Q. If a family’s minhag is to sell chometz , like macaroni, flour, boxed cereal and cookies, is it okay to keep loaves of bread in a chometz freezer over Pesach as well?
A. On question 2138 we wrote: Poskim mention that there is room to be stringent when including in the sale of chometz to Gentiles chometz gomur or items that are certain to be chometz such as bread and many other baked good. The reason being that there are a number of leniencies involved in the process of the chometz sale and therefore when Biblically prohibited chometz is involved, we should abstain from having it included in that sale. (Maase Rav quoting Hagr’a, Igros Sofrim 48 quoting Rab. Akiva Eiger, Orchos Rabbenu – Pesach: 19 quoting of Chazon Ish, Teshuvos Vehanhogos 1: 309, and others).
There isn’t in regard to Pesach Halacha much difference between loaves of bread and cookies. However, Horav Shlomo Miller’s Shlit’a opinion is that keeping frozen bread or any other chometz in the freezer during Pesach, even when properly marked, stored and sold, will cause one to benefit from it during Pesach, since it requires less energy to keep frozen a full freezer than an emptier one.
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit’a
Leave A Comment