Uva hakohein v'ra'ah v'hineih pasah hanega babayit tzara'at mam'eret hi babayit tamei hu.
And the priest will come and look, and, behold,the plague is spread
in the house, it is a malignant leprosy in the house, it is impure. (Vayikra
14:44)
Today is Shabbat
Hagadol, the Shabbat before Pesach. Traditionally, a rabbi would give a sermon
only twice a year, the rest of the time reserved for teaching. Shabbat Hagadol is
one of those times. The other is Shabbat Shuvah. Speaking during the High Holy
Days makes sense. It is a time to ensure the congregation is in the right
mindset for t'shuvah. So why is the other time Shabbat Hagadol? Maybe because
it too is the start of a new year, a time when we refocus our thought and our
actions. It is a time when we rid not only our homes, but our lives of hametz,
of the sourness in our lives, for that is the true meaning of hametz, sourness.
In ancient times,
bread was not leavened with yeast added to the dough, it was leavened with a
sour. If you bake, you may know that a sour is a living thing. It must be fed
and maintained. If maintained properly and kept in balance to the other
ingredients, this sour can be used to produce wonderful baked goods. However,
if the sour is allowed to grow unchecked, much like the tzara'at of our
parasha, it takes over, producing rot and making the food inedible. So too can
this happen within a person. Hametz, adds flavour to our lives. Without it life
is bland and flat, but if we allow the hametz to take over, we may cease to
maintain that which is necessary in our lives, throwing things out of balance.
In every life there are ups and downs. There are times when we become too busy.
The laundry piles up. Suddenly there are 2000 emails in your inbox. At these
times we need to clean house, remove the hametz, return to the simple, and with
that rebalance our lives.
Shabbat shalom and zissen Pesach
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