So, Passover is less than two weeks away now, starting on the 19th. This is the first time we (wife and I) are ever hosting Passover (Pesach) meals in our home. So it requires us to do a lot more work then we have ever done before, for this holiday.

Why so much more? Well, Passover has a strict rule to not have any bread in your house or in your possession. There are plenty of other rules and customs, but the bread thing is huge. Passover is like the major spring cleaning for orthodox Jews. We clean our homes with a fine tooth comb, to make sure we don't find even a crumb of bread (including food items made with bread (i.e. pretzels, crackers, many cereals, etc).

Now, if you are not Jewish, it is kind of hard to imagine what goes into cleaning your house of all bread items. Try to imagine what it would take to clean your house of all these items. Can you imagine that? Anyway, that is a brief overview of that aspect of the holiday.

Yesterday, we had to 'tovel' (means, spiritually clean new utensils and vessels such as pots, pans, forks, knives, etc. by dipping them in a Mikvah filled with rain water). Why did we get all new pots and pans? Well, like I said above, we can't have any bread items. So we either burn the bread from within the pans off with hot boiling water or we buy new ones we can use every year. We opted to buy new ones, and reserve them for Passover use every year. so before using new pans, we need to spiritually clean them (which actually makes them physically dirty, so we wash them when we get home). The tevilas keilim process isn't fun, but it's necessary.

So far, we bought tons of food, tons of bake wear, things to eat on, etc. Then we toveled them. Next up is to clean the kitchen so it is "kosher for passover." That will require me pouring boiling water on everything that is not new and locking up cabinets that has bread in them (and then selling off the contents of those cabinets to a non-Jewish person).

This all gets very technical and it is a lot of work. But it is exciting to host our first Passover.