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Orthodox passover rebels do away with Ashkenazic ban on legumes
By Nathan Jeffay, The Forward
Tags: israel news, jewish world 

In Tel Aviv, shortly before Passover, David Cohen was mulling over his holiday menu. "I'm thinking of making sushi," he said.

His plan reflects more than just growing Israeli enthusiasm for Japanese food; it reflects a new polarization on one of the most controversial of Passover-related issues - kitniyot.

Cohen, a beer brewer in his 40s, is an Ashkenazic Orthodox Jew, yet he plans to eat a food shunned on Passover by most observant Ashkenazim. Rice - a key ingredient in sushi - is not in the biblically banned category of hametz, or leavened cereal grain. Religiously, if not taxonomically, it falls within the family of legumes that in Hebrew is known as kitniyot.
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Sephardic Jews eat them on Passover, but Ashkenazic rabbis banned them centuries ago because they resemble leavened food when they swell up.

More and more foods have been classified as kitniyot in recent years, as Ashkenazi rabbinic positions have hardened across a wide expanse of Halacha, or traditional religious law. Of late, however, something of a rebellion has erupted among pockets of Modern Orthodox Jews who have decided to eat kitniyot.

"Why should we uphold a meaningless restriction when the Torah permits us to eat kitniyot?" Rabbi David Bar-Hayim of Jerusalem asked rhetorically in an interview with the Forward. Bar-Hayim made history two years ago by formally lifting the ban on kitniyot in the Holy Land. His authority is invoked among the growing ranks of new kitniyot-eaters like Cohen.

According to some experts on changes in religious law, we are witnessing the beginning of the end for the ban on kitniyot in Israel. "In another generation, people in Israel won't even know what you are talking about," said Rabbi Donniel Hartman, co-director of the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute.

For many observant Ashkenazim here, the kitniyot prohibition is a long-standing pet peeve. "This was a much easier process before I moved to Israel," said Michael Davis, a recent British immigrant interviewed while shopping for Passover in a Tel Aviv supermarket.

For most of the year, Israel is the capital of kosher, offering the world's easiest consumer experience for observant Jews. Come Passover, however, many of those same consumers find shopping interminably complex.

Beginning a few days before Passover, Israeli shops overflow with items certified "kosher for Passover," like those in Diaspora Jewish neighborhoods. But in Israel, traditional Ashkenazim must read the fine print on every item. A growing number of products are labeled ?Suitable for kitniyot-eaters only."

In part, the confusion is caused by manufacturers using kitniyot in ever-more adventurous Passover products. The other cause is the constantly swelling list of items banned by Orthodox rabbis as kitniyot.

"The attitude in the last few decades has changed and become stricter to the point of absurdity," said kitniyot expert Daniel Sperber, a professor of Talmud at Bar Ilan University. Recent additions to the kitniyot list, he said, include cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil and even hemp.

Opponents of the growing list point out that many products now deemed kitniyot, like sweet corn and soybeans, were unknown to the medieval sages whom today's rabbis claim to follow, and therefore cannot be covered by their prohibition.

Thanks to the growing stringency, a traditional Ashkenazi in the store where Davis was shopping would have to avoid such un-legumelike products as chewing gum and chocolate spread, along with most cooking sauces.

Bar-Hayim argues that maintaining practices unique to Ashkenazic Jews in Israel is undesirable. By definition, he said, the Jewish state should find Jews more "united in their religious practice," not "living here as if they are in the old country."

For backing he cited the Shulchan Aruch, the authoritative code of rabbinic law, which states that a Jew moving to a new area should adopt the customs of the new community rather than cling to the old ones. And since the kitniyot restriction is European and was never widely observed in the Middle East, he reasons, it holds no weight in Israel.

His ruling has provoked widespread rabbinic fury. "People have been keeping this tradition for over 600 years," former Sephardic chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef said in a lecture last month. "Those who kept it were great people. What, we should tell them to give up their traditions?"

To Bar-Hayim, the critics' approach is irrationally attached to the past and is "not halachic," possibly even "anti-halachic." "Just as it is forbidden to allow what is prohibited, it is forbidden to prohibit what is allowed," he said.

The debate runs deep, even dividing some families. Eliyahu Skozylas, a Jerusalem software engineer, will be eating kitiyot this Passover for the third consecutive year, but his wife refuses. It is, he admits, a "major source of tension in our home."

Bar-Hayim's ruling and his reasoning closely echo a 20-year-old halachic ruling by the Israeli Conservative movement. David Golinkin, head of the Conservative rabbinical college the Schechter Institute, wrote in 1989 that all Israelis can eat kitniyot "without fear of transgressing any prohibition."

Some scholars predict that a combination of rabbinic rulings and demographics will eventually make the kitniyot ban a thing of the past in Israel. "The classic characteristics of halachic change" are already discernible on the issue, Hartman said. For example, large numbers of Ashkenazim - himself included - draw a fine distinction by eating kitniyot "derivatives" but not kitniyot.

