Halachot PeSach In 15 Minutes by Rabbi Yaron Reuven

0:10we're going to put this shiur online so you can watch it again, but I'll give you all of the halachot for Pesach in, I think, anywhere between five to ten minutes. This is the minimum of minimum, meaning there's obviously a lot more details, but if you do all of what I say, you're good, okay? This is halachot of Pesach. Now, first and foremost, the month of Nisan, the month of Nisan, from Rosh Chodesh Nisan until the end of Nisan...

1:32stews and things of that nature that are meat. Then you have to go to something called libun. Libun is usually found in Jewish communities, and all Jewish communities have at least one or two or ten people that do this libun, which is that they burn and... They burned the actual pot all over again with a blowtorch to make sure that they reopen all of the holes within that metal to remove all of the chametz from it. If you're going to use the same thing, today, on one hand, it's very easy to get brand new. And number two, Baruch Hashem, most of Am Yisrael is in a decent financial shape such that you can get a brand new or at least a suitable set of pots and pans for the Chag from Walmart or Amazon for 30 dollars. So, most people opt not to do Libun. However, if you wish to use the same pots and pans, you have to perform Libun, which involves using a blowtorch to treat utensils used for cooking hot foods with Libun. If you prepared things that were cold, then they must undergo Hagalah. Hagalah means...

2:33You have to put it in boiling water. You have to put whatever tool that you're using in boiling water. And this is Hagalat Keilim. Hagalat Keilim, Hagalah, comes from the source of removing something foreign. We get this from Parashat Bechukotai, Sefer Vayikra, chapter 26, verse 11. Hashem says to the people of Israel, "V'lo tig'al nafshi etchem." Don't do something, don't bring something foreign into yourself to the point where I'm disgusted by you because of this foreign object; there's something foreign that you're doing. So on Pesach, we're not allowed to bring the rest of the year with us. On Pesach, we start new. Do not make Hashem disgusted with that. So the hagalat keilim is if you use the same things. Now, for Sephardim, anyone that is Sephardic, which I’m assuming is almost everybody here,

3:33There's a very big leniency when you're using glass. So, glass cups and glass plates do not need to be kashered. You can actually use them all year round. For Pesach and for outside of Pesach, you don't have to do anything if you're Sephardic. If you're Ashkenazi, you have to do the same thing as what your tradition is. Now, you can't be Ashkenazi just on Pesach or Sephardi just on Pesach, and the rest of the year be different. This, by the way, is one of the arguments I forgot. Baruch Hashem, I learned it again today. It's one of the arguments when it comes to this wigs craziness, where people say, "Yeah, but such and such rabbi says it's allowed." Yes, the reality is, even if what he says is right, you're still not allowed to do it. Why? Even if what he says is wrong, but even if what he says is right, you're still not allowed to use it. Why? He's not your rabbi. You're not allowed to use multiple rabbis. You can't say, I'm following Rav Ovadia all the way, except for this. There's a Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 14. It says that if someone takes all of the leniencies of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, he's a rasha.

4:44You can't use the leniencies of both houses. What if he does the chumras? He takes all of the stringencies of Beit Shammai and all of the stringencies of Beit Hillel. It says, on him it's written, "The fool will walk blind." The fool will walk blind. You can't use two poskim. You can't use two houses. If you're with Rav Ovadia, be with Rav Ovadia all the way. If you're with Rav Elyashiv, be with Rav Elyashiv all the way. Lubavitcher, be Lubavitcher. Whatever it is, follow one rabbi. You can't pick and choose rabbi. It's not a trick-or-treat bag. You have one rabbi. So this is also another important point. The next thing is cleaning out chametz. Cleaning out chametz... Also, it's mentioned in the Torah, the mitzvah involves removing all of the leavened bread from the house—all of the things that are chametz, whether it's pasta or other items like that, you must remove it. Now, disposing of the chametz is discussed in the Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, Siman 433.

