tagged: ביעור חמץ bi'ur ḥamets • the Open Siddur Project ✍ פְּרוֺיֶקְט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ https://opensiddur.org/tagged/biur-hamets/ a community-grown, libre Open Access archive of Jewish prayer and liturgical resources Fri, 25 Sep 2026 17:09:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3 https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Open-Siddur-Project-Logo-2015-5509b4bdv1_site_icon-250x250.png tagged: ביעור חמץ bi'ur ḥamets • the Open Siddur Project ✍ פְּרוֺיֶקְט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ https://opensiddur.org/tagged/biur-hamets/ 32 32 כָׇּל־חֲמִירָא | Kavvanah for Returning Our Ḥamets to the Earth by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid·org) https://opensiddur.org/prayers/lunisolar/pilgrimage/pesah/erev-pesah/kavanah-for-returning-our-hamets-to-the-earth/ https://opensiddur.org/prayers/lunisolar/pilgrimage/pesah/erev-pesah/kavanah-for-returning-our-hamets-to-the-earth/#respond Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:27:45 +0000 http://opensiddur.org/?p=6335 ḥamets into dust. It really is a legal formula that means that you renounce ownership of any ḥamets still in your space or your domain, so that it no longer has any value to you. But is it true that dirt is valueless and ownerless? We certainly act like we own the dirt, the soil. Developers take good land, build houses on it, and truck the topsoil away to sell to other people—thereby doubling profits and doubling damage to the earth. We act like the soil can be renewed and replaced at will, poisoning its microbial communities with pesticides applied even more strongly on our GMO corn and soy, while we replace the nutrients they create with petroleum-based fertilizers. We send the soil downstream and into the ocean along with vast quantities of agricultural runoff, creating algal blooms and anoxic dead zones. In that sense we do treat the soil like it is both ownerless and valueless. But our lives are almost entirely beholden to the soil. If it is ownerless it is because it belongs to all of us, or more precisely, as the story of the rabbi deciding between claimants goes, “The land says it doesn’t belong to you or to you, but that you belong to it.” Like the dirt of the earth, the ḥamets inside your house becomes what at Burning Man we call “MOOP” (Matter Out Of Place). Finding out where it belongs means finding out that it doesn’t belong to you or to us. Returning it to the soil means tilling our stuff back into the earth, where it can become renewed, where it can become sustenance for new life.]]> Some people think of this as a magic formula that turns ḥamets into dust. It really is a legal formula that means that you renounce ownership of any ḥamets still in your space or your domain, so that it no longer has any value to you. But is it true that dirt is valueless and ownerless? We certainly act like we own the dirt, the soil. Developers take good land, build houses on it, and truck the topsoil away to sell to other people—thereby doubling profits and doubling damage to the earth. We act like the soil can be renewed and replaced at will, poisoning its microbial communities with pesticides applied even more strongly on our GMO corn and soy, while we replace the nutrients they create with petroleum-based fertilizers. We send the soil downstream and into the ocean along with vast quantities of agricultural runoff, creating algal blooms and anoxic dead zones. In that sense we do treat the soil like it is both ownerless and valueless. But our lives are almost entirely beholden to the soil. If it is ownerless it is because it belongs to all of us, or more precisely, as the story of the rabbi deciding between claimants goes, “The land says it doesn’t belong to you or to you, but that you belong to it.”

Like the dirt of the earth, the ḥamets inside your house becomes what at Burning Man we call “MOOP” (Matter Out Of Place). Finding out where it belongs means finding out that it doesn’t belong to you or to us. Returning it to the soil means tilling our stuff back into the earth, where it can become renewed, where it can become sustenance for new life.

Source (Aramaic) Translation and Kavvanah (English)
(Add the words in parentheses in the morning when you burn the ḥamets.)
כָׇּל־חֲמִירָא וַחֲמִיעָא דְּאִכָּא בִרְשׁוּתִי
(דַּחֲמִתֵּהּ וּ)דְלָא חֲמִתֵּהּ
(דְּבַעֲרִתֵּהּ וּ)דְלָא בַעֲרִתֵּהּ
לִבְטִיל וְלֶהֱוֵי כְּעַפְרָא דְאַרְעָא׃
All the ḥamets that is in my possession/r’shut,
which (I did see or) did not see
and which (I did remove or) did not remove,
let it be nullified and become like the dirt of the earth/afra d’ar’a.
May we remember on this day
that just as we do not own this ḥamets,
we do not own this Earth.
May we recall that Adam, the human,
is made of afar min ha’adamah,
soil, dirt from the ground,
and that we belong to the soil.
May we cherish the soil
that comes from millennia of rocks breaking
and life growing and decomposing.
We too are “hewn from the rock
and dug from the mine”
of Abraham and Sarah.[1] Cf. Isaiah 51:1-2. 
And so, may it be Your will, Adonai Eloheinu,
that we give truth to your promise to Abraham,
that his progeny would become “like the soil of the earth” –
ka`afar ha’arets” – k`afra d’ar’a –
and that, like the soil, we may live to nourish all Life.[2] Genesis 13:16. 

 

Notes

Notes
1 Cf. Isaiah 51:1-2.
2 Genesis 13:16.
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