Q&A: Regarding the Sale of Leavened Food
Regarding the Sale of Leavened Food
Question
You linked in a thread to something you wrote about the categorical imperative, and in the course of your remarks you mentioned your practice of buying only products that were ground after Passover, and that after some years, because of the categorical imperative, you changed your practice.
During the holiday I looked a bit into this stringency, and I was surprised to find that there are real concerns involved, especially in places where there is concern that the shop owners continued using the merchandise they had sold, such that their sale was retroactively voided. If so, then apparently the sale of leavened food has nothing to do with the categorical imperative. (After all, if there is an inherent problem with the sale itself, there is no room for that discussion.)
I am attaching a link to a detailed responsum on the matter by Rabbi Asher Weiss https://www.torahbase.org/%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%AA-%D7%A6%D7%95-%D7%94%D7%92%D7%93%D7%95%D7%9C-%D7%9E%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%97%D7%9E%D7%A5/
Answer
If it is a grocery store that is not suspected of doing that, then there is no such problem (I was living in Bnei Brak then). Beyond that, this is a doubt regarding a rabbinic prohibition. And beyond that, even if the shop owner used the leavened food, if there is a sale contract then the leavened food is sold and he is simply a thief.