5:46And it says that to get rid of the chametz, there are a couple of ways of doing it. Number one, if it's chametz that is open, like an open box of pasta, open candy, open potato chips, or some other snack that is chametz and not a sellable item, you have to throw it out. Unless it's very, very expensive whiskey, wine, or something like that, which people traditionally preserve over an extended period of time. If it's like a bag of some snack, that's not something that people usually keep. That stuff, you go and you burn it. You burn it during the time when they actually burn the Chametz, which is the day, the Pesach Eve during the day. Now, the stuff that is... Brand-new, you know, people buy more than they need. They go to Costco, Walmart, and all these places; they buy more than they actually need so they don't have to go to the store all the time. That stuff you sell. What do you mean, so you have to remove it out of the house? No, you make one place in your house.

6:50Closet, you put all of the chametz there. It's still brand new. You seal it or you put something on there so nobody opens it. You go to your local rabbi and tell him, "I want to sell my chametz." He's going to ask you where it is located in the house. You're going to specify where it's located — in the closet here, in the kitchen — and the chametz stays there throughout the entire Chag. You're not allowed to open this closet, and... or whatever you put it into, and you sign an agreement with the rabbi that you sold the chametz, and he's going to sell that chametz to some goy for the duration of the chag. After the chag is over, the chametz now goes back to you as your own chametz. But this chametz is brand new stuff. It's not like Bamba bags that you ate half of them. It's stuff that really, if you really had to sell it, somebody would buy it. No one's going to buy a half a bag of Bamba and half a Snickers bar. So be realistic with yourself. You know, if it's something real that's really brand new, it's technically resellable, and the store would take it back, then that's something that you keep and you sell the chametz. After you sell the chametz, you have to check for chametz. After you've sold and burned it, you also have to check for chametz on the night before Pesach. Now, Rav Ovadia Yosef says that in this day and age, even though in the original Shulchan Aruch, Siman 433...

8:10and also the Gemara in Masechet Pesachim, page 2a, it says that you should do it with a... Feather and you should do it with the candle. He says in today's age, it's okay to do it even with a flashlight. You can even do it with a flashlight instead of a candle because sometimes the candle fire could be very dangerous with the carpets and so on that we have today. So, you can use a flashlight to check for chametz. Now, the minhag — there is a machloket, there's a debate whether this minhag is a good one or a bad one, but... But the minhag is that if you know you cleaned the house, then you know there's probably no chametz. However, the minhag is that one member of the family, often the wife, is going to hide ten pieces of chametz somewhere in the house. The husband, and if he has children, brings the children along with him to find the chametz on his own without her telling him. She has to know where she put it, so she should write it down. This way, in case he didn't find it, she can retrieve and dispose of it. But the point is to show that at least they exerted all effort to find the chametz. That's the minhag, that's the custom. The reason why some people say it's not a good custom is because some people forget where they hid things, and it stays in their house. So, they have chametz in their house. Therefore, whoever is hiding it has to write down where they hid it.

9:27Usually, they do ten pieces. You put them in a Ziploc bag. You put a little piece of pita or some type of bread in a Ziploc bag, and somebody hides it in different spots in the house. That's the minhag (custom). It's very fun for little kids to do it also with their parents, for whoever has kids. Now, in chapter 445:1, it says you have to burn the chametz. As I mentioned, usually most Jewish congregations have one or two central locations where there is a big barrel with a fire where people throw their chametz in. This is to burn the chametz that is not sellable. About 10 a.m., you have to check your local time because it's based on when the sun rises and sets. It depends on your location. In New York, it's different than Florida and so on. It's usually around 10 a.m. on Erev Pesach, before the Chag begins, that you're no longer allowed to eat chametz. Even though the Chag doesn't officially start until later on and the seder is not until the night, you're no longer allowed to eat chametz by around 10 a.m. You have to check the exact time locally. Additionally, if you're a firstborn Jew, you have to fast all the way until the seder. However, there is a little trick to get out of it.

