Not eating chametz that was sold to a non-Jew

This has become a very popular chumra in the Charedi world in Israel. However, it is all a fake. It is practically impossible to keep this chumra as manufacturers can put whatever they want on the label and no one checks whether it is actually true.

Kashrus organizations do not see a difference between cake sold halachically to a גוי and cake made after Pesach. Therefore there are no grounds for relying on the manufactures declarations. In fact, the kashrus organizations stance is usually to permit the manufacturers to write on the package whatever they want.

In other words the Kashrus organizations that almost all Charedim rely on like the Eidah Hacharedis, R' Landau, R' Rubin and others hold that this is a chumra with no basis and therefore have no issue with the manufacturers writing whatever they want. So even if the package says baked after Pesach you have no way of knowing that this is true.

Some people rely on checking product codes which tells them when the product was made. However, this is not that useful. All it says is that the product was made after Pesach. However, every Chometz product has chometz ingredients in it (at least flour which is most probably chometz because it was washed) and the consumer has no way of knowing when the chometz ingredients were made. For example even if you only buy cookies that were made after Pesach you have no idea what flour was used. It is very possible/probable that the flour used to make the cookies was chometz and was sold for Pesach. Likewise for all of the other Chometz ingredients.

Food and water in the Midbar - Updated

In parshas בשלח Hashem provides food and water for the Jewish people in the Midbar. Here are a few questions related to that:

1. Manna was provided for the people.  What did the animals eat? The Torah states that each person got the amount of Man needed to feed the people in their household. This would seem to exclude the animals. Yet, we know that the Jewish people left Egypt with extensive livestock and they had to eat something.
2. The Torah has a list of Korbanos (that were brough in the Mishkan) that require oil and flour (or loaves of bread) and wine (Mincha, Todah, etc.) . Where did the oil, flour and wine come from?  They could not have stored enough oil and flour and wine for 40 years in the desert when they left Egypt. In any case it would spoil. Additionally, on Pesach people needed to eat matzah to fulfill the mitzva, where did they get the flour from to bake Matzah?
3. Water was provided by a rock. However, for a rock to produce enough water for 2.5 million people is simply not practical. People need at least 40 liters per person a day, that means 100 million litres a day flowing from a rock. For people to actually collect that much water per day would mean that this is what they did all day and nothing else. Can you imagine 2.5 million people queuing up to get water every day? This also leaves out the water needs of all of the livestock that they had. Did the livestock drink from the same source? How would that work?

In short, even with the miraculous Man and water from a rock, it is not possible that 2.5 million people would have had enough water or other food supplies.

Update 4/6

Tosafos in Menachos 45b discusses the issue of flour. Rashi in fact states that they had no flour in the midbar and therefore did not make the שתי הלחם. Tosafos disagrees based on a Gemara in Yoma 75b that they bought food from merchants in the midbar. Therefore Tosafos says they must have bought flour as well.

In truth, the Gemara in Yoma that they bought food from merchants seems quite bizarre. There is not even a hint in the text about this. Also, what merchants are there wandering in the desert to sell food to the Jewish people? One of the big questions about the whole midbar experience is where is the archaeological evidence. The answer I have always heard is that the Jewish people lived on Nissim (man etc.) which didn't leave any trace. However, if we accept this Gemara in Yoma suddenly everything changes. They bought food and other things from merchants. If so where is the evidence? 

Is halacha still binding if one accepts biblical criticism?

theTorah.com has a symposium on this very question with various learned answers. I have to say that IMHO all of the answers made no sense to me at all for the following reasons.

Anyone who learns Gemara knows that the basis for almost all halachos min hatorah is some kind of derasha, whether it is an extra letter or word, a different word, a גזירה שוה, etc. The underlying assumption of all of these is that the text is divine and therefore we can make derashos from them. The moment the text is no longer divine but rather, written by humans, all of these derashos fall by the wayside. This is even more so when considering teh documentary hypothesis. According to the DH the text we have is an amalgamation of a number of different sources edited to be a single document. Based on that, we certainly cannot ask why do we have this extra letter/word, etc. to make a derasha. Therefore, if all of the derashas are invalid/go away what are we left with? What is the halacha based on?

Not eating Kitniyos nowadays - a fossilized Judaism

Ashekenazim do not eat Kitniyos on Pesach even though the Gemara states specifically that they are not Chometz. 2 reasons are given for this minhag (source: OU).

1. Kitniyos are often grown in close vicinity to the five grains (wheat, oat, spelt, rye and barley). As such, it was not unusual for a small amount of one or more of the five grains to be intermingled with kitniyot. Thus, it was possible that one eating beans or rice on Pesach could inadvertently eat actual chametz
2. Kitniyos can be easily confused with chametz for several reasons. Raw kitniyot resemble the five grains in appearance. Furthermore, kitniyot are processed in a similar manner to the five grains. For example, mustard seeds are threshed and winnowed in a manner similar to grains. Finally, kitniyot can be milled into flour, made into dough, baked into bread or cooked into a porridge that may resemble chametz. Because of the similarities between kitniyot and actual chametz, the rabbis feared that people may mistakenly believe that if they can eat kitniyot on Pesach, they can also eat chametz on Pesach.

