I have a confession to make:

I love Pesach. 
 
Ever since I was a little girl, Pesach has been one of my favorite holidays. I loved the food, the special plates, the Seder, the coconut-covered marshmallows, the fancy chocolates, salted butter spread on matzah (yes, I even love matzah)—everything.
 
When I got married, I was determined to make Pesach prep fun.

I wanted my family to look forward to Pesach, not dread it.

So I made myself hum and sing as I cleaned.

I also liked the impetus to do a thorough spring cleaning, throwing out clutter and having everything clean, clean, clean. (Spring cleaning isn’t religiously necessary, but it is something most Orthodox housewives do or hire someone else to do. Or convince their kids to do.)
 
And sure, pregnancies, births, and young children threw a wrench into things, but mostly I was okay and did my best to foster a positive Pesach attitude.
 
An Israeli friend used to call me a month before Pesach to transmit the latest tips she received from her Superwoman sister-in-law.

“Clean whatever you can in the kitchen first,” she said.

“The kitchen?” I said.

“Yes,” she insisted. “You usually save it for last, right? We all do. But by the time you get to the kitchen, you’re usually exhausted from having cleaned the rest of the house first. Yet the kitchen is the most important part! It’s important to do a thorough job in the kitchen—much more important than cleaning the rest of the house.”

“How can I do anything in the kitchen first?”

“The upper cabinets,” she suggested. “Lower drawers and shelves can also be done if you cover it with foil after, then just peel that off and apply new foil later.”

Now, that’s advice you don’t often hear. And you know what? It’s pretty good advice.

But last year, my Pesach prep went splat.

I’d been proudly counting on my kids who’d been so helpful the year before.

But one broke his hand, another sprained his wrist and his ankle, another ended up working all-nighters, and so on.

The past three years have seen me growing weaker physically. I’ve gotten some of my oomph back, but not all of it.

So last Pesach, with my weakened state and my debilitated or very small kids, there wasn’t the pleasure of a really clean home.

I ended up merely nullifying the chametz by wiping bleach over exposed surfaces, taping my oven and kitchen cabinets shut, and relying on the only child available enough, old enough, and fit enough to do anything: the eleven-year-old.

(If you are wondering, my husband also helps for Pesach, but he ended up with more work than usual that year, so he wasn’t home much.)

We can’t manage cleaning help, either.

I felt miserable about it, but later, I realized the Pre-Pesach Splat was a huge gift:

• First of all, the whole point of cleaning chametz is to clean out arrogance to make room for humility. What better way to do that than to NOT be a Prideful Pesach Prep Princess? There was nothing for me to be proud of—although there was a lot to be grateful for.

 

• I got to tackle some unhealthy thinking I never realized I had. For example, I felt like a failure. Why? Because I didn’t have the shining home Jews traditionally have had for Pesach? If only I’d been frum from birth, I’d have somehow managed despite my weakness, just like that mysterious entity: “Everybody Else”? “'Everybody Else'” is managing—it’s just me who’s not." This is very wrong and unhealthy thinking.

 

• Before last Pesach, I let my eleven-year-old get out of doing a lot. He was always little and so cute and a blithe spirit who was enjoyable, but not necessarily reliable. But guess what? There was no one else to help and he managed to shoulder things well enough. So after last Pesach, we started expecting him to do more. And he has been great (and not just with Pesach), capable of a lot more than we were giving him credit for. He’s more mature now for it. We (him and I) joke about it that Pesach having been a turning point for him.  

 

• Finally and most important: I was relying on myself and external factors instead of Hashem. Like, “Well, I have fabulous children (bli ayin hara!), so everything is going to be okay.” Nope, wrong again. Sure, I can be grateful for fabulous children. (Yours are fabulous, too, by the way.) But I can only rely on Hashem.

​So this year, I changed my thinking to: “Well, I have a fabulous Creator, so everything is going to be okay.”

And so far, so good!

So these are my two big Pesach tips:

• Do whatever you can in the kitchen first.
• Praise, thank, and lean on God.

The topic of daat  kalah (light daat*) and binah yetera (or binah yeseira, if you please, i.e. extra insight) with regard to women is a post of its own (and one I’m working on).

But suffice to say, daat  kalah  doesn’t imply an innate lack of intelligence and binah yetera doesn’t imply an innate surplus of wisdom.

Binah in a nutshell is the art of jumping to conclusions. A wise woman’s binah enables her to jump to correct and useful conclusions while a lesser woman’s binah drives her toward incorrect and harmful conclusions.

Furthermore, daat kalah does not mean that women possess no daat at all; it just means that female daat comprises a lighter dose compared to that of men. Likewise, women’s possession of binah yetera does not mean that men don’t possess any binah, it just means that they don’t have as much binah as women.

