Why Kitniyot Passover Fight Is Literally Full of Beans
A take-off from an essay in The Forward.
For those who read THE Ave, or just know me, I am (on my father’s side) a Sephard … a descendent of the Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. My wife, however is a Rush … a Jew from Russia, one of the large groups Jews called Ashkenazim with origins from east of Germany. Over the centuries there have been those who argued that Sephardim are true Jews from Israel while Askenazim are sort of Jews who arose by conversion in the South of Russia. Barb and I are, therefore, kinda sorta intermarried. I say kinda sorta because geneticists now have shown that the Ashkenazim, arose from a small group of refugees from Spain who fled to the Northeast, through the Rhineland. One place this myth gets real is at Passover time. We Sephardim eat beans … before, during and after Passover. But, the Rush, and other Eastern Jews, the Ashkenazim, say beans are not Pesadicher… not kosher for Passover. Where did the Ashkenanazi get this idea? The issue is matzos, unleavened bread. During Pesach Jews are supposed to eat only bread that has not been allowed to rise. Anything that could make bread rise, a little mold growing on the dough, is strictly forbidden. To assure the bread will not rise, little holes are punched in the dough and the baking time is strictly controlled. Wheat flour that can rise is not used for making other things. During Pesach ground up matzos replaces flour. Bread and wheat flour or anything like them is called hametz. So, what is wrong with beans? Long after the expulsion from Spain, beans were not classified as hametz. Even Maimonides permits use of beans during Pesach. He used the hebrew word “kitniyes” for beans .. what are now called legumes. The great rabbi included rice and other forms of starch as min kitniyes, kinda sorta like beans. In the 12th century a rabbi in the Rhineland, however, ruled against the beans. No one knows why Rabbi Eleazar of Worms made this decision. Maybe he had a bean allergy or was concerned by the possibility there might be some wheat in the that bean crop? Beans were planted in alternate years with wheat because beans replenish the nitrogen in the soil. Rabbi Eleazer wrote, “We do not eat beans and lentils because there is wheat in them.” This civil war between bean eaters and bean deniers began in 1868 with a severe famine in Eastern Europe. Some Askenazi rabbis ruled that beans, legumes, could be eaten because they were cheap. Other rabbis, stood their righteous ground. Intellectual Jews, a growing community in the East where non religious Zionism was taking root, mocked both groups with the motto kitniyot shel pesach, “legumes for Passover” as a motto for putting hunger higher than Talmudic obscurantism. The essay on the Forward finishes “This is why the Yiddish expression min kitniyes, literally “a kind of legume,” has the meaning of a whatchamacallit or a-who-knows-what-it-is. After all, if a potato can be a legume, anything can be just about anything, all the more so if it comes with a rabbinical stamp. You can also say in Yiddish, alerley miney kitniyes, “all kinds of legumes,” in the sense of “all kinds of odds-and-ends” or “everything but the kitchen sink.” As for what we eat on Passover, it would be easier if we were all Sephardim. Read more: http://forward.com/articles/196541/why-kitniyot-passover-fight-is-literally-full-of-b/#ixzz2z1esoDlR