Both of these 2 reasons no longer apply today in any way shape or form. Again from the OU:

In our contemporary society, the original motivation for avoiding kitniyot is no longer relevant. Hundreds of years ago, when the custom was first instituted, there was concern about people confusing legumes and grains, and thereby unwittingly eating chametz on Pesach. But what would our ancestors say to the unbelievable variety of kosher-for-Pesach-food items resembling chametz that are ubiquitously available today? Until about fifty years ago, Pesach fare was limited to mostly chicken, eggs, potatoes, and matzah. Nowadays, one can dine on kosher l’Pesach cereal, pizza, pasta, lukshen kugel, cookies, cake and almost anything else we eat year round. Is there any benefit then to maintaining the minhag of not eating kitniyot? 

The only justification offered is tradition, a link to Jewish history. IMHO, this is one of the problems with Orthodox Judaism. The religion has become fossilized, חדש אסור מן התורה, it has a very hard time adopting to the modern world. Tradition is great, but when it directly impacts people negatively it loses it's charm.

Questions about the Parah Aduma

We just read Parshas Parah so I would like to rise a few questions about the Parah Aduma.

I. How many people can a Para Aduma be metaher?

The Mishna in Para (3:5) states that there were 9 para adumahs in history. However, the distribution is very puzzling. The Mishna states that Moshe (really Elazar) made the first Parah Aduma and that Parah Adumah lasted until Ezra which is over 900 years and then Ezra made a Parah Aduma when they returned from Bavel to rebuild teh Beis Hamikdash.However, in the period of the second Beis Hamikdash they made an additional 7 para adumahs. This raises a number of questions:

1. How is it possible that from Moshe until Ezra one Parah Aduma was enough to be metaher everyone while in a much shorter period from Ezra until the destruction they needed 8? 
2. What changed between the period of the Shoftim and the first Beis Hamikdash and the second Beis Hamikdash that required so many more Parah Adumas in the second Beis Hamikdash? 
3. The real question is how could 1 para aduma possible have enough ashes to metaher everyone for 800 years? Did people not become tahor in that time period?

Additionally, the Rambam at the end of the 3rd perek of Hilchos Parah Adumah writes that the melech hamashiach will make a tenth Parah Adumah. It sounds like the Rambam holds that 1 Parah Aduma will be enough to be metaher everyone. There are more then 12 million Jews today and each

person needs 2 "doses" which means to be metaher everyone will take at least 25 million "doses". There is no way that all of those can come from 1 parah aduma, yet that is the implication of the Rambam.

In short, I don't see how it is possible for 1 Parah Aduma to provide enough ashes for a 900 year period, nor do I see how 1 Parah Aduma could provide enough ashes for all o fteh Jewish people when Moshiach comes.

II. Preparations for the Parah Aduma were child abuse?

The Mishnayos in Parah (3rd perek) describe the many precautions the Chachamim took in order to ensure that the parah aduma did not become tameh. One of those precautions was the following: They would take pregnant woman to a special cave (built on top of a hollow) to give birth and then raise the children there to ensure that they would not become tameh. The children were not permitted to leave the cave except to deal with the parah aduma. From a modern day perspective this would definitely be considered child abuse. They essentially locked children in a small cave for the first 8 years of their life not letting them leave for any reason except the parah aduma. How exactly should we relate to this?

Girls on Purim - Stay inside and try not to be noticed

In other words girls are not really people, they are sexual obstacles that we need to avoid. 

It's a bit funny that the letter ends off with Be proud to be like Esther Hamalka, Esther was not exactly a paragon of tznius. This is the same Esther who participated in a beauty pageant and slept with the non-Jewish King. 

Parshas Zachor - More Genocide

Everything I wrote here Parshas Matos - Mass Murder applies to Parshas Zachor and the commandment to destroy Amalek. Every year we read how we are to commit genocide against Amalek, kill every man, woman and child, and no one cares. And yet, when this happens to us, we scream bloody murder. The Nazis did nothing worse then what the Bnei Yisrael did to Amalek at the time of Shaul (except maybe more efficiently) and are commanded to do even today. If we can wipe out Amalek, killing men, women and children, why can't the Nazis wipe us out? What is the difference?

R' Aharon Lichtenstein addressed this problem as follows:

 I recall in my late adolescence there were certain problems which perturbed me, the way they perturb many others. At the time, I resolved them all in one fell swoop. I had just read Rav Zevin’s book, Ishim Ve-shitot. In his essay on Rav Chayim Soloveitchik, he deals not only with his methodological development, but also with his personality and gemilut chasadim (acts of kindness). He recounted that Reb Chayim used to check every morning if some unfortunate woman had placed an infant waif on his doorstep during the course of the night. (In Brisk, it used to happen at times that a woman would give birth illegitimately and leave her infant in the hands of Reb Chayim.) As I read the stories about Reb Chayim’s extraordinary kindness, I said to myself: Do I approach this level of gemilut chasadim? I don’t even dream of it! In terms of moral sensibility, concern for human beings and sensitivity to human suffering, I am nothing compared to Reb Chayim. Yet despite his moral sensitivity, he managed to live, and live deeply, with the totality of Halakha—including the commands to destroy the Seven Nations, Amalek and all the other things which bother me. How? The answer, I thought, was obvious. It is not that his moral sensitivity was less, but his yirat Shamayim, his emuna, was so much more. The thing to do, then, is not to try to neutralize or de-emphasize the moral element, but rather to deepen and increase the element of yirat Shamayim, of emuna, deveikut and bittachon.

Truthfully, I was expecting a better answer from R' Lichtenstein. This answer does not help me at all.