And being light on daat (or da’as, if you prefer) doesn’t mean you are stupid or unworthy of an opinion. It does mean, however, that you need to make sure you are holding firmly onto a brimming source of daat as you make your way through life. Traditionally, husbands and fathers provided (and are STILL supposed to provide, regardless of the high intelligence and textual skills of their wives and daughters) their wives and daughters with daat, which the husbands and fathers are supposed to receive from their rav/rebbe and their own Torah learning.

Binah and daat are supposed to work together, both within a person and within a family.

Unfortunately, there are female orphans and widows, women from secular backgrounds, unlearned men, and men who are emotionally neglectful or abusive jerks (not to mention problematic wives who refuse to accept daat  from her perfectly decent and available husbandly source)—all of which can leave a woman without her traditional source of daat.

Fortunately, women today are and have been literate for generations in the Western world, which gives us direct access to THE prime source of daat: halacha (Jewish Law).

Here’s how this works:

Years ago, I found myself in a state of nuclear fury after a conversation with an extremely manipulative person who was the wife and daughter of some powerful rabbis. (Not real rabbis, but academically intelligent and shrewd snakes.)

I’d dealt with this family before, dealt with people who’d dealt with this family, and it all came crashing down on me: their hypocrisy, their self-indulgence, their fake piety, and the brash unfairness of them getting away with so much just because they’ve been given so much authority and leeway by their unwitting leader and the general religious populace, which is reluctant to criticize or even open their eyes when these types rise to the top.

I was absolutely enraged.

And there wasn’t much room to give the benefit of the doubt because I saw things too clearly. These were not good people who were making a mistake.

These were hypocrites taking advantage of their position and I was being treated badly for not being a sycophantic suck-up (although I was behaving toward her with the same courtesy I behave toward everyone, but these types expect lots of fawning, and not the mere courtesy that is okay for “lesser” mortals, and also they don’t like you making any demands on them—even if these demands are framed in the nicest way and are simply holding them up to the halachic regulations that THEY THEMSELVES either enacted or supported within the community) and for very nicely asking them to stop letting a mentally ill off-the-derech alcoholic with violent tendencies live in THEIR apartment, a situation which was causing problems for those who lived nearby, the secular music blasting out of open windows at all hours of the night being only one of the problems with that situation.

And such a person was NOT supposed to be living in the middle of a religious neighborhood full of families with small children—according to the stipulations for that community of that same “rebbetzin” and her oh-so pious husband and father (who was the owner of that apartment), thank you very much.  

Anyway, I was consumed with wrath.

And then…I thought of a GREAT plan of revenge!

Ooh, it was delicious. Yummmmmm—slurp!

But somewhere in the back of my raging brain, I remembered there is this well-known prohibition:
Thou Shalt Not Take Revenge. (Vayikra 19:18)

Yeah, it’s right there in plain Torah text, making it even harder to brush off with the usual beloved pseudo-platitudes: “Oh, that? It’s only for people on a really high level—like tzaddikim” or “It doesn’t apply to us nowadays. Yeridas hadoros, ya know.”

But I resisted my Yetzer Tov with: “No - this time, revenge is okay! These are really awful people! In fact, it’s probably even a big mitzvah to perform a particularly delicious act of revenge on them! L'shem Shamayim!”

But my Yetzer Tov kept quietly standing firm: “No. Halacha—especially an outright Torah command—applies even if you’re consumed with righteous indignation. In fact, halacha applies EVEN MORE when you’re consumed with righteous indignation.”

My husband was in another country, my father wasn’t frum, and there was no rabbi or rebbetzin I felt I could call in such a state.

Fortunately, I have a book in English called Journey to Virtue: The Laws of Interpersonal Relationships-Practical Applications in Business, Home, and Society by Rabbi Avroham Ehrman, which is all about hilchot bein adam l’chavero (the laws of interpersonal relationships). I figured something about revenge must be in there.
(After all, it's a pretty thick and comprehensive book.)

So I opened it up and started scanning the contents. But initially, I became even more frustrated and infuriated because it seemed like revenge wasn’t covered!

But really, I was in such a state of wrath that I just couldn’t find it right away and needed to go over the entire Table of Contents thrice before I found it.

Seriously. Picture a wild predatory animal that has been wounded and is crazed with pain. Yeah, that was me.

Anyway, I found it--Chapter 7: Reproof, Vengeance, and Grudges—and guess what? According to some opinions, revenge is actually permissible in some situations!
(Page 62!)

Yes!

So of course, I hummingly skimmed over passages referencing solid sources like Mesillat Yesharim: “Here a Jew is required by Torah law to rise above his low earthly inclinations and emulate the angels,” deciding that requirement must only be for tzaddikim (it’s not) and doesn’t apply to me (it does). Instead, rubbing my hands together gleefully, I focused on the part that describes how revenge might be permissible:

• Was I humiliated? Check! (At least, I felt humiliated. It wasn’t public, but heck, why get bogged down in the details?)

 

• Was I humiliated to the point of feeling hurt from the insult? Check!

 

• Was the humiliation actively inflicted? Check! (At least from my point of view, it was actively and intentionally committed. It was certainly intentional. Even in hindsight years later, I am completely sure it was intentional.)

