Friday, March 17, 2017

Owning and Selling Hametz on Pesah



Owning and Selling Hametz on Pesah

Day: Friday
Date: March 17, 2017
Parshat: Ki Tisa
Yalkut Yosef: O"H: 448

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The Torah commands us rid our homes of all hametz before Pesah and separately it forbids us from owning hametz on Pesah. Therefore, the Hachamim decreed that any hametz that was owned by a Jew during Pesah is forbidden for benefit for anyone even after Pesah. Even if a person declared that he doesn't want any of the hametz that is in his posession, he still may not keep it in his house over Pesah unless it was sold to a non Jew. There are some poskim who hold that it is even forbidden to smell hametz if it was owned by a Jew on Pesah.
The accepted custom is therefore to sell ones hametz before Pesah and one need not question this practice. When one sells his hametz he should not include his pots and pans and hametz dishes, only the hametz in them itself. If one did include the dishes he must dip them all in a mikveh after he buys them back just like any other dishes or utensils that are bought from a non Jew. No blessing is said on this tevilah. After Pesah is over one should not buy hametz from a Jewish owned store unless it has been ascertained that he did not own his hametz on pesach. There is a disagreement among the Hachamim regarding one who is located in a different time zone than his hametz. Some say the prohibition against owning hametz on Pesah follows his location, and some say it follows the location of the hametz. Therefore to satisfy both opinions, one who is in Eretz Yisrael and owns hametz in chutz la'aretz located in a time zone that is earlier Eretz Yisrael (for example in Los Angeles) should ideally sell his hametz in Eretz Yisrael. This is because if he may not own hametz anymore in Eretz Yisrael at 11am, for example, it is only 1am in Los Angeles at that time. By the time his hametz is sold in LA at around 11am LA time he, in Israel, will already have owned hametz for ten hours past the time he had to get rid of it. By the same token, if his hametz is in a later time zone he should sell it in that location for the same reason. However if he sold it in such a way that he still owned it when it was forbidden in his location but not in its location, or it was forbidden in its location but not his location, it is not forbidden after Pesah since this is a Rabbinic prohibition and when we have an uncertainty about a Rabbinic rule we can be more lenient.


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