Knesset To Pass Law Prohibiting Chametz In Hospitals

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JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The Knesset is due to pass at the second and third readings a law prohibiting bringing Chametz into hospitals.

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The law was presented by MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ) and a number of other MKs after the High Court declared that hospital directors cannot prevent Chametz from being brought into hospitals without legal backing.

The current law has been toned down from the original bill which would have allowed security guards to check the contents of people’s bags. The law now states that “Hospital directors can establish regulations regarding a prohibition or restriction on bringing Chametz into the hospitals, in order to facilitate maintenance of kashrus and Pesach for those who are hospitalized in their hospitals.

“These regulations will be established after the hospital director has considered other options and while maintaining the rights of the patients and their needs including their medical needs.”

The bill also requires the hospital director to publish the regulations on the hospital’s website or on the Health Ministry’s site.

Gafni originally described the law as a “superfluous law, since for 70 years hospitals operated on Pesach calmly and serenely until the court jumped in. The court said that the hospital director has no authority on the matter. Why did  the court get involved? Why did it require legislations? This kind of insolent interference only happens on religious issues.”

The Bennett government fell last year after Idit Silman left the government in protest over the government’s demand from hospitals to allow Chametz into their environs.

Silman said that “People in the Holocaust fasted on Passover to avoid eating chametz. And a minister in the State of Israel, in a coalition such as ours, unfortunately calls for bringing in chametz. Beyond the fact that it hurts me personally, and disrespects members of the coalition, it disrespects a significant percentage, nearly seventy percent of the Israeli public, with the approval of this government of unity and consideration. So I really owe him some sort of thanks, because he made me realize, because sometime we get lost in all of this hard work, that the people of Israel have certain banners, banners, that for entire generations people gave their lives for these banners, and we, certainly, in the current government will not be part of tearing them down. We have to respect the public.”

 


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Junior
Junior
11 months ago

Very nice
But what about the greater issue of גיירות? Court reforms?

It seems The chareidi CK are very short sighted! This and the Reforming the courts are a much bigger issue which is prevalent to all of Klal Yisroel. Not just a few in the hospital and in that they are quiet

So they made a law about chometz, what if the courts knock it down????

an0n
an0n
11 months ago

So does the law prohibit bringing chametz in, as it says in paragraph 1, or just allow hospital directors to make such a regulation, as the article implies in paragraph 3?

Zelig
Zelig
11 months ago

Shalom.

This is very peculiar.

The hospital is the number one place in the whole country where chametz is of no concern, as such health needs render the issue of chametz moot.

Furthermore, if it is not one’s own chametz it poses no issue as long as one doesn’t derive benefit from it.

To preface: on Shabbos one may light a general candle for an internally ill patient, and even for a blind patient, because the knowledge that the candle is lit calms them. -Shulchan Aruch

So certainly if a visitor being in the room while not panicking over the possibility of a stray chametz crumb reaching their mouth calms the patient, then the visitor may remain without worry.

Similarly, if a “chiloni” patient will be calmed by having their favorite danish, it is given to them. And if their visitors in a fit over chametz prohibitions is disturbing them, but they would be calmed by the visitors if this were not the case, then they are allowed chametz, just as one may light the candle.

But one can’t force people in a whole hospital to submit to the will of a patient to calm them, just as one cannot compel someone to visit a patient against their will because the patient says it will calm them.

And certainly considering the extremely broad reach of what is actually considered a “choleh sheyaish bo sakana” (almost everything), no one who is not in sakana needs a hospital anyways on Pesach.

Last but not least, all medical and support staff needn’t be concerned with “possible” accidental chametz consumption in any regard.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that they are preventing goyim from bringing chametz.

I would argue that chilonim are wise to all this, even without knowing the Halachic ins and outs, and see this as an overreach to oppress them.

It would seem that there is not only no basis for such a hospital policy, but that it is actually against Halacha considering it disturbs patients, and with regard to Charedi patients, if their leaders would boldly reinforce that they are doing a Mitzvah by allowing it for others and anyway it is not of a concern for the ill anyway, those so greatly pious as to raise the chametz concern caused by a previous patient in their room, will be calmed by this. And if not, it is not piety but imposition on others, and it need only be heeded with the same measure as any I’ll patient who seeks to impose on others as a means to achieve calm.

All said.. it is very peculiar indeed that they would reason justification for this of all things.