Chevre, this week’s parsha is Metzora (מְצֹרָע) and Shabbat HaGadol. To begin, I need to say a big thank you to everyone who made my trip to New York so welcoming. And for Israel for opening their skies in time for me to take off and land on-time to get back to my family after some missles and things were lobbed at Israel. I was able to get back without a problem and my in-laws were able to get in with out a problem. Now I’m in De-Nile regarding anything with the war until after we are ready for Pesach.
Shabbat HaGadol is The Shabbat before Pesach (Passover). Traditionally, the town Rav will give his semi-annual drasha. Given that we are a few days away from Pesach, one of the key pieces of cleaning a home from Metzora - 2024 (a spiritual malady that can affect people and buildings) is the actual pulling down of the house. It feels, as we clean for Pesach that we are actually pulling apart the whole house, but (I hope) we are leaving the walls up.
In my house my wife does the spring cleaning and I do the Pesach cleaning. In my work life, I prefer to have as little cruft (we’ll call it chametz) as possible. I do my best to automate the removal of old files from download directories, or to automate the cleanup of OpenSearch Indexes, logs (including CloudWatch Log Groups), and S3 Multi Part Upload Fragments (MPUs). To the point where new Log Groups and S3 Buckets automatically get a default Retential Period or MPU Lifecycle Policy thanks to my friend Event Bridge and Lambda.
I find the focus on cleaning and the immediate need and looming deadline to be super useful to pushing through some soreness and for making sure I’m working on the right things. At work, this also came through given my travel and vacation schedule. Is it important and urgent? Great, I’ll do it as efficiently as I can. Everything else either gets a “no” or a reminder to do “after pesach”. Of course, the “after the chagim” earlier in the year never came due to unforseen circumstances on Simchat Torah.
I wish you all a supreme cleaning of chametz from yourselves and your homes, that you can focus on the most important and useful (during Pesach we’ll call that family and friends) and have a Kosher and Happy Pesach. Oh, and Shabbat Shalom!