My column in Tablet magazine this week is about how Passover can turn us into crazed, perspective-lacking control freaks. Love the photo of the tinfoil living room. It reminds me of seeing the documentary Be Fruitful and Multiply a few years ago — the film is about ultra-Orthodox Jews following the commandment to have huge families, and the consequences thereof. There’s a scene showing one of these huge families preparing for Passover. An army of little girls in long skirts and long-sleeved blouses scrubs the house and encases the kitchen in tinfoil. It winds up looking like the inside of a spaceship.
The comments were interesting. It’s very nice when readers defend me.
Is there really so much stigma to getting occupational therapy?
Every year I struggle with how much to clean and what to eat on Pesach. I fall on the side of doing less but trying to observe the spirit of the law – yet every year I feel guilty about this choice. The past two years we’ve chosen to eat kitniyot as well, but when my husband suggested an all-kitniyot meal of rice and beans, I just couldn’t do it! On my Pesach dishes, no less (because yes, although I hide my chametz in the pantry and do not cover my counters at all, I do change my dishes).