To observe the biblical prohibition against having ḥamets—foods and beverages made from leavened or fermented grain—in one’s possession during Passover, Orthodox Jews customarily sell such products to a Gentile before the holiday begins. Rabbi Mordechai Willig, a highly regarded scholar, first sold ḥamets on behalf of his congregation in the Bronx to a real-estate agent named John J. Brown in 1977, and since then many of his students followed suit with their own congregations. Brown, a Bronx native and Korean War veteran, died on February 6 at the age of eighty-eight. Ben Sales writes:
Every year from 1977 to 2019, [Brown] bought ḥamets from the congregants of dozens of synagogues in and around New York City, completing the sales via the synagogues’ rabbis.
“It meant an awful lot to him,” said Paul Jacobs, Brown’s son-in-law. . . . “There was an extremely high level of mutual respect. It was a business transaction and John treated it as a business transaction, so that was part of it. John had this commitment to real estate and contracts and all that.” But Jacobs said that to Brown, it was more than just another business deal. Brown, Jacobs said, had a lot of intellectual curiosity and would pepper his speech with Latin phrases as well as Yiddishisms he picked up in New York.
Brown would then signify that he completed the transaction under Jewish law in a few other ways—by picking up and placing a pen down on the table, signing a document, and shaking the rabbi’s hand. He repeated the same process with each rabbi. Eventually he became so experienced in the particulars of the Jewish practice that he began to teach newer rabbis how it was done.
Read more on Jewish Telegraphic Agency: https://www.jta.org/2021/03/11/united-states/john-j-brown-who-bought-hametz-from-thousands-of-jews-each-year-before-passover-dies-at-88