
Take a feather and a candle: spring cleaning in 13th century Haggadah books - diodorus
http://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/04/take-a-feather-and-a-candle-why-thorough-spring-cleaning-is-so-important.html
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xherberta
_All 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.

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torgoguys
There 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.

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yehi
you'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.

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torgoguys
Looked 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/...](http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/1689/jewish/Selling-
Your-Chametz.htm)

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ederlf
Spring 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).

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ska
From 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.

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tmnvix
Am I missing something or is this just a clickbait title?

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JoeAltmaier
tl;dr: Jewish men help clean the house one day a year

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Dolores12
can you tell why it is so important?

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coldtea
Who said it is?

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criddell
It's right there in the title.

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golergka
It's only talking about religious people; extrapolating religious norms to the
whole ethnicity is kind of unfair.

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M_Grey
...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.

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jimmyk
_quite a diverse bunch really_

In comparison to who?

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gwbas1c
Christianity, where the definition effectively prohibits someone from being
both an atheist and a christian.

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M_Grey
To be fair, I'm not sure that Islam is too enthusiastic about atheists
proclaiming for it either... to put it mildly.

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mturmon
"There is no god but God" does seem to offer some wiggle room for atheists,
but maybe that's an inadvertent loophole.

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M_Grey
It might, but I think the current climate in much of the Islamic world, while
not the crazed image many have, is actually pretty brutal to people within the
religion who are seen as blasphemous. From what I know, and I have to admit
that this isn't as much as I'd like, the process of proclaiming your faith
pretty much involves accepting the existence of god, prophets, the "punishment
of the grave," that kind of thing. My impression is that if you're seen to
have lied about that, you're lucky just to be outcast.

tl;dr It really doesn't pay to be seen as an "apostate" in Islam, at least in
most places at this time.

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DanBC
> From what I know, and I have to admit that this isn't as much as I'd like

In general when you're talking about a group of a billion people you should
avoid generalisations, especially if you also need to say that you don't know
what you're talking about.

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jimmyk
What did he say that was wrong? He didn't say all parts of the Islamic world
are brutal to apostates, he just said much of the Islamic world is. And that's
absolutely the case.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam#Apostasy_in_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam#Apostasy_in_the_recent_past)

