Israel’s leavened food law forbids, during Passover, the sale of chometz (leavened food) in a public place. Israeli courts have taken an extremely narrow view as to what constitutes a public place. One man has devised a clever strategy to protest those rulings, as ynetnews reports:
Arieh Yerushalmi of Bat Yam arrived at the non-kosher supermarket branch on Tel Aviv’s Nahalat Binyamin Street on Sunday afternoon, and startled unsuspecting shoppers when he stripped down to nothing but a sock covering his private parts.
Mr. Yerushalmi was arrested, but has not, as yet, been charged with a crime. Indeed, it’s not clear that he committed any crime. The obvious charge would be lewd conduct in public, but according to the court’s interpretation of the leavened food law, a supermarket is not considered a public place.
While Jewy News can’t endorse his tactics, we can’t help but admire his cleverness.
Mr. Yerushalmi: “This isn’t public???”
I wrote about this case yesterday and looked at whether any similar judicially inconsistent interpretations crop up in New York. Link: http://tinyurl.com/crcysp