[Avodah] Selling whiskey/bourbon

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 11:42:16AM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
: >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.

Your first words in this thread, posted Mar 22 6:41am PDT:
: But whiskey is *not* a taaroves, it's chametz itself.

: >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....

Needing dilution to be drinkable means needing dilution to be within the
halachic category? RRW brings sources to say "yes", but I haven't seen
them inside yet.

Wine that needs dilution isn't yayin. In that case, the word "yayin"
refers to the "taaroves". Chameitz that needs dilution isn't chameitz?
Are you invoking undiluted whisky as being einu ra'ui la'akhilas kelev,
and thus it's not chameitz, the diluted stuff is?

>From straight sevara, which I now need to suspend judgment about until
seeing RRW's meqoros, I would think that's enough difference between
wine-as-yayin and whisky-as-taaroves to question whether you can prove
something by analogy from one to the other.

(RRW will confirm that I'm very picky with my analogies.)

...
: >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".

This distinction is messy nowadays, as we haven't congeled into
post-WWII minhagei hamaqom. Most of our minhagei avos are minhagei
hamaqom of the 19th cent meqomos of our avos.

...
: >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? ...

Chassidus down near Hungary and Romania had many such qehillos, no?

...
: >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...

IOW, you aren't sure the sale is real. That's imperfect intent, no?

...
: 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 this were true, then no shtar could be an asmachta. I don't know
the subject, but this /has/ to be an oversimplification.

Nor is this devarim shebeleiv. You demonstrated your doubt in the reality
of the sale by not selling your chameitz gamur.

: >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.

There is no such animal as a minhag she'ein hatzibur yakhol laamod bo.

You can have a "minhag chassidus", but not something inheritable, as
implied by the star-K.

: >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.

Logistically, the minhag only works for me because he isn't following
it. If he did, my supply system would fail.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is harder to eat the day before Yom Kippur
micha at aishdas.org        with the proper intent than to fast on Yom
http://www.aishdas.org   Kippur with that intent.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rav Yisrael Salanter