Why Did this Mormon Drive 10 Hours to Buy Whiskey? To Help Out a Jewish Friend for Passover

Forward ^ | April 18, 2024 | Benyamin Cohen

[nickcarraway]

At any given point in time, Nate Oman has two bottles of wine in his kitchen, one red, one white. No more, no less. He only uses them for cooking, since he is a devout and lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which prohibits imbibing alcohol.

So it may come as a surprise that the day before last Passover, Oman, a 49-year-old law professor at William & Mary, drove from his home in Williamsburg, Virginia, to Philadelphia to purchase dozens of bottles of whiskey.

And vodka. And gin. And tequila.

Also Fruit Roll-Ups, Entenmann’s donuts and a bunch of half-used boxes of breakfast cereal. There may have been some flatbread from Costco. After a while, Oman said, it was hard to keep track of his haul.

He made the 10-hour round trip in his “somewhat battered” black Toyota RAV4 to participate in the annual ritual of Jews selling their chametz, or leavened products, to a non-Jew for the eight-day holiday of Passover, when they are forbidden not only from consuming but also even owning such things. And he is hitting the road again on Sunday, to do it all again for this Passover, which begins on Monday at sundown.

While most observant Jews do these symbolic deals — after all, the transaction is reversed after just over a week — through their rabbis, or online, Oman, a self-described “contract geek” who specializes in law and religion, thought it’d be neat to make the whole thing a little more personal.

He’d learned about the ritual from his friend and colleague Chaim Saiman, the chair in Jewish law at Villanova University and a member of The Merion Shtiebel, a congregation in a Philadelphia suburb. Saiman set Oman up to purchase all the leavened products from the shul’s 50 families. One congregant, a wealthy hedge fund manager, included in the sale his second home in Israel, which was filled with chametz while he was spending Passover at home in Pennsylvania.

“As I understand it,” Oman recalled, “I had a perfectly valid lease on a really nice apartment in Jerusalem.”

Oman, who teaches classes on business contracts, and the occasional seminar on sovereign debt, understood it perfectly. And he enjoyed every bit of the experience.

Arriving the night before the planned transaction, he stayed at a Hilton hotel so as not to interrupt the Saiman family’s pre-Passover scrubbing and vacuuming. “You don’t want your weird non-Jewish friend to show up in the middle and complicate that,” Oman noted.

The next morning, Oman and a few others gathered in the backyard of Rabbi Itamar Rosensweig, the head of the shul and a judge on the Beth Din of America. Rosensweig called Oman “an ideal chametz buyer” because “he appreciated this interface between ancient law and modern commerce.”

Indeed, he delighted in the details, like when he realized upon reading the contracts that he had the right to walk into congregants’ homes during the holiday and pillage their pantries. “If he wants to access any of the homes,” Rosensweig said in an interview, “I’m duty-bound to get him the key, to get him the alarm code to any of those properties.”

For the purchase, Oman gave the rabbi $200 — in coins, to eliminate any doubt of the validity of paper money in Jewish law — plus a handkerchief, to close a halachic loophole that could potentially negate deals involving money with non-Jews. “That obviously would not be required under Pennsylvania property law,” Oman said.

The backyard handshake, the ancient holiday, the half-eaten Cheerios: It was all special for Oman.

“As a Latter-day Saint you grew up sort of thinking, ‘Boy, we’re really strict,’” Oman recalled. “And then I go to my Orthodox Jewish friends and I always feel like I’m a poser.”

For him, the journey was the physical manifestation of a thought experiment.

And what about the whiskey? Luckily, Latter-day Saints are allowed to own it, just not drink it. Which, of course, he didn’t.

“I’m hugely sympathetic to people who are trying to come up with ways of living pious and faithful lives in the modern world,” Oman told me. “Being able to sort of help, in some little way, people live that kind of life in the modern world was appealing to me.”

The only downside, he said, was the phone call with the rabbi an hour after Passover ended, in which he sold the congregation’s chametz back. “And then,” Oman joked, “I lost my apartment in Jerusalem.”

[nickcarraway]

When I was a freshman in college, there was an (observant) Jewish guy I'd sometimes see in a common are after classes in the afternoon. He was an older guy, I don't remember what degree he was there for. We only saw each other there, but we would occasionally talk.

He would talk about all these inventions he was developing. One day there was a commercial for inventors on a communal TV, and I saw him look really intently. I realized it was a Friday, probably around 4:00 PM, so I thought, he's trying to memorize the telephone number, since he couldn't write it down on sabbath. I offered to write it down for him, but he declined. I don't now the exact rules, but it seems like more work to memorize it.

[Jamestown1630]

This is interesting. I knew people had to get rid of all leavened products in the house, but I thought they just threw them out...

[Tell It Right]

Luckily, Latter-day Saints are allowed to own it, just not drink it.

Like Bill Clinton saying he once put a joint up to his mouth, but did not inhale. LOL

[Kenny500c]

Man o Mana Shavitz

[Jamestown1630]

When I was growing up, my family dealt with a Jewish grocer. Every Christmas he sent us a big bottle of Manischewitz.

My Dad appreciated that :-)

[ConservativeMind]

Interesting story.

[waterhill]

My southern Baptist ass went to a bar mitzvah once. I was like wow. I could not believe it. I considered converting. My teenage brain.