But then I ran into some “problems”:

“[S]ome opinions only permit passive revenge (as explained in paragraph 11) but not active revenge.” (Page 62)

Ooh. Bummer. My plot was definitely active revenge.

But maybe that’s just the author’s interpretation?

Nope, it’s footnoted: Shaarei Teshuvah 3:38 and Kodesh Yisrael Chapter 18.

Well, can’t argue with Rabbeinu Yonah.

Then I read: “…it is only permitted to take revenge according to the amount of ‘pain’ suffered. If the avenger oversteps that boundary even slightly, he violates the prohibition of revenge.”

Thus says Rashi (among others) in Gemara Yoma 23a.

Uh-oh.

I could feel my delicious plan for revenge starting to splutter. No, I tried lying to myself. I’m suffering a LOT of pain! Of course, my revenge wouldn’t overstep the amount of pain I’m suffering! (Also, I enjoyed being referred to as "the avenger.")

How can you measure that—exactly? asked my Yetzer Tov. Just one teeny-tiny step over that boundary and you have got a serious Torah prohibition stamped into your Heavenly account. Is it worth it? After all, it’s not like your account has been squeaky clean until now—can you afford this?

It also occurred to me that intentionally ignoring halacha is intellectually dishonest.
It's like saying: Oh, yeah, I’m oh-so frum—unless, of course, someone really ticks me off. Then it’s okay to indulge my lesser self and toss the usual halacha as if there is some form of wacky pikuach nefesh at stake.
Yeah, right.

Basically, if I see myself as someone for whom halacha comes first, then it has to come first all the time, and not just when it’s convenient and emotionally satisfying. I mean, it’s bad enough that I accidentally trample halacha sometimes. But purposely tromping all over it? Inexcusable.

So there I was, stuck. Once again, the Great Ones—Rashi, Rabbeinu Yonah, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzatto, the Sages of the Gemara—were interfering with the gripping desires of my voracious nefesh habeheimah (animal soul).

Anyway, as you guessed, my passion for revenge fizzled out completely and I ultimately didn’t do anything—except beg Hashem to prevent these people from cause any more harm. Which is the best and most effective response anyway. (Unless, of course, there is a clear and present danger, like if they're child abusers or committing some other type of actual crime.)

And this is how daat works.

(Needless to say, if men don’t also hold firmly to halacha with constant review and sincerity, then their own innate level of daat is worthless.)
___________________
 
*Daat is very hard to translate because it means different things in different contexts. In other contexts, daat means “knowledge” or “mind,” but neither of those definitions relate to daat in this context. Here (Kiddushin 80b), Rashi explains daat kalah as being more "easily swayed/influenced/seduced” by subjective factors. The prime daat source—halacha—imbues every person with a center of spiritual gravity to hold him or her securely in place.
______________
Related post:
A Quick Word on the Truth about Women & Daat Kalah

Oreet and Yoram lived as a happily married secular couple when Yoram decided to do teshuvah. Obviously, that put certain obligations on Oreet—whether she wanted them or not—if they were to continue living together as a happily married couple. Fortunately, Oreet agreed to uphold these obligations even as she continued to see herself as secular.

“I’m just doing this for my husband,” she insisted.

(The fact that she was willing to go according to high standards of kashrut, Shabbat, and taharat mishpacha solely for her spouse probably says a lot about them both.)

This also meant that they could now host old friends who’d already done teshuvah, now that their home was kosher. They could even invite their frum friends for Shabbat—which they did.

During one such visit, the frum guest noticed that Shabbat had ended, but Oreet hadn’t moved from the sofa to turn off the Shabbat timer or prepare for Havdalah. The frum guest offered to help Oreet with the dishes, but Oreet said, “Oh, no. I don’t take Shabbat out now. I keep Rabbeinu Tam.”

(Rabbeinu Tam maintained that sunset is almost an hour later than what most others ruled sunset to be. So people who "keep Rabbeinu Tam" end Shabbat almost an hour after everyone else.)

Needless to say, the frum guest was shocked.

Noticing her guest’s double-take, Oreet said, “Well, I simply can’t just plunge into the weekday straight from Shabbat. I find I need time to adjust from Shabbat to weekday. And keeping Rabbeinu Tam allows me that transition.” Oreet cocked her head to one side as she looked at her guest. “You don’t find that you need a transition period before starting the regular week?”

Her guest smiled. "Unfortunately," she said, "I don't."

“You know,” the frum guest said later. “Oreet isn’t really secular at all. In fact, she must have a very special soul if she was instinctively so attuned to the difference between Shabbat and weekday. In fact, I think she’s one of the frummest people I know! She just doesn’t know it yet…”

Agreed.

While we accept the existence of atoms today, most scientists initially believed atoms to be imaginary—so impossibly small, it was unlikely that they could exist at all.

This was the common belief until a little over a century ago.
 
Born in 1844, Ludwig Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist of such genius that by age 22, he served as the professor of mathematics in the University of Ganz.

