[Avodah] Chometz: Less than a kezayis

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 08:31:29PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: The same page is available on line in a few other magazines, such as page
: 99 at https://issuu.com/weeklylink.com/docs/vol_10_issue_28
...
: They write in the name of Rav Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg ztz"l:
:> The general obligation to check for and get rid of crumbs
:> does not apply if the crumbs are less than the size of an
:> olive (k'zayis) and are dirty or spoiled enough to deter a
:> person from eating them.

: And they quote Rabbis Elozor Barclay and Yitzchok Jaeger that:
:> If the chometz is dirty then only a piece that is the size
:> of a k'zayis (an olive) must be removed.
:> If the chometz is edible, then even a smaller [than a kzayis]
:> piece that one may be tempted to eat must be removed.

: If this is indeed the halacha, then it explains and simplifies several
: difficulties I've had over the years. But *is* this the halacha? The page
: has very few references to printed sources, and I'd appreciate any mar'eh
: m'komos that anyone might offer.

This is in line with the posts we used to get annually about how keeping
Pesach doesn't require driving ourselves crazy with Spring Cleaning. And
therefore driving yourself crazy to the point of dreading the approach
of Pesach is assur as violating simchas YT. 

Eg
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol33/v33n044.shtml#01 - R/Prof Levine
http://web.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/pesach/stress_relief.pdf

http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol12/v12n131.shtml#08 - posted by
RET "R. Elyashiv on Pesach" (highlights from a booklet)

There are others, I think Rt Boublil posted a couple. But I am in
Israel, and now that my lives-too-far-away grandson is awake, I am
motivated to invest less time searching and letting you do the rest.
(What is below was written earlier.)

On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 06:52:59PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: We are told many times how very thorough the bedikah must be: Cracks and
: crevices. Holes in a wall. And so on. These places have always led me to
: believe that we must search for all chometz - even if it is small and even
: if it is dirty....

In the past, I "blamed" the havtachah of the Ari zal that omeone who
totally purges their chameitz will not sin in the coming year. A
minhag based on Qabbalah, not din.

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 07:45:29AM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: Here's my guess at the answer: We often put eating chometz and owning
: chometz into the same category, but that's a mistake. Eating chometz is a
: very severe issur, but owning chometz is more like a "gezera d'Oraisa" to
: insure that we don't go so far as to eat chometz...

After bitul, we aren't even dealing directly with the deOraisa. At this
point the matter is derabbanan. So, maybe bal yeira'eh isn't a "gezeira
deOraisa", but not having chameitz be'ein laying around is a gezeira
derabbanan

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "'When Adar enters, we increase our joy'
micha at aishdas.org         'Joy is nothing but Torah.'
http://www.aishdas.org    'And whoever does more, he is praiseworthy.'"
Fax: (270) 514-1507                     - Rav Dovid Lifshitz zt"l