I had a conversation today with my youngest sister that made me think. (Nothing good can come of me thinking.) For the sake of this post I will paraphrase the relevant parts of the conversation.
Sister: You have no idea how tired yet accomplished I feel.
Me: How so?
Sister: I worked for five hours but baruch hashem I finished the whole ‘meat’ side of my kitchen for Pesach, including the corelle dishes, china dishes, crystal glasses and cutlery. I even ‘st. moritz’ed’ all the pots. Tomorrow I am not going to work, I hope to do the dairy side, and then my kitchen is done for Pesach, besides the oven, stove, microwave and fridge.
Me: Seriously? You’re telling me that you usually don’t clean your dishes before you put them back in the cabinet? I am sure that you wouldn’t work all these hours and clean them for Pesach if they were already clean.
Sister: Oh come on! Of course they were clean, duh!!! You know that I would never put something into my cabinet if it weren’t perfectly clean. Now I did it for Pesach! I did it for the same reason that I toiled and ‘st. moritzed’ my pots, even though they have never been used yet.
Me: Wow! Cleaning pots that have never been used, that’s a new one. Is your husband okay with that? (How pretentious of me…)
Sister: Why should he care? It’s not like I am making him do it. And besides, this is what I saw mommy do and I will do it too.
I sensed that she was feeling very content and accomplished; I didn’t want to bust her bubble and ruin it for her, so I didn’t say anything. But this made me wonder why it has to be that way. Why do Jewish women have to find that feeling of accomplishment by doing useless labor? Why do scraping unused pots with hazardous chemicals have to be the only outlet available for a frum woman? I am open-minded enough to be able to accept that some people don’t mind this rigorous work and some even find pleasure in it, but why – for heaven’s sake – are they taught that this is an activity that has any worth at all?
In my house we don’t clean anything unless there is chametz and we are going to use it on Pesach. I get those people who designate this time to do spring cleaning, washing anything that is dusty. I can even find some reasoning and religious value in stringencies such as gebrokts, kutniyas or cleaning crumbs. But this? What kind of infantile unexcited upbringing and education does it take to get sane and even intelligent people to find pleasure in scraping unused pots?
I genuinely feel bad for these people but I do not have the heart to burst their bubble of bliss.
Boroparker 