At one point, he realized that gases comprised tiny atoms that followed the laws described by Isaac Newton.

In the 1870s, Boltzmann published a series of papers explaining this. This idea resulted in the realization of stunning new laws of physics.

​Ultimately, Boltzmann’s breakthrough fermented an entirely new category of physics: statistical mechanics.
 
However, Boltzmann faced unexpected heat for his new-found ideas:

• Most of the most prominent philosophers and scientists of the time scoffed at the very idea of atoms’ existence.
• Boltzmann became the object of scorn and attack by even his most highly respected colleagues.
• Even close friends of Boltzmann harshly disagreed with his theory (while maintaining warm relations with him outside of the bitter debates).
• One of the premier German physics journals rejected most of Boltzmann papers on the grounds that atoms and molecules were strictly theoretical tools for a scientist’s convenience and could not literally exist in nature.

 
(Much of this seems to have been the academic elite’s 19th-Century version of trolling.)
 
But at the same time, Boltzmann experienced academic honors (such as being promoted to Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich in 1890 and serving as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna in 1893) in tandem with the attacks and ridicule. Boltzmann's students were solidly on his side of the equation. And Boltzmann also enjoyed a happy marriage to a fellow mathematical and scientific genius named Henrietta, and together they had 5 children.

But those honors and comforts weren't enough to balance out the ridicule and attacks.
 
While all this was going on, Albert Einstein (still considered up-and-coming at that time) wrote the first paper to demonstrate the existence of atoms. That was in 1905.
 
But Boltzmann never learned about that paper. Instead, he endured the scholarly assaults and ridicule until he committed suicide in 1906 while his family was at the beach.
 
Had Boltzmann toughed it out a little longer, he would have seen his wheel of scholarly fortune cycle up to the top by the time Einstein was honored as one of the leading scientists in 1908.

In 1902, Albert Einstein was 23 and on the verge of suicide:

• His doctoral thesis had been rejected the year before (which later proved to be a good thing, as its purpose was to demolish very theories of Boltzmann which Einstein later ended up validating).
• With a fresh doctorate in hand, every university he applied to rejected him based on nasty “recommendations” written by one of his former professors.
• His personal life had become miserably complicated when his involvement with a Serbian fellow physics student (the only female in their class) resulted in her pregnancy, with both sides of the family strongly opposed their relationship (and eventual marriage, which later ended in divorce).
• Einstein couldn’t succeed in the workforce, was even fired from a simple tutoring job, and his applications for school-teaching were rejected.
• Plus, his father died—which Einstein not only experienced as a personal loss, but as a great shame because in Einstein's eyes, his father died seeing his son as a loser.

Letters to his family expressed the feeling that it would have been better had he never been born because he was such a burden to his family and lacked any possibilities for success in life.

But a compassionate friend managed to get this apparent neb a job at the patent office. Yet even there, Einstein was passed over for promotion twice because he had not yet “fully mastered machine technology.” (Ha!)
 
However, the job at the patent office became Einstein’s turning point. It was there Einstein started analyzing the innovations that passed over his desk and contemplated physics puzzles like, “What happens if you manage to run faster than a beam of light?”
 
And who doesn't know of all the success and recognition Einstein reaped in the end?

(Although my personal belief is that Einstein would have been more successful had he truly delved into the Torah world—rather than just “reading through the Bible,” presumably in German—and followed halachah. Certainly, holding steadfast to the laws against intermarriage and of guarding one’s eyes, guarding against physical contact with women, and remaining alone with a woman would have saved him untold heartache and distress.)
 
And while this can just end in the usual lesson of how one should “never give up!” and “Hang in there—the best is yet to come!” (and that is a very good moral to get from this story), the truth is that a look under the surface reveals even more.

Boltzmann doesn’t seemed to have believed in God.

He once stated that any theory which could explain everything would be “God” for him.
He disdained philosophies he considered “metaphysical” and held Darwin in lofty regard, even stretching the theory of biological evolution to encompass cultural evolution, seeing cultural evolution as a physical brain process—in other words, he saw them as one and the same.
​
This kind of thinking ultimately leads to eugenics, which ultimately leads to genocide.

That would make anyone depressed.

On the other hand, Einstein (who tragically never developed the true knowledge of Hashem as One Who is intimately and omnipotently involved in every aspect of Creation) did come to acknowledge an “Intelligence” that formed the Universe.

(Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be evidence one way or another of Einstein’s attitudes toward evolution or Darwin.)

​Furthermore, Einstein expressed spiritual beliefs—or at least an openness to spiritual beliefs—using the word “mystical” to describe such ideas.

But anyway, don't give up, no matter how impossible and bitter your situation seems.

Seriously.

In my favorite book, A Daughter of Two Mothers, Sheina Ruchel Fruchter describes how she felt when her baby daughter was first kidnapped from her by a woman named Mrs. Goldman:

“I threw myself down, put my head on the floor and shouted: ‘Leichu, my Leichu, come back to me! Dovid, my dear husband up in Heaven, I implore you: Help me to bring my daughter back from the evil people who stole her from me…!”

