Eat Kitniyot This Passover

On Saturday night I was sent off on the Pessah equivalent of a combat mission - shopping. Everyone had the same idea: I'll beat the crowds by shopping a few days before the Seder. The supermarket was bursting with such brilliant crowd-beating people.

As an immigrant to Israel who keeps kosher, most of the year I relish being liberated from the Diaspora practice of scavenger-hunting for kosher products. Living in the Jewish state means having the freedom to pick anything off the shelf without using a magnifying glass. Every spring, however, I would regress to shopping like Sherlock Holmes, looking for signs of the dreaded kitniyot (legumes) that Ashkenazi Jews are told are not kosher for Pessah.

Adding insult to injury, not only am I reduced to hunting and pecking but to watching as my Sephardi brethren blissfully snap up anything that looks remotely tasty. Almost all the good stuff - cakes, cookies, humous - have kitniyot. Whole bakeries are verboten to the kitniyot-challenged.

From now on, no more. For all of you who have grown up with whole swaths of the Pessah menu closed off to you, I have good news. You can drop the whole kitniyot mania and feel good, even self-righteous, about it without making your holiday one iota less kosher, even from an Orthodox perspective.

The kitniyot custom, it turns out, is the religious equivalent of a computer virus whose only leg to stand on is that we have gotten used to it.

It all started about 700 years ago in France when someone got the bright idea that they would be more kosher than the next guy by not eating things that might be confused with the five grains that can become hametz if mixed with water and allowed to rise. The practice had barely had a chance to spread when rabbis of that time denounced it as a "foolish" and "mistaken" custom. Since it is a custom with no legal basis, there is not even an authoritative list of what "kitniyot" are, and the custom has expanded to include rice, corn, soy beans, string beans, peas, lentils, peanuts, mustard, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds.

Both Ashkenazi and Sephardi rabbis agree that it is not possible for any of these foods to become hametz. According to Conservative Rabbi David Golinkin, who wrote an exhaustive responsum on this subject, the only reason to observe this custom is to preserve an old and very widespread tradition.

There are a number of good reasons, however, to end this practice, particularly in Israel. Golinkin points out that the kitniyot distinction detracts from the joy of the holiday, causes unnecessary expense, confuses the significant (hametz) with the insignificant (kitniyot), makes people less likely to observe real Pessah laws and, most importantly, creates a schism among the Jewish people.

This is most evident in Israel, where Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews live intertwined but are often prevented from sharing a Seder table because of the kitniyot custom. The Israeli army has wisely cut through this problem by simply following the Sephardi custom in maintaining kashrut during Pessah. Since even Ashkenazim admit that their custom has no halachic standing (Golinkin argues it is in "direct contradiction" to Talmudic dictates), and the custom causes concrete rifts between Jews, it is incumbent on Ashkenazim to at least soften this peculiarity in the name of Jewish unity.

I, for one, am happy to do my part by dropping the kitniyot custom entirely. It is never too late to start correcting a 700-year-old mistake. But those not comfortable with going this far might want to follow the recommendation of the (Conservative) Rabbinical Assembly of Israel: Do not eat rice and legumes - the original limits of the kitniyot custom - but do eat products made from kitniyot-related oils. This distinction allows Ashkenazim to eat hundreds of "kitniyot-eaters only" products, and should also allow Ashkenazim and Sephardim to attend Seders together without forcing the latter to adopt the former's more questionable quirks.

On Pessah, we try to relive slavery and the Exodus by eating the bread of affliction, but we also celebrate our emergence into freedom. In medieval France, with the prospect of Jewish independence more of a prayer than a dream, it may have been natural to emphasize the affliction side of the holiday.

At a time in which the cry "Next Year in Jerusalem!" has become a living reality, eating kitniyot helps remove an obstacle to Jewish unity while appropriately shifting the Pessah balance from affliction toward celebration.

Although I'm a Sephardi, so I probably shouldn't speak on this issue-- Singer is right. It's time to chuck customs and laws that were put in place centuries ago for valid reasons that no longer apply. Halacha is hard enough... it makes no sense to senselessly make it harder.

I'd add that its probably time the Hahamim recognize that God has no problem with chicken and dairy, that electricity isn't fire and thus prohibited on Shabbath, and that Niddah really only lasts for three days after menstration-- not 7! How come no one has ever thought of getting rid of stuff put in by men? It's either heresy (godless Reform Judaism) or an "orthodoxy" that sometimes just doesn't make sense.

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God has no problem with chicken and dairy

Why, because chickens don't lactate?

How come no one has ever thought of getting rid of stuff put in by men?

I am sure people think of it all the time, in fact I know they actually DO it all the time. And the result is often not very pretty.

Look at what has happened to many Christian churches---once they start getting rid of stuff, they can't stop themselves. Eventually they decide that there really IS no God, so it was ALL "stuff put in by men", and they can do whatever the heck they want.

The progression seems to be inevitable once it is started. One tiny change is used as precedent for the next, and the next, and the next. So I'd be very wary of changing even a tradition I didn't like or didn't consider important.

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