Friday night marks the start of Pesach and Israel will see one of the largest trade deals the country has ever known.
For the past 15 years, Jaaber Hussein, a Muslim Arab-Israeli, has been purchasing all of the state’s chometz as part of an agreement with Israel’s chief rabbis.
This deal enables the state to honor religious decrees without wastefully destroying massive quantities of food. The deal is estimated at $150 billion. The chametz is acquired from state companies, the prison service and the national stock of emergency supplies.
Hussein, a department head at the Ramada Renaissance Hotel in Yerushalayim, will entrust the State of Israel with a NIS 100,000 (approximately $26,955) check, making him the “king of chometz.”
Hussein explained that his annual meeting with Rav Ovadia Yosef to execute the deal “a great honor.”
“I get telephone calls from people in the territories and in east Jerusalem, asking me to help them, to please give them some of my bread to eat,” he told Israel Radio. “I have to explain that I ‘own’ it but it’s not here with me in my house.”
{Yair Alpert-Matzav.com Israel}
I don’t believe all the Chometz in Israel is worth anywhere near $150 billion. That translates to over $30,000 worth of chometz for every Israeli.
That’s a lot of bread (pun intended)!
He should be able to tell his freinds, that he gets no bargain. His check is only a downpayment, with a full reckoning scheduled at a further date. He has to pay full (retail) price for whatever he takes. I think he needs to understand that too.
Dear comment 2 (ask a rav). I before E except after C…
hey einstein, it says that it’s for all the national companies, such as the jails, etc. (hopefully the army too), so if that’s the case, the numbers DO make sense
Why do they have to go all they way up to the ranks of a hotel director? They can just use one of the army’s converts (one who doesn’t keep mitzvos) – fully defined in Halacha is a non-Jew.
They make is so high that he byes it and he nose that they will bye it back bec nobody wants 150 billyon$$ wworth of food
people may sell, chometzdike factories in this deal so that could account for dome of the money