At this time of year, observant Jews are arranging, usually via their rabbis, to sell their hametz (leavened and fermented grains) to non-Jews, in order avoid violating the biblical prohibition on owning such products during Passover. Nathan Oman, a Mormon legal scholar, comments on his experience of being the designated purchaser:
In a lovely spring garden in suburban Philadelphia, I handed cash and a handkerchief to my friend’s rabbi. It was the first time that I, an observant Latter-day Saint (Mormon), had ever purchased whiskey. (Latter-day Saints are prohibited from consuming alcohol, although they are permitted to own it.) For the next two weeks, however, I would own a large store of booze, along with a number of half-used boxes of breakfast cereal, and a lease on a very nice apartment in Jerusalem. . . . At the conclusion of the holiday, I could—if I so chose—sell the whiskey back to its original owners.
Of course, the whiskey and cereal boxes remained in the homes of the sellers, and Oman didn’t sample any of the products he purchased. But, in his mind, the fact that the sale has many hallmarks of a legal fiction makes it all the more significant:
In my mind, it is the double-mindedness of the legal fiction that is brilliant. Sitting in the suburban garden in Philadelphia, it was impossible not to feel the authority of Jewish law. Indeed, several members of the synagogue were there to witness the transaction with their children for precisely that reason. The forms and signatures literally had no other purpose than to comply with the demands laid down in Exodus. The dynamics of equity and legislation that tend to erase the very traditions from which they spring were wholly absent from the transaction. If anything, the very particularity of the legal formalities mitigated against the Christian danger of dissolving religion into spirituality.
Read more on Lehrhaus: https://thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/buying-jewish-whiskey/