The process of the cleaning of chametz (yeast products) from the house, over the weeks and days preceding Pesach, has a spiral trajectory, it goes round in circles starting with the largest items.
This year 2020/5780 is for me the first time that I do this activity in a real home of ours, where Ariel, the cat Sarà and I live a normal Jewish family life. In 2019/5779 we were already living in this house, but we were still settling. So, two weeks ago, when I began to chase dust and chametz from every surface, fabric or drawer, I had a year’s worth of that already!
So, the series of concentric circles that I started a few days ago with windows, curtains, etc, reached this morning its core, the realm of chametz: the kitchen. After emptying all the cupboards (why else would you find this scene 
in a living room ?!), cleaning them inside and out, washing the walls, getting rid of all the ‘carbs’, I rearranged the foods we will have during Pesach - we decided we say yes to kitniot, that is legumes and rice, according to the Sephardic tradition - and those we bought especially for the Seder, the ritual dinner that will take place this Wednesday evening, and I inevitably found myself checking the expiry date of every packet, bag or jar in sight.
While the kitchen was drying, I sat down for a moment to rest and I thought about how important is to me to periodically clean and check the quality of the bounty that, thank God, we always have. I felt gratitude for my parents who passed to me the idea of respect for our food and the environment; but above all I felt deep gratitude for the teachings of Judaism, of my tribe: for establishing and focusing on rules about food, on the way we must treat animals and for inspiring us in the many different ways we relate to different kinds of food on various occasions of the Jewish year. My thoughts suggested a fleeting parallel with the alleged reason why the virus that is threatening us in these days might have developed.
In those moments, sitting in my kitchen that I am preparing in a way so we will be able to properly walk through this coming festival and its symbolic meaning of freedom, I suddenly had the vision of what it means, as I understand it, that the law of the Torah, not the absence of law, can make me free.
Happy Passover!
LiOr