The Torah declares, “For seven days no leavened matter shall be found in your houses” (Shemot 12:19) and “No leavened matter shall be seen by you, nor shall any leaven [itself] be seen by you, in all your borders, for seven days” (Shemot 12:19).
Although the Mishnah (Pesachim 21a) mentions selling chametz to a non-Jew before Passover, chametz sales were not de rigueur during pre-refrigeration historical times. Rather, Jews simply planned their chametz purchases and consumption so that, by the deadline on the 14th day of Nisan, only a small amount of chametz would remain that would require disposal.
However, the situation became thorny during the Middle Ages when Eastern and Central European Jews leased distilleries from landowning barons in exchange for a fixed price or a percentage of sales. (The Bach, a renowned halachic authority in 1630s Poland, writes that most Jewish commerce at the time was in liquor.) Since liquor is made from fermented grain and therefore constitutes pure chametz, the advent of Passover presented an epic problem for Jewish lessees, owners, manufacturers, and distributors of liquor, who could not simply sell or consume their entire stock before Pesach.
Similarly, food merchants, who would maintain large inventories of chametz, faced the loss of business not only during Passover but also during the subsequent weeks it would take to restock their inventory were they to discard it before Pesach. Equally important, Jewish customers would be unable to purchase chametz for many weeks after Passover. A further problem was that merchants often maintained large stocks such that even if they were somehow able to sell it all, the buyer would be unable to transfer it from the seller’s property before the start of Pesach.
To resolve these problems, rabbinic authorities instituted a procedure whereby the chametz would be sold to a non-Jew for the duration of Passover. (The origins of this process is a discussion in Tosefta, Pesachim 2:6.) With a shtar mechirah – a contract for the sale of chametz – all chametz is legally sold to a non-Jew for the duration of Passover, but the contract allows the Jewish seller to repurchase his chametz after the holiday so that he can stay in business.
Many of the leading rabbanim at the time – including interestingly the author of the Tavu’ot Shor, who himself was a whiskey manufacturer – argued that the shtar mechirah was a sham because, among other reasons, everyone knew at the outset that the chametz would be returned to the seller after Pesach and because, unlike usual food sales, the buyer does not take actual possession of the chametz, nor does he pay full price for it.
Some Rabbinic leaders ruled that the shtar mechirah could be used only when the seller faced grave financial loss, but virtually all contemporary halachic authorities permit the shtar mechirah and characterize it as valid in every respect.
The question of the duty of a Jew owning shares in a company that owns chametz is complex – as we say in the vernacular, “consult your local rav” – but the duty of a wholly Jewish-owned company to dispose of its chametz before Passover is clear. Which leads to a fascinating question: How should a Jewish government dispose of its chametz? Answer: Through a shtar mechirah, like anyone else. But to whom does Israel sell its chametz? Therein lies a fascinating tale.
The purchaser of Israel’s chametz for more than two decades has been Jabar Ismail Hussein (b. 1965), an Israeli Muslim from Abu Ghosh who serves as food and beverage manager at the Hilton Hotel in Jerusalem. Jabar has been the designated purchaser of all the chametz owned by every Israeli government ministry, including the chametz of the Israeli military and Israeli police, since 1998. He also purchases all the chametz from state-owned companies and food distributors, as well as the chametz sold through the Chief Rabbinate by privately-owned Israeli restaurants.
Ironically, Jabar became the designee for purchase after it was discovered that his predecessor, also a resident of Abu Ghosh, had a maternal grandmother who was Jewish – which meant that his mother was Jewish and that he was Jewish and thus ineligible to serve as a chametz purchaser under a shtar mechirah. Asked by an interviewer if he was familiar with the fact that his predecessor had a Jewish mother, he delightfully responded that he was a Moslem and “a goy mehadrin.”
Jabar was assigned the important responsibility when, in the course of his work at the Hilton, he met and became friendly with Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who explained the details and significance of mechirat chametz and solicited him to purchase all of Israel’s chametz. He also serves as Israel’s “go-to non-Jew” for the purchase of land from the Chief Rabbinate during shemitta years.
A remarkable man, Jabar comes across like a fervent Zionist. He says that he finds inspiration from Menachem Begin, who was an honest man and faithful to his principles and to Israel, and that he is emotionally moved whenever he hears the public singing of HaTikvah. He is also a great admirer of President Trump, whom he commends for his courage in moving Israel’s embassy to Jerusalem.
The process for the sale begins each year when Israel’s finance minister, through the grant of a legal power of attorney, authorizes the Chief Rabbis to affect the sale of all the government’s chametz. The non-Jewish purchaser then executes a contract with the Chief Rabbinate during a ceremony held at the offices of the Chief Rabbinate at Hechal Shlomo attended also by the Finance Minister.
For years, the buyer made a down payment of NIS 100,000 (about $32,000 today), payable to the Chief Rabbinate, for the purchase of some $150 billion of chametz assets; Jabar loves to joke that, for one week, he is the richest man in Israel, if not in the entire world. “It is a beautiful thing,” he says.
He tells of receiving many inquiries during Passover week each year from hungry people in the territories and in east Jerusalem who ask him to give them some of “his bread” to eat; he explains to them that he does not actually have the food in his possession. (He says that his fellow neighborhood Arabs express no enmity regarding his helping the State of Israel with its “chametz problem.”)
