The college student's guide to keeping Passover
College Students Guide to getting your dorm ready for Passover and observing Passover! Take the time to read through! There is lots of great information here!
1) Clean your room! First step is to get rid of your chametz — leavened food, their derivatives, and utensils. Basically, you want to clean your space of any foods not Kosher for Passover. Breads, pastas, cereals, cakes, pretzels, beer… those are just some of the things you’ll want to dispose of. Spiritually, the leavened bread represents the negative character traits we may have allowed to accumulate over the course of the year. Bread is made of the same ingredients as Matzah — it’s just allowed to rise, to puff itself up with arrogance. Passover is freedom time — time to free ourselves of all that spiritual clutter, and clean ourselves just as we clean our rooms. There are three easy ways to get rid of your chametz. Eat it, give it away, or put it in a designated closed closet and include it in the chametz sale (see below). Also make sure to (finally!) properly clean your room and car, getting rid of any crumbs or food bits and pieces. Make sure to double check: • In any of cupboards, drawers and other storage • In your room under and around your bed • Backpacks • Luggage • Clothing • Car • Toothbrush – replace it, it’s probably time anyway. Shared kitchens in houses and halls of residence present a host of challenges to prepare them for Passover, beyond the scope of this overview. Suffice it to say that your personal dishes/utensils need to be put away for the holiday and sold with your chametz (see below). Some cooking and eating utensils used for chametz may be cleaned thoroughly and Koshered appropriately. 2) Sell that stuff! You’ve cleaned out your room. But you have a huge bag of pasta that you really don’t want to get rid of. Or even if you have gotten rid of everything. There are still all those pots and pans, plates and cutlery that were used with chametz all year that are off limits for Passover. And on Passover, we’re not just not allowed to eat chametz — we’re not even supposed to possess it! Not to worry. For thousands of years, Jews have been utilizi