Parashat Tzav – Passover Cleaning

Fittingly, just before the festival of Passover, we have a tie in from the weekly Torah portion.

Many people look at the extreme measures that we are suppose to go to in order to kosherize out homes for Passover (boiling metal pots, using blow torches on others, not being able to kosherize earth ware…), and think that some Rabbi made up these rules. But in fact they have basis in the Torah, as we read this week.

The passage is talking about the meat from a sacrifice. If it isn’t eaten within a certain time limit, it, and the vessel it’s in, become unclean. The passage details how to purify the vessels again. It talks about a clay pot has to be broken, since you can not purify it, and that a copper pot needs to be either boiled, or immersed in fire until it becomes red hot. The ancient commentaries talk about the reasons for this (food particles getting in the pores of the vessels).

The same rules and reasons apply today when you want to make a pot kosher for Passover, or convert it from milk to meat, or just make a pot kosher.

I’ll need to read this section closely, since I want to kosherize all my kitchen stuff when I move into my new house, so we can have a strictly kosher kitchen.