Food, Faith--and Fire : Religion: Orthodox Jews prepare for Passover through ritual purification of kitchenware, which can require a blowtorch for some pots and frying pans.

Around this time every year, Rabbi Alter Tenenbaum takes up a blowtorch and embarks on a divine mission of destruction.

In accordance with biblical laws, the Orthodox spiritual leader is charged with removing even the slightest presence of leavened food from his congregants’ kitchenware. For silverware and other utensils, a pot of boiling water sufficiently cleanses. But for frying pans and some pots, only the blowtorch will do.

“In the old days, they built big fires to do it,” said the 35-year-old rabbi, who expects to sterilize at least two dozen pots and pans in the ritual this week. “But then modern technology brought us blowtorches, so we started using them. What do you think, they are just for plumbers?”

To some, the practice of kashering --which, roughly translated from Yiddish, means “cleansing”--may seem as hard to believe as a man surviving in the belly of a whale. But to many Orthodox Jews, the ritual marks an important symbolic observance during the eight-day Passover holiday that begins Friday at sundown.

“Without knowing what it’s for, someone would think we are nuts,” said Tenenbaum, who runs the Chabad Chai Center in Irvine. “We are following the laws of the Bible.”

Few of Orange County’s estimated 90,000 Jews go to such lengths in observing Judaism’s oldest holiday, which commemorates the Jews’ deliverance from slavery in ancient Egypt. Most Reform, Conservative and even Orthodox Jews comply with biblical kashering laws by reserving a separate set of dishes for the annual spring holiday, local rabbis say.

The importance of ridding the household entirely of leavened products is rooted in the Passover story. In their haste to leave Egypt after 430 years, Jews could not wait for their bread to rise and ate hard wafers--called matzo--as they fled.

During Passover today, Jews eat matzo at a ceremonial meal called a Seder, during which the story is retold and other foods are consumed in symbolic re-creation of the exodus. The holiday’s name comes from the biblical account of Jews’ homes being “passed over” when an angel of death struck down the Egyptians’ first-born sons.

“Even people who are minimally observant throughout the year will alter their habits during Passover,” said Rabbi Mark Miller of Temple Bat Yahm, a Reform congregation in Newport Beach. “It evokes many childhood memories, which is so important in Southern California because so many of us have lost our roots.”

For Orthodox Jews, the holiday takes days of preparation, Tenenbaum said. The rabbi joked that the painstaking task of burning off specks of leavened food has its good and bad points.

“It’s nice to be able to do this as a rabbi, since it means people are adhering to the practices,” said Tenenbaum, as he torched a large frying pan. “But physically, it’s very tedious.”

But the holiday that puts a flame in one hand also puts a business contract in the other, Tenenbaum said. To further satisfy the biblical injunction against eating or possessing any leavened products, the rabbi finds himself serving as business agent for his congregation of 50 families. In another symbolic ceremony, he sells their leavened products to non-Jews for 10 days.

The legal business document, however, is canceled in eight days under an option in the bill of sale, and the sellers retain their ownership of the leavened products when Passover ends, Tenenbaum said.

“I’m talking kitchens-full, cupboards-full,” Tenenbaum said. “It’s a lot of bread and bagels.” The food does not actually change hands; it is locked up in its owner’s home for the duration of the holiday.

Biblical laws also dictate that food preparation areas be covered to make sure that no residue of leavened products contaminates dishes being made during Passover. At Orthodox homes such as Monique Shaffer’s, this means spending an afternoon lining food preparation areas with aluminum foil.

“It looks kind of funny when your whole kitchen is covered with aluminum foil,” said Shaffer, 35, an Irvine resident and member of Tenenbaum’s congregation. “But this is my heritage, and it’s a custom that reminds me of what God did for us. It’s something I can pass down to my children.”