Sheina Ruchel had been widowed twice, lost most of one arm to a life-saving amputation and lived in poverty in a remote village near the Carpathian Mountains of Hungary.

Three children had distanced themselves from both her and Judaism.

All she had in the world was her baby daughter.

And the people who'd volunteered to babysit her daughter until she recovered from her amputation then sold her daughter to a wealthy childless couple.

And every time Sheina Ruchel retold that part of the story, she would raise her remaining hand to Heaven and declare:

“Ribbono shel Olam, Father of orphans and Judge of widows, repay this woman for the years of pain and anguish she caused me!”

Later, Sheina Ruchel often mused:

“If I'd been a violent or hot-headed person…I might have even killed Mrs. Goldman that day.”

Yet at one point, she was able to give the benefit of the doubt to all the people involved:

​“[T]hey felt they were doing the right thing—they felt that a ‘poor, disabled and widowed woman’ simply couldn’t bring up a child.”

But what about the large amount of money involved?

What about the people who acted as the go-between didn’t act merely out of a warped sense of compassion?

The amount of financial compensation they received was so large, they never told Sheina Ruchel where her daughter was, no matter how much she nor how much some rabbis begged over the years.

Regarding this issue, Sheina Ruchel explained sadly:

“They could not resist the temptation they faced; a large sum of money is a very difficult temptation indeed...But it is not up to you or I to judge them.”

When Sheina Ruchel’s best friend, Rivka Klar was told of Sheina Ruchel’s refusal to judge these hard-hearted people, and also hears the conclusion that Sheina Ruchel must be a tzadekes (a perfectly righteous woman), Rivka Klar doesn’t respond right away.

(Rivka Klar herself was an incredibly good and kind person. You can read a little bit about her and her husband in How the Worst Turned Out for the Best: A True Story.)

After mulling it over, Rivka Klar insists:

“That is the correct way to look at this whole situation…I do not know if that makes her a tzadekes; she is simply acting as a person should, and as she always does, with honesty and uprightness.”

We often hear about great people and the great acts they performed.

We repeatedly hear about the correct and heroic choices they made.

Yet we rarely hear about their starting point.

It just seems like they always made the right choices.

Sure, a really good biography may describes the righteous person’s dilemma, but in the end, the righteous person always makes the right choice (and never the natural, all-to-human choice).

And it’s obvious to me from reading the book that Sheina Ruchel truly was a tzadekes.

She proved this so many times, making a particularly heroic choice in the end, which saved her daughter's life.

Yet when the initial abduction occurred, Sheina Ruchel was understandably wild with rage and grief. She did not thank God for the good along with the bad, nor automatically accept it as Hashem’s Will, nor any other lofty ideal—nope.

She literally wanted to kill the person who’d given her baby up for adoption.

And then she asked God to curse that person.

In fact, it sounds like, over the course of many years, she repeatedly demanded that God “repay” that person for the pitiless and greedy act.

And who can blame Sheina Ruchel?

Of course the people who knowingly participated in the unethical adoption behaved with great cruelty.

Their lack of remorse or any attempt at rectification in the face of Sheina Ruchel’s pain—even years later—is truly incomprehensible.

Yet an emuna mindset knows that even this heart-breaking ordeal is from Hashem, that even this is somehow for the best in ways that seem unfathomable.

​We can’t know most of the ins and outs in this world (although growing up in the adopted family enabled the kidnapped girl to make connections that later saved her life), but we can at least claw our way toward the intellectual acceptance of everything as Hashem’s Will.

I do not know exactly how Sheina Ruchel crossed the wide gulf between her completely justified and understandable fury to finding a small speck of merit in those people, even going as far as to refuse to judge their ruthless greed.

Sheina Ruchel lived in poverty incomparable to those who buckled under temptation of immorally obtained money, while she herself never would have submitted to that temptation.

So how could someone like her not judge someone like them?

Yet it’s clear in the book that she dealt with the issue spiritually.

She frequently recited Tehillim, asked for blessings from Rebbes, and constantly poured out her heart to Hashem, speaking to Him in her own words as she would her own father.

And it sounds like she wobbled on that point.

It’s not entirely clear from the book, but it seems that while sometimes she was able to rise above her natural feelings and see it all with perfect emuna—even to the point of refusing to judge the people who’d hurt her so badly—yet other moments showed her as demanding Heavenly retribution against Mrs. Goldman.

The point is, she needed to work up to that lofty level.

And indeed, she became a very great person.

I think part of the secret is in the words of Rivka Klar:
​
“That is the correct way to look at this whole situation…she is simply acting as a person should.”

Our Sages tell us repeatedly in so many books and so many ways what the right mindset is.

Even if we can’t bring ourselves to look and act as they say, we at least know that is our goal. We know what the “correct way” is and we also know how to act “as a person should.”

