Skip the Skips: An Environmentally Responsible Approach to Passover
- Discussing the commandment of not leaving over any of the Passover sacrifice to the next day, the Sefer Hachinuch explains that in order to show our liberated status, coming out of slavery in Egypt and becoming a free people, we are copying monarchs and rulers who as an expression of their wealth simply destroy any food left over at the end of a meal and have no need or wish to preserve food from one day to the next.
- Social conditions and social consciences have changed, both for monarchs and for ordinary people in the intervening period since this was written.
- No responsible person today would think it appropriate at the end of a banquet simply to throw all the remaining food away: with hunger facing people even in the most developed countries of the world, this would be an act of gross insensitivity, and thought is routinely given by caterers at all levels in society as to how to use leftover food in an appropriate way.
- This thought about changing social conditions has no direct application to the Passover sacrifice today because we do not bring it: it does, however, have direct application to our preparations for Passover.
- Not so long ago it was common for local councils in areas with large Orthodox Jewish populations to provide an extra rubbish bin collection on the day before Passover, and to set up communal skips into which people were invited to throw their leftover chometz (non-Passover) food on the day before Passover itself.
- It is inconceivable that this would be thought appropriate by responsible people today: burning a slice or two of bread in the garden on the day before Passover as a symbolic rejection of the grosser forms of materialism is one thing: throwing into a skip significant quantities of good food for which the homeless and the hungry would be grateful is entirely another.
- The message for today’s age is simply this: the mitzvah of biur chometz (destroying leavened food) starts now, or even earlier, with a concerted effort to wind down the larder so as to ensure that on the day before Pesach we have very few open packages of non-Passover food still around, and we can move into the symbolism of a simpler lifestyle for the duration of Passover without committing acts of irresponsible and disreputable waste.
The Sceptic Blog 
Thank you for your radio 4 “Thought for the Day” today 17 July. Although possibly inappropriate for “Thought for the Day”, do you think that the argument you made could be extended to the treatment by Ofsted of Jewish schools that separate genders and have problems with teaching ideas about novel forms of relationships and marriage?
M WILKS
July 17, 2019 at 9:04 am
Thanks very much – there may be some parallel, although far from a complete or exact one; it’s all very difficult for an increasingly secular society to get the balance right between respect for religion and respect for inconsistent rights. Where does imparting religious heritage to ones children stop and brainwashing in outmoded cultures begin? Even within the Jewish community there might just possibly be different views on that … I think the thing about the Uighars is that their treatment is so obviously completely wrong that the Chinese are sufficiently uncomfortable about it to want to keep it mostly hidden.
Daniel Greenberg
July 17, 2019 at 10:41 am