10:51The trick to get out of that fast? How? You go to a Beit Knesset that has somebody finishing a Masechet—finishing a tractate of Gemara. If you listen to him finish the tractate of Gemara, you don't have to fast because you can be part of the Seudat Mitzvah. No, if you're a firstborn, you have to fast. Firstborns have to fast, but it's easier to find somebody finishing a masechta because there are plenty of synagogues that have people finishing a masechta on Pesach. It's a well-known tradition. also at around noon again. You have to check the exact time at around noon. You're no longer allowed to work. So if you have a business or you work for somebody or something like that, you have to finish before that. You're not allowed to work anymore. Even though the chag officially starts later on—the seder is later on and so on—as of noon, regardless of what day of the week the chag falls on, you cannot work anymore and can't work in the stock market, can't work in a phone place. You can't work anymore, pretty much you're out as far as no work. You are no longer allowed. Yeah. What if, then you quit now, let's say you call in sick. Call in sick, if you were sick you would still tell them you can't work. Okay, so call in sick. Call in sick. I'm sick today, I have a stomachache. I

12:13Or you can just tell them, my doctor told me not to work. Okay, so you can tell them, my doctor told me not to work. Which doctor? The Rambam. The Rambam was a doctor. Okay? My doctor told me not to work. The Rambam was a doctor. So it's true. So you're not lying. Good. He gave me guidance. So you're not lying. You're telling the truth. The Rambam told you not to work. But you don't have to tell them. The Rambam told me not to work. So that's it. Why? Huh? You have to find a new job if that's going to risk your job. If not working for a few hours is going to risk your job, you have to find a new job, because it's not a normal job. No normal person would fire somebody for not being able to show up. It's freedom of religion, by the way. If anybody fired you, you could sue them. It's called freedom of religion. There's actually a right in America for that. If that person was a Muslim, and they told him, "Listen, I'm not working because it's our Ramadan, it's our whatever it is," the guy even peeps the wrong way, looks at her the wrong way, or him the wrong way, she could sue for millions, close down the business. It's called freedom of religion. So you don't have any excuses, Baruch Hashem, and trust me, if you do what Hashem wants, He'll make it so.

13:23So no more working afternoon. Again, check the exact time. You're also not allowed to eat matzah, not matzah shmura, not matzah ashira, and not matzah regila. So what do you eat throughout the whole day until the Seder? You could eat chicken, you could eat meat, you could eat fruits, you could eat eggs, you could eat everything else except bread and matzah. You cannot eat. This is, again, Shulchan Aruch, 471b. Many of these sources now emphasize that preparing for the seder is not just a matter of showing up. You shouldn't just show up to the seder because the responsibility of the seder includes several important components. First off, eating matzah is not like what we might have thought for most of our lives: simply taking a little bite does not fulfill the obligation. You're supposed to eat matzah four times during the seder and drink wine four times during the seder. take a little sip, take a little bite, you're finished. That's not right. The actual halacha is you have to eat each time, each time that they say you have to eat matzah, you have to eat 30 grams, 30 grams of matzah. Now if you're going to use the square matzah,

14:3130 grams of matzah is, unfortunately, almost more than one. It's like one and a half of a piece. It's a lot, and you have to eat this four times. So what a lot of people do is they eat fterah. Fterah is something that the Yemenites and a few other Sephardim have, which is like a soft matzah. It's a soft matzah. And the reason why they eat it, aside from it tasting a little bit better for some people, is because it's also more substantial since fterah is thicker, almost like pita, but it's kosher for Pesach. It's thicker, so 30 grams of this fterah is literally just one tiny little slice. This allows you to fulfill the obligation without consuming too much matzah, leaving room to enjoy the rest of the delicious food available today. But in general, you're supposed to prepare yourself four servings of 30 grams of matzah, whichever matzah you pick. Yeah? I heard you need the original matzah now. The fdera? Why not? Different custom. Different custom? For who? You're Sephardi, aren't you? Yeah, but I heard from one guy that you can't just switch matzah.

