Tag: R. Baruch Teomim-Fränkel

The role that the Stamp Act of 1765 played as a triggering event of the American Revolution is well known; in this post we discuss a connection between stamp acts in general and the Jewish festival of freedom, Passover.

As we briefly noted five years ago, the nineteenth century saw a debate over whether a sale of חמץ must be valid under prevailing secular law in order to satisfy the halachah. Various legal problems with the typical sales were raised, with the two most notable being the language of the bills of sale, which was commonly Hebrew or Yiddish, whereas the law only recognized documents written in some other language (such as German), and the failure to utilize stamped paper. We find three basic positions among the aharonim:

• R. Baruch Teomim–Fränkel considered it at least possible that the legal invalidity of our sales engenders a halachic problem. Note that R. Teomim-Fränkel was quite skeptical about the modern sale of חמץ in general:
  

  ותיתי לי שמיום עמדי על דעתי אני כנזיר משתיית יין ושכר של ישראל שמקודם פסח1

• His son-in-law R. Chaim Halberstam of Sanz, on the other hand, insisted that the halachah is concerned only with its internal rules, and that the status of our sales in the eyes of the secular legal system is utterly irrelevant to us.
• The Hasam Sofer (as well as the great Galician authority Rav Avraham David Wahrman of Buczacz [“the Botchatcher”], whose stance here is consistent with his previously discussed position regarding a כתובה written on unstamped paper) seem to concede that in principle, the legal invalidity of a sale could engender a halachic problem, but they maintain that the law does not actually deem our sales of חמץ to be invalid. Note that the Hasam Sofer was a staunch defender of the modern sale of חמץ in general:
  

  וכל אפין שווין המכירה גמורה הוא וכל המפקפק ראוי לגערה

  [The above appears just several lines earlier in the same responsum in which he respectfully cites the concern of R. Baruch Teomim-Fränkel – and the previous citation from R. Baruch Teomim-Fränkel is from a responsum of his addressed to the Hasam Sofer in the course of a protracted debate they conducted …]

I recently discussed this dispute in the fifth of a series of mini-haburos I delivered on the general topic of מכירת חמץ:

1. Introduction
2. Kinyanim
3. Denying Access to the Purchaser
4. Selling חמץ After the Sale
5. Legal Invalidity
6. Enumerating Types of חמץ
7. זכין לאדם שלא בפניו
8. חמץ Purchased After Delegation Of the Agent
9. Sale Or Rental of חמץ-Containing Premises
10. Married Women

I also discussed the dispute in a survey lecture on מכירת חמץ.

1. שו”ת עטרת חכמים חו”מ סימן ט”ו ד”ה ומה שמחליט כבוד גאונו נ”י [↩]
2. שו”ת דברי חיים חלק שני או”ח סימן ל”ז. [↩]
3. שו”ת חת”ם סופר או”ח סימן קי”ג ד”ה וז”ל … והנה בהיות עדיין הגאון מו”ה ברוך פרענקל זצ”ל. [↩]
4. אזהרת ר’ אברהם מביטשאטש בריש ספר שו”ת נטע שעשועים, אות ג’ בסוגריים. [↩]