That man, a real estate agent named John J. Brown, acted as the linchpin of a Jewish legal process that is crucial to those who keep the strict laws of Passover, which forbid Jews from owning or benefitting from hametz, or any products containing leaven. Because most observant Jews don’t want to throw away all of their hametz ahead of Passover, they sell it to a non-Jewish person, who sells it back when the holiday ends.

For thousands of Jews, Brown was that non-Jewish buyer. Every year from 1977 to 2019, he bought hametz from the congregants of dozens of synagogues in and around New York City, completing the sales via the synagogues’ rabbis.

Last year, the tradition was suspended because of the pandemic. This year, someone else will have to pick it up: Brown died in February at age 88.

“John J. Brown was a legend in the Willig family, in the Riverdale Jewish community, and — for those that knew his name — actually an important role player in the lives of many thousands of Jews each Pesach for decades,” read a Facebook post by Rabbi Gidon Shoshan, the son-in-law of Rabbi Mordechai Willig, who orchestrated the sales with Brown.

Willig, who rarely speaks to the media, did not respond to a request for comment.

“He took pride in the transaction and in his connection with the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Shmuel Hain of Young Israel Ohab Zedek of North Riverdale/Yonkers, who sold his synagogue’s hametz to Brown for more than a decade.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was unable to reach Brown’s family, but an obituary said he “was honored, for decades, to serve as the non-Jewish buyer of ‘chometz,’ or forbidden bread products, during the Passover period from rabbis and congregants around the world.”

Willig and Brown met when Brown worked on the 1975 purchase of the Young Israel of Riverdale, where Willig was the rabbi. In 1977, the synagogue was looking for a new hametz buyer, and Willig thought of Brown, figuring he would understand the complex legal processes involved in the hametz sale.

“In Jewish law, real estate is a powerful lever for legal transactions,” said Hain, who is close with Willig. “So Rabbi Willig liked to have someone in real estate because they understand the power of real estate and the overall significance of real estate in Jewish law.”

Willig also was a leader at the Yeshiva University rabbinical school, and those he had trained also would come to sell their congregations’ hametz to Brown. The transactions would take place at around 10 a.m. on the morning before Passover, the last possible time when Jews are allowed to have hametz in their possession. Dozens of rabbis and Brown would crowd around a conference room table at the Young Israel of Riverdale while Willig read through the contract.

Afterward, would pay for the hametz with bundles of coins — a few cents for each of the thousands of households whose food he was purchasing. This token sum was meant as an ostensible down payment on the goods he was buying.

Brown would then signify that he completed the transaction under Jewish law in a few other ways — by picking up and placing a pen down on the table, signing a document and shaking the rabbi’s hand. He repeated the same process with each rabbi. Eventually he became so experienced in the particulars of the Jewish practice that he began to teach newer rabbis how it was done.

“He always took an interest in them and would correct the novice rabbis who mixed up the order of the transactions, who would shake his hand before lifting up the pen,” Hain recalled.

In addition to buying the leavened products stowed away in people’s homes, Brown would symbolically purchase shares that people owned in businesses, such as hotels, that sold hametz over Passover.

Year after year, he also took temporary ownership of people’s pets: Jews are not allowed to benefit from hametz in any way, so they are not allowed even to feed it to their pets. To get around that restriction, many people sell their pets along with their hametz, so that the animals eating the forbidden food on Passover do not technically belong to them.

“A number of years ago, we started saying to Mr. Brown, you’re going to own a certain number of dogs, a certain number of cats,” Hain said. “[He] had good humor when it came to some of the more silly, some of the lower-stakes kinds of issues.”

Even after Brown retired and moved from Riverdale to Minerva, a town far upstate in New York, he would make the nearly four-hour trip back to New York City each year to buy hametz. In return, Willig plugged Brown’s real estate business — telling people to mention his name when they called his former agency so he would get a cut. And rabbis who sold hametz to Brown would also give him a bottle of liquor as a gesture of goodwill.

As he was listing the kinds of leavened foods prohibited on Passover during the 2015 sale, which was filmed, Willig mentioned fermented products and said, “I would daresay, Mr. Brown, the alcohol fermentations are probably the more valuable of the items that are being sold to you.”

“Judging from the quality that I’ve seen around here, I would agree,” Brown replied.

Last year, due to the pandemic, Brown was unable to come to Riverdale. When Willig attempted to reach him this year, he learned of his death. He’s now looking for someone to carry on Brown’s legacy.

“He said we have to find someone together to do this going forward, and hopefully this person will outlast my tenure in Riverdale,” Hain said of Willig. “For him, this was a moment where he sees it as an end of an era.”

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