Nonetheless, the chametz is legally his in every sense of the word. Pursuant to the contract of sale, he receives a list of all chametz items and the keys to all relevant premises where the chametz is held, and he retains the right to enter any government site to inspect his chametz.
An important condition of the contract is that the non-Jewish purchaser must tender the balance of the purchase price (billions of shekalim) by the end of Passover. Under the terms of the shtar mechirah, if he breaches the contract by failing to make the payment – which, of course, he always does – it is legally void and all the chametz that was the subject of the sale reverts to its owner, with the return of the deposit to the purchaser.
In this sense, the State of Israel contract of sale is no different than any contract whereby an individual Jew sells his chametz, usually through the designation of his rav to serve as the agent for the sale.
Exhibited here is an incredible original document from my collection, an actual shtar mechirah executed by Rav Shlomo Goren, then head of the Military Rabbinate of Tzahal (the IDF) and later Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi, whereby he sells all of Tzahal’s chametz to Laviv Naser al-Din, a Druze from Daliyat al-Carmel, who affirms that he is not a Jew and signs the contract in both Arabic and Hebrew. Al-Din has gone on to purchase Tzahal’s chametz for some 40 years.
There appears to be a slight anomaly with respect to the date, as Rav Goren has filled it in as “Nisan 14 1969 at 8:45 a.m.,” while at the same time crossing out the printed year “1969” and writing in “1970.” However, this was almost certainly a 1970 shtar mechirah because R. Goren has also crossed out the word “second” in the phrase “the second year since the liberation of the unified Jerusalem” (which would be 1969) and handwritten in “the third year…“ Lest there be any doubt, he has also written an unambiguous “ = 1970.”
The contract requires a deposit of 50 lira for chametz and items that contain chametz, 25 lira for animals, 25 lira for places that have chametz and animals, and 25 lira for utensils and sacks. Rav Goren executes the contract on behalf of:
the Ministry of Defense, the Soldiers’ Welfare Committee, institutions in the Prime Minister’s office, individual military soldiers and officers, and all on behalf of whom he has permission who are “stitched and glued to” [i.e., relying upon] this contract of sale, and all who have authorized me to sell all their chametz and chametz mixtures under their control, in their homes, boundaries, and other places and that may come into their possession before the end of Passover…
The materials sold pursuant to the shtar mechirah are very broad indeed:
wheat, barley buckwheat/kasha, stalks of grain, rye, flour from all these, challahs and bread from all these, bran from all these, all kinds of filled dumplings/kreplach, wantons, pastry, yeast and all kinds of groats, pearl barley grits of all kinds and liquor and all kinds of spirits, and all kinds of intoxicants and all kinds of whiskey and wines improved by leavening, all kinds of leavening made from sour liquid, all kinds of chocolate and sugar concoctions and all kinds of sugar mixtures, all kinds of wheat milk and Corrine (?) starch and all kinds of medications and cosmetics and (body) paint, and all kinds of leavening and leavening mixtures not otherwise specified herein, all of which is within this sale, and also horses and cattle, and all kinds of animals and birds.
The contract is guaranteed by one Ze’ev ben Zvi Dafni and signed and witnessed by two kosher Jews, Yehuda ben Simcha Shmuel and Shmuel Zalman Yod.
Rav Goren was a seminal figure in modern Jewish history, and the story of his role in bringing matzot to the soldiers of the Palmach and Haganah during the fight for a Jewish state in 1948 is well worth telling. As the rav describes the situation in his autobiography, there were only about 2,000 pounds of matzah for consumption by 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem over the seven days of Pesach; outside provisions were blocked by Arab blockades, and there were insufficient supplies for all the people of the city to hold even a nominal seder.
The military governor of Jerusalem decided to allocate the scant matzah supplies to the city’s civilians, but Rav Goren could not stand the very idea that the first Jewish soldiers to fight for Jerusalem in two millennia would be forced to eat chametz on Pesach. Unable to convince the governor to reallocate the matzot, he unilaterally undertook a one-man campaign, broke into the warehouse, and distributed the remaining matzot to the Jewish fighters.
Then, knowing that the soldiers would have to remain at their posts and could ill-afford the luxury of attending an hours-long seder, he organized shortened Passover sedarim so that the soldiers could at least satisfy their minimum halachic obligations. He enlisted the services of yeshiva student volunteers who left their classrooms and families to join their fellow Jews in their outposts and foxholes and, under sniper fire and mortar bombardment, they held abbreviated sedarim.
Some of the soldiers had a very special guest that seder night: not only Elijah the prophet, but also David Ben-Gurion, who arrived in besieged Jerusalem that evening in a Piper Cub plane from Tel Aviv. Exhibited here is a rare, historic, and deeply emotional original photograph of Ben-Gurion attending a seder on April 23, 1948 at a Haganah base in Jerusalem.
In encouraging the soldiers to continue their fight for the Holy City, Ben-Gurion, though himself not religiously observant, inspired them through reminders that this was the first time in 2,000 years of exile that Jews could celebrate Passover, the “Festival of Freedom,” as free men in their own land.
He reminded them that while every seder for thousands of years had ended with an exclamation of “Next Year in Jerusalem,” this night they were actually in Jerusalem fighting for the liberation of the city they had never forgotten through the long and dark exile.
May this be our last Pesach in galut, and l’shana habaa B’Yerushalayim! Wishing a chag kasher v’sameach to all.
