The Rabbis Build Little Theological Mazes

People sometimes tell you that Judaism is a utilitarian religion. Having to throw out all your food and scour your home before Passover according to the laws of bedikat hametz—the search for leaven—may be tiresome, but it yields the greatest good for the greatest number.

This turns Judaism into a sound public policy, but a dry, dull religion. So, it’s important to remember that the sages of old weren’t health officials. When they directed us to remove every trace of fermentable dough from our homes the night before Passover, they weren’t thinking about sanitation. To clean, you need ample light, but the Talmud tells us to search at night with no more than a candle (“On the evening of the fourteenth, we search for hametz by the light of a candle”). And that’s both inefficient and odd. Jews in the Greco-Roman world had perfectly good torches.