New Jersey Jewish News
Passover Feature Story
If Elijah the Prophet had a wife, she would be cleaning, too
by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer
Mrs. Eliahu never comes to my house before Passover. I don’t even know what she looks like. But sometimes I have other guests.
I have now reached that moment in the year when I catch myself casting furtive glances over my shoulder at my cabinets, feeling them whisper their truths. “We’re crumby,” they say. “We’re full of crushed crackers and chips and Cheerios,” they murmur. “It’s time to clean us.”
Like the bleary-eyed donut maker, I know. Others look for crocuses in their gardens, or grow hopeful about casting off their down jackets. I descend into the grueling ritual of Passover cleaning. Every year, I am asked, Why? What is the meaning of this ritual that you follow? What satisfaction does it bring you?
I have no easy answer. Although I would like to say I do it because that is what Jews do this time of year, that’s not true. Many don’t. I would like to say I do it because it is written in the Torah, but it’s not. I could say I do it because the rabbis have said it is what we do. Perhaps.
Some years, I look at all of the storage boxes on the floor in my kitchen, and think, “It looks like we’re moving.” Some years I feel we are — moving from winter to spring, from some lower place to a higher one, to some kind of freedom. I’d like some freedom from the bondage of Pesach cleaning, I think.
In those moments, I would like to feel the easy joy of a former colleague, who one day gleefully entered the office and announced that Mrs. Eliahu Hanavi stands by her side as she cleans. I am stung. Mrs. Eliahu Hanavi doesn’t come to my house to help me clean.
Who stands at my side? Most years, just Mr. Clean, accompanied by plenty of sponges, a wet floor, and some rubber gloves. Dar Williams croons in the background about getting lost in February and forgetting what flowers look like.
One year, I try to imagine Mrs. Eliahu Hanavi. What would she say to me? What would she look like? It was useless. She would not be visiting the likes of me. I cast her out of my thoughts and focused on the refrigerator shelves — until, ever so slightly, something shifted.
That was the first time I felt my grandmother watching, shaking her head gently to encourage me. And later, when I really needed her, Auntie Betty came to my rescue. “It’s okay, it’s enough, you don’t have to scrub anymore,” she said.
Sisters, I have always imagined them as my boat to a distant shore of small villages, a shtetl in Russia, where they all cooked one big pot of soup for Shabbat, where their father was the sofer, where everyone in the village cleaned their kitchens for Pesach.
Who stood by their sides as they cleaned? I wondered. They are not Mrs. Eliahu, but they are enough. Now, they come to help me every year. And when I finish my work in the kitchen, they are gone.
