So to this day, chassidim—all chassidim, not only Chabad chassidim—are careful about matzah sheruyah. In Chabad, though, we are somewhat more careful about it than other chassidim. But that is the source. He

10:58 Speaker 2 He relates that once, everyone baked matzah at home, just as they baked bread at home. And when people baked at home, some knew how to do it better and some knew less. But the main thing was that they baked matzah at home, and they also baked it during Chol Hamoed. A lot of the matzos were soft matzos, the kind sold today. Some people sell soft matzos, and that really is what they had back then. But soft matzos don’t keep; they dry out right away. So if you bake at home, you can bake fresh matzah every day. But you can’t prepare it in advance, because it dries out. So people began making the matzos we eat today—the thin, dry matzos. Before that, they made them thicker. Now, sometimes the dough wasn’t worked hard enough, or it was stiff, or something like that, so not all the flour got mixed into the dough. There could be little pockets of flour inside. Even though that flour went into the oven, many hold that it remained flour. And if it then comes into contact with water—if that flour is soaked in water—it can become chametz. Because there is flour inside the matzah. There is

13:29 Speaker 2 an empty pocket containing flour that wasn’t properly mixed and kneaded into the matzah. If that flour now comes into contact with water, it becomes chametz, according to those opinions, even after it has been through the oven. That is why people began to be stringent about soaked matzah. It was a period when people were learning how to make matzos in this way, and that was when the stringency began. It wasn’t something they had in the time of the Geonim, or in the time of the Shach. In the time of the Shulchan Aruch, this problem didn’t exist, because everyone baked at home and baked differently. But once people began making matzos like the ones we make today, the concerns about soaked matzah arose. That is why we are stringent about it. The Rebbe Rashab was exceptionally stringent about soaked matzah, and our customs in this regard go back to him. When he ate, he did not eat matzah together with anything else. If he was eating fish or any other food, he wouldn’t eat it with matzah. He would eat the matzah first, finish with it, and then eat the other foods. Another interesting point is that the Rebbe Rashab did soak matzah in specially guarded wine, something we don’t have. “Guarded wine” means that all the utensils and everything involved were checked to ensure that there wasn’t a single drop of water. That is called fruit juice, and fruit juice does not cause the dough to become chametz. So he had special matzah,

16:01 Speaker 2 guarded wine, and guarded milk, with no water mixed in, and he did use those with his matzos. But what he taught us is to be very careful about soaked matzah. They relate that every time the Rebbe Rashab took a spoonful of soup, he would wipe the spoon afterward. To that extent. We also saw that when the Rebbe ate matzah, he would take a napkin and wipe his mouth after each piece, to remove the crumbs and so on. We saw that many times. In any case, we are very careful about soaked matzah. And here we need to go into quite a few halachos. We are careful about soaked matzah even with young children. What we do is eat the matzah before the food, and then eat the food. But we don’t stop eating matzah altogether, because there is a halachah in the Shulchan Aruch about someone who, in the middle of a meal, stops eating the—one also needs to eat matzah between the fish and the other things one eats. But while eating the matzah, the other foods aren’t there; and while eating the other foods, one doesn’t eat matzah. The custom in the Rebbe’s household was to cover the matzos on the table so that nothing would splash onto them. Nowadays, we even put the matzos in bags. Each person has matzah in a bag, breaks off a piece, and puts it in their mouth. That is our custom. We give matzah to young children too, and they eat it this way. Sometimes a child takes the whole matzah instead of breaking off a piece and putting it in his mouth, and he

18:28 Speaker 2 eats from the whole matzah. So his saliva gets on the matzah, which then goes back into the bag. The truth is that we certainly must not impose stringencies on children. The Rebbe said at a farbrengen that one should be careful about soaked matzah even with children, but the Rebbe said in 5748 that we should do so without making things hard for them. The Rebbe was very careful that the holiday should be pleasant for children, so they wouldn’t say, “Oh no, Pesach is coming and I won’t have anything to eat.” The Rebbe was strongly opposed to that. We don’t want a child to feel that mitzvos are a burden, because that can lead to bad things. So the Rebbe says not to be strict with them: “Don’t eat from the child’s bag if he has bitten into a big piece of matzah. Fine—eat from a different bag.” There is also a very interesting story about the Frierdiker Rebbe. When he first came to America—I’m not sure—there was a Pesach when a guest came to him. Suddenly the Frierdiker Rebbe heard a sound. The guest didn’t know the customs, and he took his matzah and put it into the borscht. How do you say borscht? Beet soup—borscht. So the Frierdiker Rebbe said, “Better that the matzah should turn red than that a person’s face should turn red.” In other words, don’t embarrass someone. Yes, we observe stringencies, and that is fine, it’s a good thing. But those stringencies must not lead us to embarrass a Jew, or to conflict, or to giving sustenance to

