Mechiras Chometz: Overselling a Mitzvah

In the larger scheme of things, selling chometz really isn't all that important. I haven't done it myself for many years - although making sure you actually get rid of all your chometz does involve some planning.

In fact, mechiras chometz is a minhag that isn't referenced anywhere in Chazal and only became popular in the past 500 years or so. The Torah itself only tells us to destroy remaining chometz before Pesach. According to halacha, this can be accomplished through nullification: מדאורייתא ביטול בעלמא סגי. According to rabbinic law, we also do bedika (שמא ימצא גלוסקא יפה).

But if you are going to sell your chometz, you’d better get it right. It’s useful to note how much care responsible rabbonim will put into the sale process. Typically, many city rabbonim prefer to avoid the risk altogether and instead delegate the actual sale to a specialist. Of the dozens of rabbonim in Toronto, I believe only five are entrusted with carrying out the final mechira process, and they’ll guide and supervise the מינוי שליחות performed by individual shul rabbis with their members.

Establishing the legal agency (שליחות) necessary to properly transfer chometz ownership requires a formal transaction (קנין) that's far more complex than just giving your permission. Part of the complexity revolves around identifying what chometz is being sold and where it’ll be kept. After all, if the non-Jew can’t access his property, exactly how is it his property?

It’s well known that some people prefer not to sell actual chometz so as not to circumvent the Torah mitzva to eliminate their chometz. Others just participate in the sale to cover anything they may have accidentally overlooked - like crumbs in the peanut butter jar. I guess there’s no harm in any of that, although there’s no need to get rid of chometz less than the volume of an olive in a single container.

But what I’ve never understood is how some sale contracts include the chometz value of the market-traded securities you might own. Whether we’re halachically responsible for any chometz owned by Tesla or Nvidia - or any other companies in our trading portfolios - is by no means obvious. But what’s completely unclear is how a time-limited rabbinic proxy sale to a non-Jew could possibly solve that problem.

Have you noticed all the layers of legal acknowledgements and notarized authorization and identification requirements you need to satisfy before they’ll let you purchase your first security? Do you really think you can undo all that with a casual line in a communal שטר מכירה mentioning nothing more than your name and address?

And how would it even work? Again, the non-Jew needs access to his property. If he shows up at your house on the second day of Chol Hamoed looking for a snack from the Google staff cafeteria, what will you tell him? If your portfolio value loses 20 percent over Yom Tov (a real possibility for this Pesach), could you decide not to buy back your chometz and force the non-Jew to take the loss?

If a contract isn’t enforceable, is it even a contract? Could the clause selling securities invalidate the rest of the sale?

The people who create these contracts tend to be very smart, so I wouldn’t sell them short (so the speak). But if any of you have any explanations, I’d love to hear them.