Lessons Learned: Don’t bring pork to Pesach

Did I really bring pork to Pesach? Unfortunately YES, mistakenly (It pains me to even write it y’all. I’m cringing). But let me just say upfront, that no one ate it. Phew! HalleluYah.

I’ve already shared the wonderful time we had at our Pesach gathering down the Jersey shore, but if all I took away from it was a great experience then I’ve completely missed the point.

I believe that The Most High has given us these commandments as a way to show our obedience and love for Him of course, but also as a spiritual exercise. And it’s a gift to maintain our culture all at the same time!Absolutely brilliant right?

Equating leaven with sin and false doctrine is the idea. So in preparation for the feasts I purge the physical leaven from my home and search for the spiritual leaven in my heart. There is a physical and a spiritual realm that I am aware of at all times. That doesn’t mean that I don’t get tripped up in my physical circumstances at times but I know the solution for whatever I’m physically experiencing is spiritual.

So in preparation for our trip, we had to book a hotel and since the hotel had a full kitchen and it was Shabbat and Passover into Unleavened Bread, shopping and cooking was complicated to say the least. I’m used to my routine at home but taking this show on the road had me buggin’ out. Only on the inside though. I was calm and collected on the outside (insert side-eye). Anyways, we left Friday around noon and traveled 2 hours south. When we arrived at our hotel which had a full kitchen, my husband was hungry, the kids were hungry and I needed to shop, get back and cook for that day, that night and the next day. I went to the aptly named Supermarket (more like an airport with food) and ran through the aisles reading labels and checking off my list as quickly as I could. The plan was to get prepared food from the food court buffet so my starving family of 5 wouldn’t have to wait even longer for me to cook, and then I was going to cook for Shabbat. Seems simple enough but I had to pay close attention to ingredients and there was leaven in 90% of what I looked at (things like soup-wha?!). I got a rotisserie chicken, fresh fruit, yogurt, chicken sausage, about 75 other things and cranberry juice which is regimented into my son’s diet for health purposes.

I hurried back to the hotel. Made plates and started cooking. Sunset was at 7:30p and that gave me 2 hours to cook in an unfamiliar kitchen with an electric stove (I’m used to gas),newly purchased spices, and a baby that keeps wandering in pulling at me. My husband wasn’t there because he went on a pharmacy run before Shabbat began. I got my cooking done and we entered our rest.

I went to get my son his cranberry juice only to discover I got the wrong one! (in hindsight, even though it was Shabbat I could’ve went to get the correct one). Ugh! My husband asked,” How’d you get the wrong one?” Which, honestly, annoyed me at the time, BUT his question requires me to examine “how”to get to the “why”so I don’t repeat it. And the answer to his question was, I didn’t pay as close attention as I thought I had. I had paid close attention to ingredients (or so I thought), checking for leaven and what not but missed the juice because I was sure I had grabbed the right one. SIDENOTE: This isn’t the first time I’ve picked up the wrong thing from the store in life and it isn’t the first time I’ve had to examine how it happened. Also, it isn’t the first time I was sure of something and been completely wrong. And as innocuous as it may seem to get the wrong thing from the store, on a larger scale or in a different set of circumstances, it is a HUGE deal (hence the title of this post).

Fast forward to the day after our Passover feast. We needed to check out of our hotel and we gathered once again with our extended Hebrew family for brunch at the beach house they rented for the week. I had so much food left over from my shopping expedition that I decided to donate it to the rest of the group who were staying for the remainder of the week. I left fruit, yogurt, ice cream, and chicken sausages.

Well, fast forward to two days later. We had returned home and I needed to go to the store. I decided to repurchase those chicken sausages and this day I read the ingredients. To my horror, the end of the list noted “in pork casing”. WHAT?!! My mind immediately flashed back to the sausages I left at the beach house. My heart sank and I started dialing to warn someone. My initial call went to voicemail. Then I texted another sister and she promptly responded. My fingers never typed so fast. I informed her of the situation and she confirmed that the sausages were still there, no one ate them and she threw them away. What a relief!!

So when I returned home, heart still racing and feeling absolutely terrible and embarrassed, I shared it with my husband. Insert lesson here. I knew what he was going to say. I didn’t want to hear it. I was already mortified. But hiding mistakes is an issue of PRIDE which The Most High continues to work on with me. Removing that spiritual leaven.

Then, to make things all the worse, after the feast had ended, I found items that should’ve been removed; that I missed! A hidden cookie here, a bottle of vinegar there. However, for me it is a constant reminder of the little things or the hidden things that I need to be on the lookout for spiritually. I had physically been so focused on searching for leaven that I missed the pork! Since our spiritual parallels our physical the lesson I drew from that was not to have tunnel vision about obvious sin to the point where you miss others.

Since the title of this post mentions lessons learned, I would like to share one more take away. During the feast we ate Unleavened Bread of course and my son, a true doughy bread loving, dinner roll, picky-eating carbivore quite enjoyed the homemade Unleavened Bread that we ate. So much so I asked the sister who made it for the recipe. And even though the feast has ended, he still wants to eat it! And so does everyone else. We developed a taste for it. So I realized this; The task to remove spiritual leaven remains as well as the mission to develop a taste and a love for the Unleavened Bread that is Torah.

In short, lessons I learned were maintain full disclosure, pay attention, and live Torah. I’m grateful to The Most High for this reflection as we count the Omer and prepare for Shavuot.

I hope this blessed you because I am blessed in just writing it. Please share your thoughts below.

Be blessed and Shalom!