15:40It's not a custom. If you're Sephardi, it's not the Av Beit Din of Yerushalayim. Rav Gidon ben Moshe has a whole place where every year he makes Fdera. It's not everybody's tradition. He's the Av Beit Din. He's the Head Dayan in all of Yerushalayim. He makes it for people of all types. So obviously... It's not just for people who come from Yemen or Morocco or something like that. No, if you want to eat it, you can eat it—there's no problem with it. The second thing is that you have to make sure that you have four servings of three ounces of wine or grape juice. It's better to use wine, but if you have grape juice, that's fine too. Just ensure it is four servings. Also, you should have two servings of maror. Maror is lettuce, specifically Roman lettuce. Now, the servings of the lettuce, the maror, is a kezayit. So it's a relatively small piece. Make sure that it's not only a good size, but it also has no bugs. Because if you eat maror, if you eat the lettuce, and it has even a single bug on it, it's better off you didn't do the whole seder.

16:52Because each time you eat a bug, it's six different sins from the Torah. So it doesn't matter how many guests you have. Whether you have five guests or you have 5,000 guests, you have to make sure that you know for sure that whoever is monitoring it, it's not some ordinary catering company. You're monitoring it, ensuring that somebody knows what they're doing when they're washing the lettuce one by one against the light with salt and so on to make sure there's no bugs in the lettuce. And they... Unfold it, because if there's one bug in your lettuce, your entire seder has become one big sin. It's not impossible. It's not impossible. This is actually not even difficult. It's just that people are lazy. People are lazy, so wash the lettuce. It's not impossible. Now, during the afternoon, one of the reasons why you can't work is because you have to rest. You have to rest during the afternoon. Take a nap for a couple of hours. And the reason why is because the biggest mitzvah of the Seder, the biggest mitzvah of the Seder is not the matzah; it's not the wine; it's not the afikoman; it's not even sitting down with your family. The biggest mitzvah of the Seder is the Magid. The Magid is going over the entire story of the Exodus.

18:09Now, with the Exodus, to say that Am Yisrael was in Egypt and that Hashem took us out of Egypt, He split the sea—finished. This takes five seconds. No, no, no. We're talking about all of the Midrashim, all the things you know, all the things you're going to start studying now about what happened there, the behind-the-scenes events. If you don't have the books, get them. If you don't have the ability to get them, watch my shiurim. I have them online. type in your own event, Exodus, or you could just tell me a text and I'll send it to you. It shows you different details of what happened with each one of the plagues. What happened in Egypt? What happened at Yam Suf? There's a lot of Midrashim, a lot of details behind the scenes of what happened, and we need to know these things. We need to know where we came from. That's the biggest mitzvah in all of Pesach. Why? Because of the Maggid. You have to do it during dinner and after you finish dinner and until you fall asleep, until you have no power at all and you fall asleep, there's no talking about baseball, there's no talking about basketball, or bitcoin, or Schmidt coin, or Pokémon. None of that. It's only about the mitzvot of Pesach that you should be discussing. And if you have to, bring a book. Now, what if you're with a bunch of people and they start falling asleep?

19:24She went to sleep, he went to sleep, he went to sleep, but you're still up. What do you have to do? You keep going. Who are you teaching? Yourself. You keep going. That's the biggest mitzvah of Pesach—the Maggid. Why? Know where you came from. It’s very entertaining and usually the family loves it. So the Haggadah, make sure you have enough Haggadot for all your company, whoever is coming over. If they need English reading, make sure they have English. Be polite. Make sure if they speak a certain language, you have a Haggadah for them in their language. Don't be one of those people who expects everybody to speak Hebrew. You can't assume everyone is going to speak your language, okay? And also, if you have a guest that doesn't speak your language, you shouldn't speak your language in their presence. It's not polite. It's not polite to do that. If you have 10 people, and they all speak Hebrew, and one person comes in whom you invited to the house, and he doesn't speak Hebrew, you can't speak Hebrew amongst each other. It's not nice. It's not nice to speak Hebrew among each other. Why? He might think you're talking about him. And realistically, you might actually be, because if he were speaking, you would likely switch to English. So the reality is that having a seder, having people over, also requires having manners.

