Series 07 English pages part 01 Chapter 156

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Home -- Content: Series 7 (Laws) -- Translation: English -- Book: 1 (Tora) -- Part: 1 (Positive) -- Command: 156 -- Text
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The Sharia of Moses in the TORA
Part 1 - The 248 Positive Commandments of the Tora

156 - REMOVAL OF LEAVEN

Exodus 12:15 -- “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.”

All leaven is to be removed on 14 April as a commemoration of the Passover.

Exodus 12:19-20 -- 19 “For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. 20 You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.' "

According to Maimonides, it is sufficient under the terms of this commandment to disown mentally all leaven in one’s possession; the ‘removal’ of which the torah speaks only means completely disowning it. Thus our author stresses the spiritual aspect of the procedure laid down for ‘removal’ of leaven, affirming that one must ‘inwardly disown it, considering it as the dust of the earth. He is thus to establish in his mind definitely that he possesses no leaven whatsoever, in that he considers all leaven in his possession as the dust of the earth, and as something for which there is no necessity whatsoever.”*

* Mishneh Torah, Zmanim, Hilchoth Chametz U-Matzah II, 2

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