The ancient punishment for very serious crimes in the Jewish world is called kareth, or “cutting off,” which could mean either capital punishment or excommunication. Crimes worthy of kareth include incest, bestiality, sacrificing one’s own child, and, um, eating bread during Passover. Most likely no one has been executed for eating a sandwich during Passover in quite some time, if ever, but the fact remains that the dietary laws during the holiday, beginning at sundown this Friday, are very, very serious.
The eons-old fight over whether eating bread should be punishable by death
