Q&A: Eating After Midnight for the Pampered and Delicate
Eating After Midnight for the Pampered and Delicate
Question
Volunteering to run a seder at a remote IDF base with the whole family.
The boys and girls (ages 20 and under) somehow turned out extremely pampered and delicate, and will only eat what Mom has eaten. Even though there is no justification for it, the food on that base is much more varied than at home and maybe even tastier—just plain excessive fussiness.
The problem is that the army does not allow bringing food onto the base for all of Passover, and rightly so for reasons of kashrut.
For them to eat only grape juice, lettuce, and matzot is not in keeping with the honor of the holiday.
Let us assume I could somehow sneak food from home onto the base and hide it in the rooms they will let us sleep in, or somehow stash the homemade food outside the base fence, and after the seder we would wait until midnight and then they would eat from the holy home-cooked food—is that okay in extenuating circumstances?
Answer
I think it is not advisable. There is a whole battle over leavened food in the IDF on Passover, and if they see specifically you bringing in food from home, your gain will end up being our loss.
Discussion on Answer
I do not see any point in opening up here the whole tractate of leavened food in the IDF, with all the fine points and details. Hide it in an unusual manner, with two coverings, outside the Sabbath boundary.
And to hide it outside the base, go out to eat, and come back?
From the standpoint of eating after the afikoman,
but after midnight?