Chametz

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Suspended shelves for the Passover festival in the supermarket

Chametz ( Hebrew חמץ) (in Ashkenazi pronunciation Chometz or Chumetz ) literally translated means leavened .

What is meant is usually leavened food in the sense of the foods mentioned in the Torah that are forbidden on Passover . These are all foods that contain one of the five types of grain wheat , oats , rye , barley and spelled and that have been in contact with water for more than 18 minutes without being baked during their production. According to Jewish religious law, all this food must be removed from the house before Passover and all ownership of it must be given up.

The background to this custom is that the Israelites when they left Egypt , which is celebrated on Passover, had not yet leavened the bread dough due to the hurried departure and could therefore only bake unleavened bread ( Ex 12.39  EU ). The festival of unleavened bread is also made a regulation by YHWH for all later years ( Ex 12.17–20  EU ) - whereby the regulation is already mentioned in the text before the origin, which is not entirely clear chronologically.

In American English, Chametz is used figuratively as a synonym for slow-moving or junk .

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