[Avodah] Selling whiskey/bourbon

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 10:36:25PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
> : Similarly, it stands to reason that water added to grain before it ferments
> : becomes part of the fermented product and therefore itself chametz, and
> : can't be counted as something that dilutes the chametz.
> 
> This seems to contradict what you said earlier. The water added after
> decasking is after fermentation. Would that not make it a second
> ingredient from the mash, and thus taaroves?

Indeed it would.  How does that contradict what I said earlier.

 
> I wish to remove wine from the conversation, because mezigas hakos means
> that wine *requires* dilution to be yayin, and thus the whole question
> is different than for adding water to other substances.

No it's not.  For most people Seks-un-naintziger needs to be diluted
too.   But the water that is added is still water; if you mixed flour
with yayin mazug it would become chametz in a short time.

 
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 05:12:28AM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
> : But instead, frame the question in terms of "what problem do I run
> : into when selling my chometz before Pesach", and "what problem do I run
> : into when purchasing his chometz after Pesach"...
> 
> This would justify a hanhagah tovah, a chumerah, whatever you want to
> call it. But a minhag has to be "shehatzibbur yakhol laamod ba" -- not
> viewed only in terms of personal considerations.

I dispute this.  A minhag can be private to one person *or family*.
R Gamliel's family was "machmirin al atzman umekilin al kol yisrael".


> On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 08:20:12AM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
> : Not all minhagim fit this paradigm.  Take glatt, back in the day when 
> : Jewish butchers sold mainly to Jewish consumers, so that every treifah 
> : was a monetary loss, and back in small towns where they slaughtered one 
> : or  two cows a week.  As I understand it, those are the conditions under 
> : which the custom originated, and when the meat wasn't glatt the people 
> : who were makpid simply didn't eat meat that Shabbos.  But extend the 
> : custom to an entire kehillah and the economics fails.
> 
> Umm, that was an entire kehillah. As you write, the loss was absorbed so
> it seems they could manage. The fact that 100 mi away in some other town
> someone else would have eaten the meat doesn't change the feasability of
> the minhag. It's not today, when economic and social groups span large
> swaths of a continent.

When was there ever a kehillah that were all makpid on glatt, despite
holding that non-glatt was kosher al pi din?  AFAIK there was never any
such kehillah in Ashkenazi lands; there were individuals or families who
were machmir on themselves, but there were enough who did eat it that
the butcher could make a living.  Of course in those areas where they
paskened like the Mechaber a non-glatt animal was treif, and the butcher
had to absorb the loss just as he did with completely treif animals.

 
> : My suspicion is that there is no such "minhag". Some/many individuals
> : may follow such a practice, but I don't think there's any community
> : composed of people, all of whom follow the practice you've
> : described...
> 
> This started when I looked up what the star-K said about selling
> whisk[e]y. They refer you to footnote 1, which reads, "Some individuals
> sell this chometz, others do not. One should follow his family custom."
> 
> That's when I asked how this works as a minhag. If it were stam a
> personal chumrah, that's a different story.

A family can have chumros.  Descendants of the Shaloh don't eat turkey.
It doesn't mean a whole kehillah has to keep it, so that the shopkeeper
is some kind of oisvorf.

 
> ALTHOUGH, I have a different problem there...
> If you show any reluctance WRT selling chameitz on Pesach, what's the
> quality of your intent when selling taaroves? If you carry around fears
> that the sale isn't real, that it's haaramah, is the qinyan really chal
> or did you create problems of asmachta the moment you chose to be
> choseish?

You certainly *intend* the sale to be valid.  But if you're worried that
according to some opinion somewhere there may be some technical flaw
-- perhaps you're worried that dina demalchusa voids a sale without
stamp duty, or a sale of alcohol without a license, or some other
pitfall that no rov ever thought of -- then it makes sense to play it
safe and not sell chametz gamur, just in case.  You still intend your
sale of the ta'aroves to be as valid as it can be.

In any event, devarim shebelev einam devarim.  If the sale *is* valid,
as it almost certainly is, then what you're thinking doesn't matter.


> If it's your *minhag* then doesn't it have to fit the rules for minhag?
> Such as being viable for a community to follow

I don't see why this must be so.


> Here the "minhag" only works for me because I know the storeowner is
> relying on a loophole (hefsed meruba) 

No, he's not relying on hefsef meruba, he's relying on ikkar hadin.
You're the one staying lifnim mishuras hadin; he's entitled not to.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher