[Avodah] Selling whiskey/bourbon

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Micha Berger asked:

> Personally, I don't get the whole minhag of not selling
> chameitz gamur, but shopping after Pesach at a store that
> did. What, it's less ha'aramah to rely on his sale than
> on my own?

I had this same question a few years back. RMB is framing the question as comparing "his sale" and "my sale", and that's why it doesn't make sense.

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". Now it is an entirely different picture, because the former is an issur d'Oraisa of owning chametz on Pesach, and the latter is an issur d'Rabanan of using/eating chametz she'avar alav haPesach.

So what we have now is a fairly typical application of the concept of being more machmir on d'Oraisos than on d'Rabanans, and while he won't sell his own chametz gamur, he has no compunctions against buying/eating the chametz gamur which someone else did sell.

I suppose it is okay to refer to "not selling chametz gamur" as a "minhag", but referring to "not selling personally but shopping at such stores" as a minhag is much trickier, because the latter cannot be expanded to be on a community-wide basis. (If everyone avoids selling chametz gamur, there would be no stores to buy sold-chametz from.)

Anyone who wants to adopt this practice of not selling chametz gamur would be well advised to avoid owning any sort of food distribution business which deals with chametz. Ironically, my understanding is that that's exactly the group of people for whom Mechiras Chametz was originally designed.

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
Home Improvement Projects
Click here to find experienced pros to help with your home improvement project.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2131/c?cp=JvHgPnsgXF-sG6Uvln3pkwAAJz3zeK-F0bLcqGb51B0rOTOKAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAShAAAAAA=