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Thou Shalt Seek and Destroy:
The Positive Commandment to
Destroy Hametz
Rabbi Joshua Kulp
As we learned in my comments last week, there is a positive commandment to destroy hametz. Today we carry this mitzvah out through a two stage process–first we search for hametz on the night before Pesah and second we burn the hametz on the morning before the seder (this is done differently if Pesah falls right after Shabbat). The contours of the halakhah are straightforward but questions arise in situations where someone is either away for Pesah or is at home but does not have any hametz to find or burn. I will address the latter two questions here, and next week the question of someone who is not home before Pesah.
The first mishnah in Pesahim mandates that on the night before Pesah, the home must be checked by candlelight. In Talmudic times, this seems to be when people actually began to clean their homes for Pesah. Homes were no more than a few rooms in those days, people did not store large quantities of food, and it probably took no more than a couple of hours at most to search for all the hametz in the home. However, these physical conditions and these habits were already different in the middle ages, and as Jews do now, Jews in the medieval period were cleaning their homes out far earlier than the night before Pesah. And indeed, rabbis were clear–one should clean one’s home before Pesah. For instance Rabbi Mordecai ben Hillel, a 13th century German sage, writes, “One must sweep out one’s home before searching for hametz.” This custom is referred to by other rishonim (early medieval sages) as well. Even without being told to do so, one night was not sufficient to clean even their small homes.
But pre-Pesah cleaning brought up a different problem. If the house is already clean, what are we looking for? And even more problematic, how can a berakhah be recited “al biur hametz” if all of the hametz has already been found and destroyed? Jews seem to have sensed this problem at an early stage and organically invented the custom to hide hametz before the search in order to make sure that there is some hametz to find during the search. Rabbi Avraham ben David (the Ra’avad), a 12th century giant from Provence, writes, “Those who place leaven in holes (throughout the house) at the time of destruction–this is an act of women and has no basis.” Some rabbis continue to oppose this custom for a long period of time. However, throughout the period people persisted with the custom until it finally met with universal rabbinic approval. In the 16th century, R. Moshe Isserles, the Rema, in his commentary on the Tur notes two customs to avoid the problem. The first is to hide pieces of bread and the second is to burn the bowl which would have held the hametz had any been found. We can sense here that the rituals of erev Pesah, search and destroy, found great favor in people’s minds. They wanted to find something and they wanted to burn something. In the absence of something to find, they hid hametz. And in the absence of something to burn, they burned something else, the wood bowl. What began as functional had clearly transformed into ritual.
But what to do if one does not possess any hametz to destroy whatsoever? We should note that today this could occur if one has removed or sold all of one’s hametz before Pesah. The institute of “selling hametz” in the way we do so today is a relatively recent invention that I will explore in a later piece. The likelihood of this happening in an earlier period was small, but still an intellectually interesting question. If there is a positive commandment to burn hametz, does one have to buy hametz in order to destroy it?
This issue was addressed at great length by several aharonim, post-Shulkhan Arukh rabbis. It was addressed by R. Yisrael Meir Kagan in his Mishneh Berurah commentary on the Shulkhan Arukh 445, comment 10 comments on the Shulkhan Arukh’s remark that “if he gave [all his hametz] to a non-Jew before the sixth hour [on erev Pesah] he need not destroy [any hametz]. On this, the Mishneh Berurah comments,
In any case, it is proper to not give away all of one's hametz to a non-Jew and to fulfill the mitzvah of "destroy" during the sixth hour with the crumbs that he left in order to burn them, for it is as if these crumbs have already been destroyed and even if he leaves them [and does not destroy them] they would not be sufficient to transgress [the prohibition of] "do not see [any hametz in your domain]." Rather, he should leave at least an olive's bulk of hametz in order to fulfill the mitzvah of "destroy" in its proper fashion.
The Mishneh Berurah advocates and may even mandate a positive fulfillment of the mitzvah of “destroy” with proper hametz–not just the crumbs found during the search the evening before. The “Piskei Teshuvot,” a modern compendium of halakhah, notes that there is a dispute among aharonim on this issue–is “destroy” a fully positive commandment, such that one would have to buy hametz in order to destroy it. Is it like “tzitzit” where there is a positive commandment to wear tzitzit even if one does not have a four cornered garment. Or is this a “cease and desist (שב ואל תעשה)” type of positive commandment. The positive commandment is fulfilled by having a home without hametz on Pesah. While there is no “right” answer to this question, popular custom clearly prefers the positive fulfillment of the mitzvah and not just the “cease and desist” understanding. So make sure you save some hametz so that on erev Pesah you can partake of the ritual act of burning it before the sixth hour in the morning.
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