21:03 Speaker 2 the external forces. The yetzer hara is there even when we do good things: it can push us to extremes and get us to quarrel with one another. Our stringencies regarding soaked matzah are very extensive. For example, as we said, the Rebbe Rashab himself did use guarded wine with absolutely no water in it. He soaked matzah in that wine and ate it. So the question arises: how do we view having matzah with fruit juice, with no water at all? For example, spreading avocado or egg on matzah. Is there actually a prohibition here or not? In truth, each family has its own practice. Many families are stringent about this too. Those who are stringent follow the principle of “lo plug”—not making distinctions. You may be at home and start eating matzah with avocado, but your child will do it too, using a knife he has just washed, with drops of water still on it. Then it is no longer just fruit juice: fruit juice mixed with even a drop of water can cause the dough to become chametz, and does so even faster. Because of concerns like these, we don’t make distinctions; we are stringent across the board. Many families are completely stringent and don’t put even fruit juice on matzah, because it could lead to a problem. A problem could arise even if there is no problem with the way I did it this time, but

23:45 Speaker 2 It may be that the way my child does it is fine, but if someone else does it, there will be a problem. So that’s why we don’t—there are many who don’t do it. Some do. Now, there’s another practice we follow because of these concerns. The Shulchan Aruch says that when washing mayim acharonim, you should pass the water over your lips too. We don’t do that because of the concern that there might be matzah crumbs. Anything that has come into contact with a person’s hand, we don’t eat unless we peel it. That’s why we peel all fruits and vegetables. We peel everything. Why? Because someone may have touched it, and you don’t know what was on their hand. There might have been chametz on it from a sandwich they ate earlier or something like that. This is a stringency. Yes, it’s a stringency. It was a stringency until recently. The truth is that nowadays, companies spray fruits and vegetables with some substance to preserve them, to make them last longer. We don’t know about that substance. We do know that here in Israel it is made from kitniyos, not chametz. As far as we know, it’s mainly made from kitniyos, not chametz. Chametz is more expensive; grain is more expensive. So if you take an apple and don’t peel it, you’re eating kitniyos. Today this is more than just a hiddur about anything touched by someone’s hand. There’s a real issue here, because many fruits and vegetables have some kind of wax or something similar put on them to preserve them. Okay, now we’ll come to lettuce. Obviously, for the Seder we have to prepare the

26:10 Speaker 2 lettuce, but should we eat lettuce throughout Pesach or not? Some are stringent and don’t eat lettuce during Pesach apart from what they eat on Seder night. The reason is that you can’t peel lettuce. You remove the outer leaves, and you can eat the inner ones, because the concern with lettuce is that someone touched it. They touch the outside, not the inside; they don’t open it up and touch every leaf. Some accept that reasoning, and some don’t. But that depends on the person. A person can be lenient if they want. It isn’t one of those things. There are much greater stringencies that we observe, like peeling fruit. Why are we stringent about peeling fruit? Because a hand touched it. And the Alter Rebbe says, for example, that Jews clean thoroughly, scraping and scrubbing even the dirt from tables and chairs. We don’t want something that has been touched by a hand. The truth is that it would have been enough to wash it well. Once you’ve washed the apple well—not the apple we discussed that has wax on it; I mean an ordinary apple or other vegetables—even if someone touched it, after you wash it, it doesn’t matter. But we didn’t say to wash it. Why not? There are cases where there’s no choice, but why didn’t we say to wash it? Because you’ll say, “Wash it,” and you’ll wash it properly. One child will wash it like this, another will wash it even less, and a third will do what some people do when washing their hands after using the bathroom, before saying Asher Yatzar: just touch the water, and that’s it. So they made a uniform rule, rather than having all these different ways of doing it.

28:40 Speaker 2 They established something that really works according to every approach and every opinion: you peel it. So here too we see the principle of not making distinctions. We don’t want to get into one distinction after another on Pesach, because in the end that will cause confusion, and others will be lenient. And as we discussed earlier, there are grounds for being lenient. You could be lenient about everything. But it’s like a newborn baby: you’re very careful that there should be no infection, that the air should be right, and so on. That’s one of the explanations we give for all the stringencies of Pesach: this is the time when we are like little children, being born. Our G-dly soul is now growing stronger like a newborn child, so we want no contamination at all. That’s why we’re more and more careful. You could go to the doctors, and they would all say, “It’s fine. This food is fine; that food is fine.” But you keep to your diet because you know what will make you stronger. In principle, kitniyos doesn’t have a very clear definition, but what emerges from the Alter Rebbe is that kitniyos means something where the seed is the entire part we eat. The seed is both what you plant and what you eat; there’s nothing else. Take a watermelon or a melon, for example: it has seeds inside. Should we say that the whole thing is kitniyos and forbidden to eat, or not? We say that the definition of kitniyos is that the seed is the entire food, as with most of the kitniyos we’re talking about—beans and things like that. The seed is the whole food. But if the seed isn’t the part you eat,