20:35Having manners, we can't make people uncomfortable because they don't know or they're new or they don't speak the same language. You have to speak in a common language to people. Make sure that if you're not comfortable speaking in a common language, don't invite them. Invite somebody else. So during the Seder, you have to say the Haggadah, go over the Haggadah. Also, there is the obligation to say Hallel. Hallel is the same thing you recite during Rosh Chodesh. You have to say Hallel. When you eat the matzah and when you drink, we're almost done. When you eat the matzah and when you drink the wine, you have to do a haseva. Haseva means you have to recline. And what each one of us has to do is bring a pillow. You have to bring a pillow and recline on the pillow like you're lounging like a king or a queen. Now, if a man forgot to do it, if he just ate the matzah and drank the wine and forgot to recline, then he has to do it again. If a woman forgot it, she could skip it. It doesn't matter. She doesn't have to do it. Why? Because it's not too modest for her to do it in the beginning. So, if she did it once, good. If she didn't do it, she doesn't have to. Now, you have to pace yourself. I know there's going to be a big dinner, a lot of food, especially us Jews, we like food. So, you have to understand, during dinner, don't eat to the point where you're about to explode. Eat just a little bit before you're full. Why? You still have to have room for that afikoman.

21:55...you have to eat the afikoman, and it has to be the last thing your mouth tastes for the night. You cannot eat anything else, so don't do Birkat Hamazon until you're ready to pretty much call it a night because you're not going to eat anymore. There's no more eating after—there's no candy, no fruit, nothing after dinner and afikoman—you're finished. So, that's why you should make sure that you're ready to finish eating for the day, even though you're probably going to be up for a while longer talking about Pesach, because you're going to watch my shiurim, and you're going to learn a lot about Pesach, and about Yetziat Mitzrayim (the Exodus from Egypt). So, after the seder, like I said, continue the stories about the exodus, and then, Rabotai Yekarim (my dear friends), you have completed the seder. The good news is, you have to do it all exactly the same, again, the very next night. ...the very next night, brand new. Now, if you live in the exile, you have to do it again the next night. Now, what happens if you're going to Israel? What happens if you go to Israel? If you went to Israel, they keep only one day over there. What do you do? If you're moving to Israel officially, you're moving to Israel. At that moment, you can be treated like an Israeli, meaning you keep only one day.

23:09But if you're just going to visit, you're still in the exile. You're just going to visit, and you still have to keep two days, even though everybody else around you is keeping one day. That's your problem. I know it's uncomfortable, and I know people don't like to keep this law, and so on and so forth. That's halacha. You want to change halacha? Talk to Hashem, not me. I don't change halacha. The difference is that, in the new month, the calendar was based on time. that was determined in Israel. Now, because we don't always have atomic clocks and very exact timepieces like we have today, the way we determined time was based on Rosh Chodesh and when the moon would show up in the sky. So by the time it arrived in Israel, they would determine this was a new month. now by the time the news traveled to the exile, whether the exile was in Spain or in Egypt or somewhere else, it could be even a day later. Even though it was relatively a fast system because they would have a lighting system on top of mountains where the guy that would see it would say it's officially a new month, he would light a light.

24:20The guy that's on top of another mountain 10 miles away would see the light and he would light a fire, and then a guy another 10 miles away would see the light. It would travel pretty fast to the destination. It wasn't like some horse had to travel half the country. It's not like people think we were always just geniuses; we weren't ever stupid, but we've always been smart. It was a very relatively smart system, but still, there's always a chance that there's a flaw in the system. There's a delay in the system; somebody got injured, somebody got this, this could always cause a delay of up to a day. They give it, so they say maybe they started the month a day late. Because of that, their holidays in the exile, all over the exile – America, Egypt, anywhere out of Eretz Yisrael, must be two days. Why? So they celebrate the main yom tov on the same day regardless. So it's better that they have two Pesachs rather than starting on the wrong day of Pesach. Why? Because if you eat chametz on Pesach, it's karet. It's one of the most severe sins in Judaism. So it's better to observe extra than to make a mistake and start it late.

25:25But in Israel, since the time is the time. So now today, we have clocks that tell us the exact time everywhere around the world, but we still keep two days. The reason why we keep two days is because once there is a custom that has become established for hundreds and hundreds of years, generation after generation, we are not permitted to change it.