The Sale of Chametz

Each year, we send the Sale of Chametz forms for you to return to the synagogue. There was a link to the synagogue website where you can download the forms in the Passover information email we sent to the community on Wednesday.  You can also find the direct link here. They will be mailed to congregation as part of a large Passover mailing that will be sent to the membership next week.  I am also attaching the form to the bottom of this week’s Shabbat message as well. 

Today, I want to make sure that everyone understands what this mitzvah is all about, and why it is so important.   And I want you sell your chametz soon!

Passover is far more than eating matzah, and buying special foods.  We are commanded to literally remove all chametz, (leavened products) from our homes.  In the past, this was relatively easy.  Until several generations ago, people rarely kept significant quantities of food in their homes.  Food production was for simpler than it is today.  Yet with improved food technologies, the advent of refrigeration and modern techniques, that has changed.  Most of us have several days, if not several weeks of food in our home. Current methods of food production, combined with the complexity of the ingredients in our food, guarantee that much of the food we enjoy during the year cannot be used for Passover because so many of the ingredients are considered chametz and thus forbidden on Passover.  Although we are commanded to remove all of these things from our home, it is virtually impossible to do so.

That's what Mechirat Chametz, selling our chametz is about.  After we do our best to remove and search for chametz in our home, we literally sell, that is, we transfer the possession of whatever chametz we are unable to fully remove so that we are able to fulfill this important aspect of Passover observance.

Is it a legal fiction? Perhaps. But does that make it invalid? Certainly not!  Passover, in many ways is the most important holiday.  We want to create the conditions that allow us to fulfill the words of the Passover Haggadah "in every generation, it is incumbent upon us to see ourselves as if we personally came out of the land of Egypt."  Doing our best to remove as much of our unleavened products from our possession as possible and then selling your chametz, is one of many important ways to help make that happen. 

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