[Avodah] orthodox non-compliance with Covid rules

[Akiva Miller]

.
R' Joel Rich wrote:

> IMHO the issue alluded to (in a post concerning orthodox non-
> compliance with Covid rules) may be more of one of not seeing
> the forest for the trees. When one is taught to look at the
> letter of the law exclusively one can forget about the spirit
> of the law. The goal becomes the technical compliance (e.g.
> claiming kids are part of a permitted demonstration rather than
> learning in school) vs. technical and meta compliance ...

If the topic of discussion is Spirit vs Letter of the law, I will cite an
article I just read, according to which "the Chief Rabbinate of Israel will
include chametz of Jews in the Diaspora who are not aware of the chametz
sale contract..."

cite:
https://collive.com/rabbis-decide-to-unilateraly-sell-chometz-of-europes-jews/

I do understand that some poskim allow Mechiras Chometz for someone even
without their knowledge, but I've always presumed that would be used for
people who are R"L unconscious and unable to sell it themselves.

But this is an entirely different case. I appreciate the rabbis' desire to
minimize the violations of these tinolos shenishbu. But it seems to me that
this mechira would have the effect of totally circumventing the entire
halacha of Chametz She'avar Alav Hapesach. Details would need to be studied
(like the status of chametz that a store acquires during Pesach) but on the
simple face of it, this mechira would allow any of us to shop anywhere in
chu"l after Pesach (at least b'dieved).

The Letter of the law says this is a great idea. But the Spirit of the law
says not.

When a Jew does melacha on Shabbos, and I want to get hanaah from it,
halacha makes distinctions whether the melacha was done b'shogeg or
b'meizid. Similar distinctions could have been applied to Chametz She'avar
Alav Hapesach, but instead, Chazal chose to legislate a boycott, in the
hopes that these Jews would mend their ways.

CONCLUSION AND DISCLAIMER: I am NOT suggesting that these rabanim are
wrong. It is their job to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of such an idea.
All I'm saying is that it seems to be a great example of how an
implementation of the Letter might go very much against the Spirit. (And if
it turns out that this article didn't get the story right, it's still an
example of how Letter and Spirit *might* conflict.)

Akiva Miller
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