Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Rabbi Hawks ‘Chametz’ Bread to Warren Buffet

A Nebraska rabbi symbolically sold some leavened bread products to legendary investor Warren Buffet.

Rabbi Jonathan Gross of Omaha had reached out to Buffet proposing that the billionarie buy his community’s chametz, the stash of leavened bread products that Jews traditionally sell to a non-Jew prior to Passover only to buy it back after the festival.

While Buffet was receptive, he was unavailable to meet with the rabbi immediately before the holiday.

So the sale of the rabbi’s community’s chametz – generally conducted on the day before Passover – to Buffett could not proceed. But a smaller, symbolic sale of some leavened products went forward anyway last month, partly to generate publicity for a local food bank, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

On Feb. 23, Buffet, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and currently the world’s third-richest man, greeted Gross and two other rabbis at his offices in Omaha.

In exchange for four 50-cent coins, Buffet received a bottle of scotch, a challah and a bag of (non-kosher) cheetos, reportedly the investor’s favorite snack. The sale also included a box of chametz in the rabbi’s home and three large containers of chametz in his synagogue that were being donated to the Food Bank of the Heartland .

Buffet joked that next year he would bargain the price down.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.