For the second year in a row, lawyer Nathan Oman drove roughly six hours each way to buy a whole lot of liquor that he, as a practicing Latter-day Saint, will never drink.
And half-eaten loaves of sandwich bread. And opened boxes of cereal. And what he estimates are probably hundreds of pounds of other leaven-containing foods — they are all his for the next roughly two weeks.
He does this in preparation for Passover, a holiday he does not celebrate. And that’s precisely the point.
According to Jewish law, no amount of yeast, sourdough or baking powder — leaven — is allowed in one’s home during the week of Passover, which began Monday evening, as per the biblical Book of Exodus. Across the globe, the days leading up to the holiday are marked by furious cleaning and bonfires of leavened products for the observant.
But what if you have a yeasty product — say, a really nice liquor collection — you’d prefer not to set aflame?
Jewish law has a plan for that. Rather than burn it, one can sell it to a friendly “gentile” willing to take legal ownership over it for the duration of the holiday.
Oman’s Orthodox Jewish friend didn’t have to ask him twice.
“I was fascinated,” he wrote in a story published by Wayfare magazine, “by the idea of contracting around divine law.”
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