And even if we can’t maintain the ideal state for more than a moment, the mere act of trying is still worth more than we can imagine and affects us in profound ways (even if we don't always perceive them).

Furthermore, it’s perfectly natural to wobble between a lofty state of emuna and a very human and understandable state of fury and resentment.

And it's perfectly natural to wobble like this for years.

Sheina Ruchel was truly wronged. There is no justifying what those people did.
​
And so, she spent years trusting Hashem, leaning on Him, praying to Him, clinging to Torah and mitzvot—while at the same time, hating and cursing those people and demanding revenge.

Yet eventually, she made it to the top (spiritually speaking).

And without being thrust into such a traumatic and excruciating challenge, she never would’ve been able to become the exalted person she eventually became.

When you grow up Ashkenazi lite and marry a religious Moroccan, there are many tradition-based surprises in store.

​For example, I was disappointed that Moroccans are one of the only Sephardi groups who DON'T eat most kitniyot (legumes) on Pesach (Passover).

No rice, no corn, no garbanzo beans, no soy oil, and so on. However, they do eat certain kinds of fresh kitniyot like:

• Green beans
• Yellow beans
• String beans
• Peas
• Fava beans

...as long as they’re fresh and not dried.

Fava beans, also known as broad beans, and called fulim (FOO-leem) in Hebrew, play a starring role in Moroccan Pesach meals.

​(For example, Moroccan Pesach cholent includes fulim that have only been shelled once, which is exactly what you get when you buy a bag of frozen fulim in the freezer section in Israel.)

After discovering that I really never will eat rice on Pesach, I then discovered that Moroccans have a traditional soup served at the Seder (the first night of Pesach in Eretz Yisrael, the first 2 nights of Pesach everywhere else) that has absolutely nothing to do with chicken (or matzah balls, for that matter).


My initial reaction to the thought of eating boiled cabbage instead of chicken soup with lots of fluffy matzah balls was “Yuck!”

But upon tasting this traditional Moroccan soup of fulim and cabbage, my reaction immediately transformed into “YUM!”

I also fell in love with fulim.

The ful bean is an absolutely delicious bean that doesn’t provoke any embarrassing digestive reactions later.

Now, every time I read an article on fulim, it always mentions how some people are allergic to this bean. I have never personally encountered someone with a fulim sensitivity, but I guess you’re supposed to warn people anyway.

So there's your warning.

(UPDATE: I have since heard from a lovely person who was unwittingly fed fulim and nearly died. Hashem yerachem.)
 
This is an incredibly healthy soup, as you’ll soon see.

It’s also low-gluten (or possibly gluten-free?) and low-carb. 
​
Feel free to make this during the year if your custom forbids you to eat fulim on Pesach.
 
My mother-in-law (who grew up in Tafilalt and moved to Meknes to marry and also gave birth there to her first 3 children — including my husband) taught me how to make it.

The exact amounts depend on the size of your pot and your personal taste. We always use a huge pot for this because everyone loves it so much.
 
The time-consuming part is preparing the fulim.

Initially, I thought it was impractical to shell mounds of fulim Erev Pesach. Who has time or energy for that? But believe me, it really is worth it.

Originally, Moroccan women finished their Pesech cleaning in a timely fashion and then sat down together the morning of Erev Pesach to shell out all the fulim.

(Remember, you had large homes and several guests and/or multi-generational families back in Morocco, so you had a bunch of sisters, grandmothers, mothers, and daughters available for copious social fulim-shelling.)

​My sons help me, but they don't have the same dedication and patience for it that my mother-in-law and I have.

So when I don’t have Moroccan females on hand, I start preparing the fulim the night before.

Or, more accurately, I TRY to prepare it the night before. That doesn't always happen.

So here’s the recipe and variations will follow…
Note: Depending on your geographical location and what brand of cabbage you buy, you may need to rinse off each leaf and check for bugs. Ditto with the cilantro/coriander/kusbara.

Ingredients

• A head or two of white (i.e. light green) cabbage
• 1 generous handful of cilantro/coriander/kusbara
• 1.5 kilos/3 lbs. of fresh fulim pods, as plump as you can find—indicating that the beans inside are extremely plump and large. (You should be able to get them at any shuk in Eretz Yisrael at this time of year.)

Note #1: You can buy fulim frozen and shelled out of their pods in your local Israeli supermarket, but they are smaller, making it harder to peel off that second shell. Plus, you’ll need to thaw them completely before you start shelling them, or else you’ll end up with freeze-burned fingers. Ask me how I know...

Note #2: Also, sometimes it happens that you buy pods with massively swollen bumps that hint at gargantuan fulim inside...only to discover tiny fulim. This usually doesn't happen, but you may run into a couple of deceptive pods like this. Forewarned is forearmed! Just remember that this, too, is for the best!

