Kosher for Passover software

[Nadav Har'El]

We're in the middle of Passover, and apparently observant Jews who are
computer users are facing a new problem: a famous Rabbi has just declared [1]
that during the week of Passover, observant Jews must only use software which
has been certified Kosher-for-Passover.

How can software possibly contain chometz? And who eats software anyway? :-)
As it turns out, it's not just that you're not allowed to eat chometz on
Passover - you're not allowed even to "benefit" from it. Observant jews
already make sure that during Passover, their dogs eat kosher-for-passover
dogfood, their toilet paper is free of chometz, and the milk they drink comes
from cows that hadn't eaten chometz. The new decision is that using software
which benefited from chometz during Passover is disallowed. And how can
software possibly benefit from chometz? Easy - Napoleon once said that
"the army marches on its stomache". Likewise, programmers eat, and without
food, there can be no software. If programmers ate chometz on Passover,
and you use this software, you're benefiting from chometz on Passover,
which is not allowed.

Here in the Israeli software industry we're in a unique position to produce
kosher-for-passover software, because most of our programmers eat only
kosher-for-passover food during passover. If we only make sure not to
accidentally mix-in pieces of chometz software into our kosher software.
We should especially avoid free software - because much of it was written by
gentiles who eat bread during Passover!

Happy holiday!

Nadav.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, Apr  1 2010, 17 Nisan 5770
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
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http://nadav.harel.org.il           |