31:11 Speaker 2 [unclear] like a cucumber. It looks as though there are kitniyos inside it. But that isn’t the whole food: besides the seeds, there’s also the fruit, so we don’t call it kitniyos. Therefore, you can eat watermelon, melon, and cucumber. They aren’t called kitniyos. With what is called kitniyos—corn and all those things—the entire part you eat is the seed itself. That is, in principle, the definition of kitniyos. But cottonseed oil is different. You don’t eat cotton; it isn’t a food. So making oil from it isn’t called kitniyos either. That’s how Rabbi Landau ruled. Another of our stringencies is that we no longer use any utensil that falls on the floor. Why? Because we don’t keep the floor guarded; we don’t know exactly what happens on the floor. So when a utensil falls on the floor, we don’t use it again. If it’s really needed, many people kasher it by pouring boiling water over it, even from a kettle. But not using it is a stringency where it’s practical; it isn’t practical in every home. One reason some prefer disposable dishes is that if even a bit of matzah falls onto a plate, you can throw the plate away because it’s disposable. But disposables bring another problem. Today some disposable dishes have something sprayed on them to keep them from sticking together. With the more expensive ones, they put some kind of coating between them so you can easily separate one from another, and we don’t know

33:43 Speaker 2 what that coating is. It’s a problem, and you need to know about it. Also, disposable paper dishes have a coating on them. If it has no hechsher, there could certainly be a problem. But even if it has a hechsher, it’s best not to use it. Why do we need it? We don’t even want to rely on hechsherim, because—as we didn’t have enough time to discuss—we don’t like using anything manufactured that we didn’t make ourselves. We don’t want to use it. That’s why many people don’t use store-bought oil and instead make schmaltz, using the fat from chickens throughout Pesach. Okay, because of this stringency about not wanting anything store-bought, the simpler plastic disposables, which don’t have anything sprayed between them, are fine. Even if the plastic is recycled—melted down and then made into another utensil or something like that—the melting is a form of kashering, so it’s perfectly fine to use. But the more expensive ones need a hechsher, because we don’t know whether something was sprayed on them, which would be a problem. We don’t use spices on Pesach. Why don’t we use spices on Pesach? First of all, the Rebbe Rashab once wrote that he bought everything he needed from a store that had no chametz in it. Why? Because inside a store there could be spices that, in those days, certainly posed a problem. Today, spices with a good hechsher from Rabbi Landau and the like don’t have that concern. But those who don’t eat them do so because they don’t

36:24 Speaker 2 So then you continue in that way. You also can’t say there’s a problem with salt. And there are those who are stringent about sugar; we haven’t spoken about that. The truth is that the Rebbe Rashab said this stringency was not for everyone. It was a stringency he took upon himself. There’s a story that once, on Pesach, the Rebbe Rashab said a maamar, and afterward the chassidim who reviewed maamarim repeated it back to the Rebbe Rashab himself. This was to see that they knew what they were saying, that they knew the order, and so on. But one Pesach, the young men didn’t remember the maamar. Someone told the Rebbe Rashab that they couldn’t remember it because they hadn’t drunk their tea with sugar—they were being stringent. That was said to the Rebbe Rashab; in our generation, no one would make a joke like that to him. But the Rebbe Rashab answered: “What I do, what I say, isn’t for everyone.” The stringency about sugar isn’t for everyone. That’s what the Rebbe Rashab said. Still, some people are stringent about sugar. How do they use it? They dissolve the sugar in water or something like that, then strain the dissolved sugar and use it that way. What difference does it make in halachah whether the sugar is dissolved or not? The difference is this: If there’s a little chametz—a grain of chametz—in the food, and you cook it, the cooking mixes everything together and the chametz can become nullified. But if you don’t cook it, that piece of chametz sits between

39:02 Speaker 2 two pieces—between two grains of sugar—and it doesn’t become nullified. When you use it during the festival, the chametz becomes significant again, and suddenly you have chametz in it, which is forbidden even in the smallest amount. That’s why we sift it and check it that way. There’s also encouragement to cook before the festival everything that can be cooked, so that anything mixed in becomes nullified. That’s a hiddur not everyone can manage. And another very interesting thing: many people buy everything before the festival. When you go to buy food, you need to think about the box it comes in. You don’t know what was in it; there may have been chametz in that box before, or something like that. So you should have in mind that you aren’t acquiring anything in it besides the produce, and that if there’s a grain of chametz or something like that, you aren’t acquiring it. That’s one reason for the hiddur of buying everything before Pesach. But the main thing about Pesach is that it’s a beginning. On Pesach, a person needs to strengthen himself, especially in emunah. Matzah is “the food of faith” and “the food of healing,” and we need to take that with us for the whole year, so that throughout the year we feel G-d’s closeness as they felt it at the time of the Exodus from Egypt and the splitting of the sea. We should feel G-d’s closeness—that Hakadosh Boruch Hu loves us, strengthens us, and takes us out of all our troubles. And we all pray that Moshiach should be revealed already, that we should emerge from all our personal troubles and the troubles of the Jewish people as a whole. Most importantly, the Shechinah is still in exile. The Shechinah suffers; it isn’t only people who suffer, and that should trouble a person. So he needs to cry out sincerely that he wants Moshiach and wants Moshiach to redeem us speedily, very soon. And may it be a kosher un freilichen Pesach. We keep giving that blessing because

41:39 Speaker 2 the blessing is very important. We can’t do it on our own without a blessing from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So, yes—a kosher un freilichen Pesach.