• Garlic cloves (as many as you like)
• A couple of chunks or slices of red meat (or more if you like)
• Your favorite Pesach oil (coconut is not recommended unless you like coconut-flavored cabbage)
• Turmeric (as much as you need to get your desired taste and color)
• Black or white pepper
• Salt

​
Directions:

• Using a sharp and large enough knife, slice the cabbage thinly.

(While you can use a food processor or shredder for this, I find that it makes them too thin and wispy, giving the soup a web-like texture in your mouth. But if you like that, then go for it.)

• Toss all that cabbage in your pot.
• Fill the pot with water to cover and then turn on the high heat.
• When it will boils, turn the heat down to a merry simmer. (The cabbage needs to cook forever, so just start it cooking right away while you prepare everything else.)
• Peel the garlic and then do whatever you like to do with garlic (i.e. leave it whole, slice it, mince it, halve it, or whatever) and toss that into the pot with the cabbage.
• Mince the kusbara and toss that in.
• Add the oil (however much or little you want)
• Add the pieces of meat.
• Add the spices.

Now get to work on the fulim:

• Break open the pods and pop out the ful beans.

(My mother-in-law calls this “once-shelled fulim.”)
Now comes the patchky part.

• You need to peel this soft “shell” off of them, too.

(My mother-in-law calls these “twice-shelled fulim.”)

How?

Dig in your fingernail and just scrape or peel the soft shell off. Sometimes, you can even pop the fulim out of this second shell, depending.

The plumper and larger the fulim are, the easier this will be. (That’s why when you were shopping for fulim pods, you went after the plumpest looking ones.)

• Once you have all your fulim peeled twice, then you can add them to the soup.

(You will be shocked and maybe even dismayed at how few fulim there are compared to the massive amount of pods you bought. That's okay. It's all part of the process.)

• Let the soup simmer forever (2-3 hours or more?), periodically checking to make sure there is enough water so it won’t burn.

​
The cabbage should be pretty soft. Yeah, cabbage never seems to get so soft, but it should be nice and limp.

And there you have it: your very own authentic Moroccan Pesach Seder Soup.

Tips & Variations:

• You don't need to add the ingredients in the order given. For example, nothing bad will happen if you add the meat before the garlic or kusbara, or if you add the spices before the veggies and meat.
• Add potatoes, either with or instead of the fulim. (In fact, if you can’t eat fulim on Pesach, just use this recipe with potatoes instead.)
• Use parsley or dill instead of kusbara.
• Go ahead and buy a bag of frozen fulim and use the fulim as is without shelling them a second time.
• Use a different kind of meat (meatballs, chicken, etc.)
• Omit the meat altogether to make a vegan soup.
• You can omit the oil.
• You don’t have to use such a large amount of fresh kusbara.
• You can use dried or powdered versions of the garlic and kusbara.
• I suppose you could use saffron in place of turmeric. (Maybe that was even in the original recipe way back when...)
• You don't need to start boiling the cabbage while you prepare everything else. You can also prepare everything first with the cabbage, then add the water and start cooking.
• You can prepare the fulim in advance, either partly (by shelling them out of their pods) or completely (shelling them out of their pods, then peeling off the skin).
• Fulim freeze nicely in both states of shelled-ness.
• If you don't manage to use all the fulim you bought, you can freeze them (shelled or shelled and peeled) for later or to add to your Pesach cholent.

Enjoy!

Purim is often used as a day for appropriate joking and humor with a Torah flair.
While Judaism certainly frowns on pointless or hurtful jokes and comedy along with frivolous gaiety, humor can be a great vehicle to pass on a message of mussar.
(And any mussar below applies to me as much as - if not more than - anyone else. ;-)
Enjoy!

One of the most devious and confusing things misguided people do is to take actual Torah facts and then distort them.

(This trick is similar to what Christian missionaries do, too.)

For example, I remember one Conservative rabbi who seemed like a nice & honest guy, practiced Judaism like many Modern Orthodox Jews and even insisted that the people he “converted” be shomer Shabbat, shomer kashrut, and even shomer taharat hamishpacha (VERY unusual outside of the Orthodox rabbinate).

I was newly married and well-entrenched in the frum community and had learned a lot when I encountered him at customer service where I once worked. He spoke with me during the computer lags, then suddenly, he mentioned “secret changes” in the Torah that the Sages had committed “because they were uncomfortable” with the Torah’s original language.

I was flummoxed. What on earth was he talking about?

“Like what?” I asked.

“Oh, lots of things,” he answered knowingly. (No specifics? Bad sign.)

I frowned. “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” I said.

“Well,” he answered. “They like to keep it a big secret.” He paused. "It's like a conspiracy."

“Then how do you know about it?”

He laughed. “Oh, I managed to figure it out. I learned about it where I went to school.” He added, "Actually, everyone knows about it except the Orthodox Jews."

"Wait," I said, knowing that Orthodox Jews were almost the only group that actually studied Torah and everything connected to it in the original Hebrew or Aramaic. Orthodox Jews tend to be vastly more knowledgeable of everything in Judaism than their non-Orthodox counterparts. "That makes no sense. How could you keep something like this a secret from all the talmidei chachamim and Gedolei Hador?"

