And so commences the greatest Jewish collective home edit event of the past 3,000 years: cleaning for Passover! Jews the world over will be tossing out that crusty old soy sauce from the back of the fridge, sweeping out the crumbs from under the toaster, and cleaning out all the bread/leavening products from our kitchens. Sweeping away all that old gunk isn’t just a mitzvah (Jewish ritual commandment)– it feels good too!  Like a detox, but for your kitchen. Many people take this opportunity to do an extra good sweep, mop, and vacuum not just of the kitchen, but of cars, living rooms and any place you might have crusty crumbs acrumblin’. The Torah says, out with the old, to make space for the new possibilities of Spring.

But let’s be honest: many, many households (maybe even you!) won’t throw away perfectly good boxes of cereal and pasta and whathaveyou... that would be like throwing out money and our tradition does not support being wasteful! So how can you fulfill the mitzvah of getting rid of your chametz (leavened products) for the week of Passover without actually throwing it away?

Option 1: Donate your unopened chametz’dik food to a local pantry. Let all who are hungry come and eat, right?

Option 2: Sell it all to a person who doesn’t have the obligation to avoid bread products during Pesah! The stuff will stay in your house hidden away in a taped-off cupboard, and this magical non-Jew will technically own it for the week of Passover.

But which saintly non-Jew would do this? Enter the talented, brilliant, and totally game carb-loving Mishkan-friendly gentile Lara Johnson, girlfriend of Mishkan staff member Zach Weinberg, Mishkan’s Programs & Operations Manager. She wants all your chametz (especially any sourdough bread; she’ll provide her own Kerrygold butter)! Rabbi Lizzi will appoint Zach Weinberg to sell the chametz of anyone signed up on our list to Lara for a mutually agreeable price ($1) and on Monday April 22nd, 2024 at 12:00pm CT our sale will go into effect and if your name is on our list, Lara will OWN YOUR BREAD! When Pesach ends (Tuesday night, April 30th around 7:45pm CT) all your stuff reverts back to your ownership (which, to be extra clear, never left your house to begin with, but ideally did hide in a taped-off cabinet and avoid detection or consumption).

By putting your name on this form you do hereby, therewith, furthermore, ergo, and with gusto appoint Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann to appoint Zach Weinberg to act as your agent in selling your chametz on your behalf. This is some fancy rabbinic legal magic if we do say so ourselves.

May you be matzahtastic all week and may your bowels move freely, like the newly freed Children of Israel.