8 ms·
Take a feather and a candle: spring cleaning in 13th century Haggadah books
- JoeAltmaier 10y agotl;dr: Jewish men help clean the house one day a year
- tertius 10y agoTo be fair, it's a very deep clean.
- Dolores12 10y agocan you tell why it is so important?
- dang 10y agoThis is a bad Hacker News comment that predictably triggered a stampede of other bad comments. Please don't dumb this place down any further. The post is a beautiful historical article that deserves a place here. It isn't to everyone's taste, but nothing is.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoThe post tried to make the point that historically, Jewish men helped out around the house. It was an unreasonable reach. This comment was a succinct rebuttal of that point of view. But of course you can't judge everyone's knee-jerk reaction, so I'll remove it if you still feel hurt.
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- xherberta 10y agoAll hamets (leaven) that is in my possession, that I have seen and not seen, that I have beheld and not beheld, that I have removed and not removed, let it be nullified and like the dust of the earth. This could be fun as a basis for a meditative approach to debugging.
- ederlf 10y agoSpring cleaning is something funny to someone that comes from a country (Brazil) where people usually do a thorough cleaning on a weekly to daily basis (by themselves or hiring cleaning maids in the case of the upper classes).
- wry_discontent 10y agoGrowing up (in the southern US) it was usually when we'd do stuff like go through closets, or reassess the placement of everything in the kitchen. It was more like reorganization than anything else. We cleaned all the time.
- inanutshellus 10y ago"Spring cleaning" where I am means "go through your things and throw away what you haven't used since the last spring cleaning." Recently I was watching a TV show about some guys living in the woods in Alaska and they really mean spring cleaning. In their case, their farm animals' feces had spent the winter frozen to the coop and barn floor boards, so at the first thaw they scrambled to clean the place up quickly!
- ska 10y agoFrom what I've seen, it's common place to clean thoroughly every week lots of places. The idea of "spring cleaning" is much more thorough than anyone would do week to week. For example taking everything out of every pantry and storage area, washing the backs of cupboards and storage, throwing expired things out, polishing metals, varnishing, etc. It does probably have more currency in climates where the weather would keep you cooped in for months over winter, and thus happen on the first chance to give everthing a good airing and bry properly.
- golergka 10y agoIt's only talking about religious people; extrapolating religious norms to the whole ethnicity is kind of unfair.
- M_Grey 10y ago...Especially when about a fifth of said ethnicity is basically atheistic as well; quite a diverse bunch really, from ultra-orthodox 'Haredi' to a purely cultural identity.
- jimmyk 10y agoquite a diverse bunch really In comparison to who?
- M_Grey 10y agoCompared to the GP's "Jewish men..." notion, as though that were a useful group descriptor when it comes to behaviors. So, I suppose... compared to the often monolithic notions of Judaism that I so often encounter on and offline.
- jimmyk 10y agoas though that were a useful group descriptor when it comes to behaviors. I found it to be useful. In combination with some other comments, it gave me a particular idea about what the article was about.
- gumby 10y agostrict grammarians, for instance, who would only have considered using "whom" in your sentence.
- gwbas1c 10y agoChristianity, where the definition effectively prohibits someone from being both an atheist and a christian.
- Allower 10y agoDon't bother reading, waste of time. No mention of why cleaning is important, just lots of repetition about Jewish people using candles to see crumbs and sweeping them with a feather. I haven't been this disappointed reading something in a while.
- tmnvix 10y agoAm I missing something or is this just a clickbait title?
- torgoguys 10y agoThere is another interesting wrinkle to the described process. What if you miss a bit in the house? Something in the couch cushion perhaps. Uh oh! Well, the super Orthodox Jews have a solution. Yes, you should make a good faith effort to eliminate all of the hamets in your house, but you can exploit a loophole! Hamets in your house, but not owned by you, are OK, so rabbis in these groups have a list of non-Jews willing to buy all remaining hamets in your house for $1.00 (or other small amount). They then own them and you are in the clear. There is a special term for these people, but I don't remember it. But what if you later (after Passover) find a box of crackers you missed and you actually want them? No problem because the loophole has a loophole. The buyers don't actually pay you the $1.00, they just pay you a penny as a down payment. As part of their service, they then deliberately don't pay you any more, default on the contract, and, the day Passover, the box of crackers are actually yours again.
- yehi 10y agoyou're confusing 2 things. before passover, Jews make a declaration claiming that all crumbs and other hametz not found should be like dust. if however someone had something valuable, like a bottle of whiskey, then they sell it.
- torgoguys 10y agoLooked it up. You are right..."sell" it, as in the temporary sale I mentioned above. Reference: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/1689/jewish/Selling-Your-Chametz.htm http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/1689/...
- jnordwick 10y agoAnd of course, selling the White House chametz: https://i.redd.it/p57ueuzum8ny.jpg https://i.redd.it/p57ueuzum8ny.jpg http://brisbanehebrewcongregation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/chametz.jpg http://brisbanehebrewcongregation.com/wp-content/uploads/201...
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