Never seen alcohol in a Baptist marraige ceremony/party. Kegs and bottles. It just doesn’t happen.

[packagingguy]

I knew someone who was a waitress in some swanky restaurant.

She and the other servers loved it if there was a Catholic or Jewish wedding. The tips flowed like wine (pun intended).

Then if a Baptist wedding was announced the servers were quite disappointed.

[Jamestown1630]

When I was young I worked the perfume counter in a fancy department store for the holiday season. On Christmas Eve, a couple of drunk guys came in to buy gifts for their wives (judging by all they bought, probably for some girlfriends, as well.)

I not only got a huge commission, but a tip, too :-)

[waterhill]

That’s why you always take 2 southern Baptists fishing with you.

[exDemMom]

I don’t understand and the story never explained why Oman drove all the way to Philadelphia to buy those items. I’m pretty sure they are available in Williamsburg.

[Jamestown1630]

He was buying them for a Jewish friend who had to get them out of the house.

Then he sold them back, after Passover.

[Jamestown1630]

s/b ‘FROM’ a Jewish friend.

[Dr. Sivana]

This is interesting. I knew people had to get rid of all leavened products in the house, but I thought they just threw them out...

Some synagogues set up straw purchases, and then sell them back.

Our Jewish neighbors just GAVE us the food (they were NOT wealthy, and only semi-observant), and didn't ask for it back.

[Jamestown1630]

Most of the Jewish homemakers I’ve known have been very organized; and I guess I just assumed that they managed so there would be little waste.

But this is a clever way to handle it, especially if you have expensive stuff like spirits.

[threefinger]

"...I offered to write it down for him, but he declined. I don't now the exact rules, but it seems like more work to memorize it."

You were offering to be a "Shabbos Goy," a gentile who does tasks that are forbidden for a Jew on the Sabbath. Which is forbidden if the Jew does anything to enlist your aid or to encourage you. If you had just written it down and left it for him without asking, making sure he seen you do it, he might have taken advantage of your thoughtfulness.

Judaism can be incredibly complex like that.

It's only been in the 21st Century that anyone invented the Kosher lamp shade. A Jew can't turn an electric light on or off on the Sabbath, so once upon a time, they tended to turn on a minimum of lights to get by before Shabbos and leave them on until Havdalah (end of Sabbath) and just put up with the glare when it was time to turn in. So some inventive guy invented a light-tight lampshade, sort of like vertical Venetian blinds, that could be opened and closed by turning.

But the inventing was the easy part. The hard part would have been getting it proclaimed Kosher. But the adjudicating Rabbis apparently agreed that the turning of the lampshade did not violate any of the rules against work or other forbidden activities on the Sabbath. I don't know how many attempts might have been made before that but it was 2004 before anybody got a kosher lampshade "approved."

As for memorizing being more work, one of the reasons the Jews are such accomplished people is that theirs is a religion that values and encourages development of the human intellect. Not to put too fine a point on it but it was the Jews who invented the abstract god. The gods of all the religions before that needed to have a physical representation (i.e., idol). And great deal of their history has survived only because people were carrying it around in their heads, sometimes for generations, before someone received the story who had the capacity to write it down. Carrying facts and figures around in their heads is what they do.

[nickcarraway]

Good point, I should have. But I was only 18, I didn't think of it.

A friend of mine worked at a telecom company in the 90's, and every Friday he bought the company for a penny, and then sold it back on Saturday afternoon. I guess technically they encouraged him, but I'm not sure of the details.

[threefinger]

"... I knew people had to get rid of all leavened products in the house, but I thought they just threw them out...."

For the Seder (Passover meal), it's common for the entire house to get the spic-n-span treatment to make sure there isn't even a crumb of leavened bread left anywhere. Even after the white tornado routine, some of the more stringent sects will cover the kitchen cabinets and counters with aluminum foil to make sure none of their Seder dishes come into contact with a speck of yeast that might have been missed.

But the truth is that the air everywhere is full of wild yeast spores. Sourdough bakers know this and some make their own wild sourdough starter just by leaving a container of water and flour (maybe with a bit of sugar or potato water) open, exposed and undisturbed for a few days. But the people who wrote these rules obviously weren't aware of that when they wrote them.

If this sort of thing interests you I would suggest you watch the 4-par Netflix series, "Unorthodox." It shows a lot of stuff that the typical Gentile probably would have realized, like a bride-to-be having her hair shorn before her wedding. And a wife reporting to the synagogue to have her ritual cleansing bath after her menstrual period ends, only after which may she resume intimate relations with her husband (because Jews have a lot of rules involving blood).

[Jamestown1630]

The Passover as practiced today, is a tradition. Tradition is a remembrance and honoring of the past and its lessons and blessings.

I think tradition is very important, however different people within a culture may practice theirs.

(I’ve thought that what God told the people about the unleavened bread could also make very practical sense: leavened bread takes too long to make, if you don’t know when you must suddenly leave; but it also isn’t going to stay good very long on an Exodus. Matzo stays good for a long time.)

This is interesting:

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/rabbi-benjamin-elton-passover-prepare-for-change/103753626

Like much of the Bible, there is probably a lot in the story that we still don’t really understand.