He pondered this. "Well, sure, they know about it," he said. "But they keep it a secret from their followers."

"But that's impossible," I insisted. "The followers themselves are very learned."

He frowned. It only occurred to me later than he was projecting. Because the general Conservative movement consists of so many innocently ignorant Jews who don't even have the basic skills to make it through a siddur in Hebrew, let alone an actual book of the Torah, it was perfectly plausible to him that a rabbi could so easily dupe his followers. After all, Conservative rabbis have been doing just that for decades.

As he sat there, probably trying to make up some reply, I realized something else:

If he could learn about this "secret conspiracy of Sages" at his non-Jewish college or "rabbinical" seminary, it didn't sound like a very big secret. It must be something I could recognize. I kept scanning my mind to figure out what he was talking about. Having grown up in the Conservative movement, I was pretty familiar with their distortions. But what big conspiracy of “secret changes” could he possibly mean? And for such emotional and petty reasons—the Sages were “uncomfortable”? That made no sense, seeing as the Sages ultimately discuss every “uncomfortable” thing under the Sun.

“What were the changes?” I asked again.

“Oh, I don’t remember exactly.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Hemorrhoids. They didn’t like the word ‘hemorrhoids.’ So they changed it to something else.”

This was getting more and more bizarre.

“I’ve never heard of ‘secret changes’ or a big conspiracy among the Sages. I mean, how could they hide it? Everything’s written down.”

“Well, see? You'd never heard of it. So they managed pretty well.”

“Yeah, but…I mean, I went to a baal teshuvah seminary and we asked all sorts of questions and confronted all sorts of issues. And they explained so much to us. But they never mentioned anything like this—no ‘secret changes,’ no Chazal conspiracy, nothing.”

He smirked. “Well, of course they didn’t tell you! They wouldn’t want you to know.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” I said. “They talked about everything else. And if there was some conspiracy that all the non-Orthodox rabbis are well-aware of, then they would assume that we’d eventually discover it, and they’d want to address it now.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “They’re banking on the fact that no one will ever tell you.”

Then he left. But I remained rattled. He seemed so sure of his belief. Could he really be lying? Later, I asked my Israeli husband who been learning in good chareidi yeshivah for 10 years before we married about this big conspiracy of “secret changes” to the Torah.

He had no idea what I was talking about, opined that the Conservative rabbi was just a mushchat who was trying to take advantage of me, and advised me against talking to Conservative rabbis or any kind of men at work, even if that seems rude and they get offended.

Then I called a friend, who was also baffled until she said, “Oh…wait a minute. Did he mean tikkun soferim*?”

The truth dawned on me. “Omigosh,” I said. “I think you’re right! That’s it! You mean like kativ and keri**?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Also, I remember that they did do something with the word ‘hemorrhoids’. So there you go.”

“Gol-lee,” I said. “I’m so embarrassed. That’s so basic! We learned about that ages ago! EVERYBODY knows about tikkun soferim!”

“Right,” she said.

After thanking her, I went to my husband and told him the solution to the mystery—“Tikkun soferim!”—and he frowned, saying, “But that’s no secret. You said it was something secretive. Everybody knows about tikkun soferim.” Then he grumbled something unflattering about Conservative and Reform rabbis.

Anyway, I went around feeling frustrated with myself for getting duped so easily. By this point, I knew how the Conservative distortions went, but because they use a grain of truth as their jumping-off point, you need to wade through their twisty paths to get to the exact fork of falsification.

I also felt angry and embarrassed because also felt like it was a chillul Hashem on my part because I’d inadvertently confirmed his belief that the frum world was tricky and deceptive, and that this Conservative rabbi left with the impression that he knew something—and a very basic, well-known something—that I, an educated frum woman seemed totally ignorant of.

What a low-down dirty trick!

But this is what these people do.

What threw me off (and what threw my husband off) were the words “secret” and “conspiracy,” plus his knowing tone of voice and his conviction. It led me to mentally search for something not well-known, but that was the part that was an outright lie. Furthermore, it showed great ignorance of Torah learning and the Orthodox community in general. (And this is despite the fact that the guy was situated right next to one of the biggest Orthodox communities in the world. Talk about cutting yourself off from the world around you and living in your own bubble.)

To this day, I have no idea if the guy was being purposely manipulative and dishonest or whether he was such an ignoramus, both socially and religiously, that he generally believed that tikkun sofrim is a “big secret” and a hidden “conspiracy.”

And this guy was the rabbi of a big congregation in a major American city.

Talk about the blind leading the blind.

I really, really hope that these people all do complete teshuvah.

*Note: Tikkun soferim is a term often translated as “scribal emendations.” There are something like 18 of these throughout the entire 304,901 words of Tanach (in other words, not exactly "lots").
**Important: Please see both of Yaak's comments for clarification of Tikkun Soferim and keri/ketiv. They actually aren't the same, as was wrongly implied in the post.