Today I burned a biscuit.
Let me see if I can explain this…. Before Pesach officially begins and after one has searched one’s house carefully for all “chametz” or yeast and the specified kinds of prohibited grains, and gathered up specially hidden pieces of bread or crackers or in my case a biscuit, the night before, then before about 11:00 AM on Erev Pesach (which means evening of Passover, all Jewish holidays begin at sundown), you are supposed to burn these last pieces of chametz.
Sound complicated? It IS.
Well, I found the prayer in the prayerbook and took an aluminum pan with a crumpled up paper bag in it with the biscuit perched on top, out into the backyard. I laid it down on the stones of the patio with the matches next to it. Then I thought, maybe I better get the garden hose in case the fire gets out of hand. So I took several steps over to the faucet and turned the water on and got the hose. As I turned back, there was my dog Robbie very carefully and might I even say daintily, and might I even say further with fake nonchalance, picking up my biscuit in his mouth. (If dogs could whistle and roll their eyes, he would have been doing that too)
“Robbie, no!” Fell on literally deaf ears. I had to grab him and take the biscuit out of his mouth. I was laughing hysterically at him, which I am sure he did not appreciate, for as everyone knows, food to dogs is not a laughing matter…. ever. But there I was trying to perform a serious religious obligation and my dog was absconding with my chametz!
I put it back on my pile of paper and without further ado said the prayer:
“All leaven in my possession which I have not seen or removed or of which I am unaware is hereby nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth.”
Then I lit the match and set the whole thing on fire.
Robbie meanwhile was sitting a few feet away never having taken his eyes off that biscuit. He watched me light the fire and you could just see his bewilderment. “What is this insane woman doing now? Incinerating a perfectly edible biscuit in that cheap aluminum pan. Doesn’t she know it’s already cooked, and ready to EAT? I really do NOT know what I am going to do with her.”
Well, we sat there together and watched it turn to a black charred mass and I finally declared it inedible. Poor Robbie, I must be completely inscrutable to him sometimes, and today more so than usual.
But what am I going to do ? Letting your dog eat your chametz is NOT fulfilling the obligation, even though I’m sure if Robbie were able he might try to give a “Robbinic” dissertation in defense of his solution…
“Let the good looking Sheltie eat the chametz”, being the central premise.
But we didn’t go THERE.
I had a good laugh. Robbie was disgusted. But we burned the biscuit.
Thereby coming to the place where I can say. . .
“Chametz? What chametz?