Biur Chametz: Destroying It

The Torah requires chametz to be removed from our possession on the fourteenth of Nisan, the day before Pesach — "on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses". The Sages explained that "the first day" here means the day before Pesach.

So the searching happens the night before, and the destroying happens the next morning.

The morning of the fourteenth

After finishing breakfast, and before the hour at which chametz becomes prohibited:

1. Shake out your clothes of any chametz crumbs.
2. Gather the remaining chametz in the house and keep it somewhere it will not scatter, so it can be destroyed shortly afterwards.
3. Clean the chametz vessels and store them away with the rest of the chametz vessels, out of the way.

The instruction to keep the gathered chametz somewhere it will not scatter is a small thing that prevents an obvious problem — a bag of crumbs set down carelessly recreates the work just finished.

Brush your teeth

This is on the list, and it is not a figure of speech.

Clean and brush the teeth so that no crumb of chametz remains in them. The caution is sharpened for anyone with cavities, where crumbs can lodge, and the same applies to dentures.

The reasoning is worth following, because it is exact rather than fussy. A crumb caught between the teeth is chametz you are carrying into Pesach. And the classic illustration is of someone who found that a crumb had stayed lodged, and came loose while he was eating matzah — so that he ate it together with the matzah, at the very moment he was fulfilling the mitzvah.

That image is why the instruction is given the emphasis it is.

Why this is separate from cleaning and searching

Three distinct things happen in sequence, and they are easily run together:

• Cleaning, over the preceding weeks — removing chametz from the house.
• Bedikas chametz, on the night of the fourteenth — the obligation to search, which the cleaning does not discharge.
• Biur chametz, the following morning — destroying what remains and what was found.

Each has its own time and its own obligation. Doing one thoroughly does not substitute for another.

Alongside this runs the sale of chametz, which deals with what is not being destroyed.

The times, the method of destruction and the declaration that accompanies it are matters of practice — ask your rav, and ask in advance.