An eruv is nice and all, but check this out—there's an Arab guy who buys up all the bread in Israel every year for a week!

Every year, Judaism celebrates the Exodus from Egypt (Passover). The Torah forbids eating chametz (any baked good that's undergone fermentation) for all 7 festival days and requires "removing leavened products from your homes." You've got two options: "completely destroy it" or "sell it to a non-Jew." Not much of a choice to make, really.

But Israel took this whole selling thing to the state level. This Arab businessman, Hussein Jabbar, has been buying up all the chametz in the country before Passover starts—for the last 20 years. Or rather, he declares his intention to buy: he signs a contract with the Israeli Minister of Economy (!) and the Chief Rabbi, committing to purchasing everything, and puts down a deposit of around fifteen thousand dollars. From that moment on, technically the "forbidden stuff" belongs to him, even though it's still sitting in the original owners' homes. To complete the deal, he needs to scrape together the missing (estimates vary) 300 million dollars before Passover ends. In all these years of trying, he's never once managed to come up with the full amount. So when the holiday wraps up, the purchase agreement gets canceled, the bread gets "returned" to the Jews, and the businessman gets his deposit back.

And everyone's happy. Then the next year, the whole thing repeats. Journalists never miss a chance to ask: "Mr. Jabbar, do you really want to buy this bread, or are you just doing the state a favor?"
To which he gets indignant and says, "Of course I want to! The previous times I just couldn't manage to pull together the necessary funds in time. But this year—I'm telling you—I'll definitely get it!" You've gotta wonder, what's he actually planning to do with all that bread?