The Cost of Selling Chametz

by: Paula R. Stern
April, 2008

As a religious Jew, the fact that store owners can now sell chametz during the Passover holiday has little meaning to me. I won’t buy it and, knowing that a particular store is now selling chametz during the holiday simply means that store will not be getting my business after the holiday ends – for at least several weeks until, without question, any chametz they had would be sold. Or, perhaps for even longer as I accustom myself to these other stores who chose to honor what Israel as a state has honored for 60 years.

When I go out of my way to ensure that the chametz I buy was not owned by a Jew during the holiday, these stores will factor highest and be avoided most seriously. It has nothing to do with a boycott and everything to do with halacha, religious law. It has to do with honoring tradition and, considering it is only for 7 days, seems to be easy enough.

Until this year, when some Israelis, supported by the courts, decided they couldn’t manage those mere 7 days without buying chametz. No one was questioning what they do in their own homes and certainly, this year would have been no different. As untold numbers of Israelis have done for decades, they could have bought and put in their freezer enough supplies to get them through the long, bitter 7 day drought. But this isn’t about eating chametz, this is about making a statement, about putting “in the face” of thousands of others Israelis, the power to force change.

What is being ignored, perhaps, is that there is a far greater cost beyond the price of a package of bread or some crumb-coated shnitzels. What it means, in very real terms, is a further tearing of the fabric of Israeli society. For years, I heard from left-wing friends that they had nothing in common with religious Jews and most definitely settlers and right-wing Jews. They argued that a parent who continued to live in Gush Katif, with hundreds of rockets falling there, was irresponsible and, should their child be injured, practically negligent. Suddenly, a few years later, those same friends are quiet about the parents of Sderot and Ashkelon. Suddenly, they aren’t quite so sure that our mad dash to withdrawal produced anything more than the very rocket barrages we on the right knew would be our fate.

Back then, I rejected my friends’ claims that there were two Israels. That there was a national divide that ran down the center of the country. That the Tel Aviv culture was so drastically different than Jerusalem; that the religious and secular had virtually no cultural ties. I spoke of my deep belief that we are all Jews, all Israelis. That we are united by a religion, a language, a culture, a history, a tradition, an army and sons we send to it. Keep the religious laws or not, we come from the same place, I argued back almost in desperation.  I did not want to believe what they were saying and so I was blind, until the summer of 2005.

Something fundamental changed after the expulsion of the Jews of Gush Katif. I finally understood that my friends were right. That for the first time in my life, I could claim to have almost nothing in common with those “left-wing, anti-Zionists” whose children do not serve the army because they claim they are pacifists, but will fight over a parking spot or a pack of cigarettes.

For the first time, I didn’t want to see that I had any connection with their lack of religious belief, their disdain of our historical ties, their bowing and catering to the Palestinians in their endless attempt to serve the misguided and impotent god of collaboration and peace.

The anger has dulled over the last two and a half years, replaced by a constant sense of disappointment in how the government has handled the Gaza refugees and how the left-wing that was so happy to see it come about has all but ignored their fate. With each passing month that they remain homeless and unemployed, a startling reminder that we often treat the Arabs in Gaza better than we have these people (at least they get regular shipments of 100 trucks of humanitarian aid, even while we are under rocket fire), the rift widens.

I have come to agree with my friends on the other side of the divide. In great sadness, I surrender to their view. I am as foreign to you, as you are to me, I want to tell them. Your values are completely at odds with mine, your priorities, your interests.  I believe your reasons for avoiding army service are far less honorable than the reason people on my side of the rift use. On my side, they choose to spend their time learning Torah, and often, after a few years, still enter the army. Many are in elite units, become commanders, and serve for many years in the reserves while your youth grow their hair long, pierce their bodies, and fly off to foreign continents.

Generalizations are worthless, but isn’t that what you have done for years? We are extremist, fanatical, religious, right-wing settlers, in your eyes, our clothes all black and our hearts orange. We all tote guns and speak of the coming of the Messiah as our eyes roll back into our heads in religious ecstasy. No, you don’t know or understand us at all, it seems.

And now, I admit. I do not understand you. You want stores to have the right to sell chametz on Passover. For seven simple days, you cannot stand the idea of going without bread.  You’ll follow your carbohydrates-free diet all year long, but on Passover, woe unto those who dare to deny you the right to buy pita.

For the right to buy some rolls and noodles, you will turn your back on my beliefs. No, I don’t expect you to believe, but would it be so costly for you to honor my right to my beliefs?

On Holocaust Day, a siren sounds through out the land and places of entertainment are closed. I stand beside you and mourn and like you, I condemn the act of some Haredim who desecrate these important moments. I understand their rational. How can you mourn for a moment of a year that which can never be mourned properly? But if we are to leave the choice up to the individual when it comes to buying chametz on Passover, why not leave it to the individual whether he wants to honor our 6 million+ martyrs?

On Yom HaZicharon, we remember the fallen soldiers and terrorist victims with a siren and places of entertainment are closed. I stand, one with you, and mourn and condemn the act of some Haredim who desecrate these important moments. I understand, but do not respect their rationale. They too live in this land, protected by our soldiers. But, according to this new freedom you wish to give all to trample our base traditions and foundations, should we not give them the option to celebrate and be entertained according to their whims?

Ultimately, the sale of chametz products in Israel means another desecration of what sets us apart from the rest of the world; what makes us a unique Jewish State. It will not impact on the ability to keep kosher for any religious Jew. All it will do is show us, once again, how far apart Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are – and even more importantly, it will convince those of us with orange hearts that it is useless to believe that we can ever really be one nation.

There was a civil war after the evacuation of Gush Katif. It did not play out in violence as the media and the left so gleefully predicted. It took place in the hearts and souls of those on the right. We surrender. Eat your chametz on Passover and shop on our Sabbath. Desecrate the laws of the Torah if you will and cry about your right to eat pita for those precious 7 days of the year. But what you have lost, the cost of buying that chametz will be in the millions of dollars those stores will lose from religious customers. It is our right to buy OUR pita where we will.

Go ahead, refuse to buy wine from the Golan Heights and honey from the Shomron. Don’t buy products produced in Ariel or those made in Maale Adumim. And we, in turn, will refuse to buy from stores open on Shabbat and those who sell chametz on Passover –and we will all be poorer for the experience.

But even more important than the monetary issues is the fact that you will lose our hearts, our determination to be one with the nation you want to maintain. We will not join a country that would desecrate what we value most – all for a loaf of bread, one time per year. We cannot be part of the Israel you are trying to build because it runs against everything that we believe in – a land that we hold not by the might of the army, but by the right of all that we are, all that we have survived as a people.

What is the cost of selling chametz on Passover? Far greater than Israel can afford to pay.