Meet Hussein Jaber. He’s the manager of
the Ramada by Wyndham Hotel in Jerusalem, and every year, for eight days and
eight nights, he becomes the owner of every piece of bread in Israel. Why? Well, let’s
talk about a little place called Biblical Egypt. According to Exodus—which is the second book in
what Christians call the Old Testament and Jews call the Torah—Jews were enslaved in Egypt, and
they weren’t loving that, so God decided that the best way to convince the Pharaoh to let the
Jews go would be to do plagues. And he did some bangers—he turned water into blood, he made it
rain frogs, made everybody get boils, and then as his grand finale, God killed every firstborn son
in Egypt. Seeing as the Jews, who God was trying to help, wanted their firstborn sons to stay
alive for some weird reason, God gave them what today we would call an epic lifehack: if they put
lamb’s blood above their door, their houses would be passed over when the angel of death came to do
the whole firstborn son murder thing. By following this one simple trick that Pharoahs don’t want
you to know, the Jews ended up freed from slavery with their firstborn sons intact. The thing was,
they had to leave Egypt very quickly—so quickly, in fact, that according to many tellings, they did
not have time to let their bread rise, or leaven. All of which is why, each year, Jewish people
celebrate Passover, commemorating their exodus from slavery in Egypt, and commerorating the fact
that God only murdered the sons of everyone else in Egypt. And as part of Passover, to honor
the fact that the Jews didn’t have time to let their bread rise when they fled, Jews are not
allowed to have any leavened food—also called chametz—during the period of Passover, which
is either eight days or seven days depending on which flavor of Jewish you happen to be. This
rule is specifically decreed in Deuteronomy, with a speech given by Moses in which he
says “Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith… and there shall be no leaven
seen with thee in all thy borders seven days.” Basically, not only could they not eat leavened
stuff they also couldn’t have any leavened stuff. The trouble is… leavened stuff is, like, great.
And lots of Jewish people, like lots of not Jewish people, keep a lot of it in their homes. And
if you’re a Jewish business—say a restaurant, or a hotel, or, god forbid, a bakery—you might
have thousands and thousands of dollars worth of chametz to unload. For a while, some Jews
would—and some still do—destroy their chametz. But this was wasteful and burdensome and all around
not ideal, so over time, Jewish law provided a different solution: Jews didn’t have to have no
chametz in their home, they just couldn’t own any chametz that may be in their home—which seems like
a small, perhaps even useless distinction. I mean, what are you gonna do, sell all the chametz in
your house to a non-Jewish person, wait eight days, and then buy it back from them, all without
it actually leaving your house? Yep. That’s exactly what you do. Now, let’s talk about Israel.
Israel, as you might know, is a country located around here—I’m not gonna pick an exact map
to show because I don’t feel getting canceled today—but I can confidently say that Israel is
chock full of Jewish people, meaning that come Passover, it’s chock full of chametz that needs to
be unloaded—an estimated $300 million worth. Which is why, each year before Passover, the Israeli
Minister of Finance signs documents giving the chief rabbis power of attorney over all chametz
in the country—basically, power to sell it. But, there’s the problem: who to sell it to? Who would
want to buy $300 million worth of leavened bread that’s sitting in random people’s homes and
businesses? Hussein Jaber does. Each year, Hussein, a non-Jewish Israeli hotel manager, signs
documents legally purchasing all $300 million of chametz. To be clear, the chametz does not move—it
stays in the pantries and refrigerators and couch cushions it was always in—but legally, Hussein
owns it. Why does he do this? Seemingly it’s just to be helpful—and maybe because it gives him
eight days to have a really confusing LinkedIn job title. Of course, this random hotel manager can’t
actually afford to throw $300 million away buying the sourdough in random people’s fridges, but
there’s an easy fix: the government allows him to provide a down payment of about $14,000,
with the supposed intention that he will ultimately pay the rest of the money later. But,
inevitably, he can’t actually get $300 million, and so after 8 days, he sells the chametz back
to the people whose houses it never left, gets back his down payment, and waits until next year
to once again become an all-powerful bread owner. While this country-wide system is unique
to Israel, iterations of it exist wherever Jewish people do. For 40 years, the same real
estate broker, John J Brown, bought all the chametz in New York City from a collection of
rabbis whose congregants individually signed documents giving them power of attorney over
their chametz. Some other, perhaps less strict, Jews may opt to have a friend venmo them one penny
with the subject line “buying all the chametz in your house,” and then after Passover, get sent
back the penny, thus selling the chametz back. Of course, there’s also another method for what to
do with your bread, whether you’re Jewish or not: spend it on a subscription to Brilliant. Recently,
I’ve been using Brilliant to learn about something I knew almost nothing about before: throwing
rockets into space, using a course designed by my actual real-life friend, Brian from Real
Engineering. I started by learning about orbits and rockets, then moved to centripetal motion,
and finally to material limits, and it was awesome—engaging and interactive, and in the
end, I got to really understand something new. And that’s what Brilliant is best at—whether you
want a refresher on everyday math, or you want to tackle machine learning, Brilliant has awesome,
bite-size courses for you. I’ll often find myself using stuff I learned in their statistics
fundamentals course to try to analyze performance on my YouTube videos, helping me better figure
out how to pick topics and optimize their titles and thumbnails. Whatever you want to learn more
about in STEM, Brilliant is the way to do it—to get started, click the button on-screen or go to
Brilliant.org/HAI. The first 200 of you to use that link will get 20% off a premium subscription,
and you’ll be helping support our channel.
