81 - B'Dikat Chametz

B’Dikat Chametz is a meditation as we conduct the search for all things leavened. Dennis Prager’s wonderful drosh on Parashat Bo, (Learn Torah With, Vol 5, Num 15, January 23, 1999, Torah Aura Productions) talks about eating matzah not as a "a memento of a trivial aspect of the exodus-the speed with which the Jews left Egypt" but as a rejection of the death culture of the Egyptians who invented leavening, reminding us again and again to "choose life that we might live."

About these three psalms for Pesach

Eighty-One

B’Dikat Chametz

From the frown of hurried preparations,
Turn our eyes to greening branches
That You coax from dried stock;
Let us see again Your creation.

Again and again, You hold out spring;
Again and again, You offer endless chances
To be born in wholeness and healing,
To move toward You.

Searching, we find stale opinions,
Molding ideas, burnt crusts of stubbornness.
Peeking into corners, our eyes discover
The crumbled remnants of worry and anger.

Scraping clean the grime of winter,
Built of our worries and deficiencies,
We scour a shining surface, a clean place
To arrange the season’s delights.

Sweep us clean, and burn the trite ideas
That stifle us and shield us from You.
Burn away these shattered endings
And start us again on the path toward freedom.