The "disintegration of the divide between Ashkenazi and Sephardi" will play a significant part, Hartman said. Already there is "not a single family in the country without a Sephardi member," and Sephardim are more influential than ever in national culture. He stressed that this development will be a result of Ashkenazic-Sephardic mixing in Israel and will not affect practice in the Diaspora.

Other experts predict that the kitniyot tradition will endure, preserved by a combination of religious traditionalism and multiculturalism. "There's a reassertion of ethnic pride, with people feeling it's okay to do things differently to others and to celebrate diversity," said Bar-Ilan University Jewish studies professor Adam Ferziger
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  1.   Bamba and chocolate spread 16:41  |  Nir 03/04/09
  2.   Thanks Rabbi Bar-Hayim 16:59  |  David Feldman 03/04/09
  3.   Rice 17:45  |  Rich 03/04/09
  4.   Quinoa berries and beri-beri 20:59  |  philtlucre 03/04/09
  5.   Making the Passover holiday easier 21:09  |  Yael S. 03/04/09
  6.   Finally some logic 22:50  |  Me 03/04/09
  7.   Ovadiah Yosef Said What?!? 23:14  |  Hillel 03/04/09
  8.   do these rabbis have authority 02:07  |  ezra 04/04/09
  9.   God of small things 04:03  |  netsp 04/04/09
  10.   Kitniyot 04:45  |  David B. Klein 04/04/09
  11.   In a democracy you can eat what you want to 05:47  |  L A 04/04/09
  12.   Sure L A, it is a democracy, you can even have them fed into your 08:48  |  Emanuel 04/04/09
  13.   #12 if you want people living in the middle ages 10:01  |  L A 04/04/09
  14.   Tradition more important than Torah 15:20  |  Gary 04/04/09
  15.   L/A., you have choice of being . . . 20:32  |  Zev Davis 04/04/09
  16.   Who is Rabbi David Bar-Hayim? 21:01  |  Physicist 04/04/09
  17.   diaspora differences 21:03  |  Ariane 04/04/09
  18.   FOR SEVEN DAYS BE PROUD THAT WE ARE ASHENAZIM !!! 21:23  |  PROUD ASHKENAZ 04/04/09
  19.   Rabbi David Bar-Hayim-Very Impressive! 21:39  |  Harold Berg 04/04/09
  20.   Comments on some comments... 22:05  |  CDG 04/04/09
  21.   JESUSALEN 23:15  |  jesusalen 04/04/09
  22.   Thank G-d for potatoes 01:02  |  Motic 05/04/09
  23.   Reply to #8 Authority? 01:07  |  Joseph 05/04/09
  24.   It`s eisier to take the Jew out of Exile then Exile out of theJew 01:24  |  shlomo 05/04/09
  25.   Kosher food and Passover 04:12  |  Jacob Shapiro 05/04/09
  26.   proud ashkenaz 16 04:57  |  potobac 05/04/09
  27.   Proud of what? 05:26  |  Hillel 05/04/09
  28.   Seven days in Israel and eight in the diaspora 09:27  |  Zev 05/04/09
  29.   To: No. #11 10:50  |  eddie - Haifa 05/04/09
  30.   Hillel, they call it Yetzer HaRah 11:47  |  Zev Davis 05/04/09
  31.   HaRav David Bar-Hayim-Excellent Credentials 12:59  |  Dan Alter 05/04/09
  32.   Rabbi Bar Haim Only Hurts the Cause 13:31  |  Ido 05/04/09
  33.   Ashkenasi Rabbis organise kitniot free oil for heavens sake 13:50  |  lily 05/04/09
  34.   Kitniyot 16:58  |  Irene Solnik 05/04/09
  35.   kosher food and passover 18:05  |  jozefo fulmo 05/04/09
  36.   Rabbi Bar-Hayim Will Inspire Other Orthodox Rabbis 18:18  |  Shimshon Gray 05/04/09
  37.   rice is not kitniyot 18:39  |  Susan 05/04/09
  38.   JESUSALEN 18:44  |  jesusalen 05/04/09
  39.   Passover= Celebrating Freedom not so called Democracy 19:45  |  MH 05/04/09
  40.   Should one be "proud" to observe a "minhag shtut"? 03:51  |  Raymond in DC 06/04/09
  41.   Rabbi David Bar-Hayim-A Rabbi with Principle 08:55  |  Shmuel Weisenberg 06/04/09
  42.   kitniot and respect for Jews 12:14  |  BZB 06/04/09
  43.   Why stop at Kitniyot 21:47  |  M 06/04/09
  44.   Raymond in D C 06:36  |  Joe 12/04/09
  45.   Gebrocts / matza meal 19:57  |  Yossi 12/04/09
  46.   Rebellion??? 05:09  |  David Cohen 13/04/09
  47.   Rice and Passover 03:44  |  Lewis Eigen 21/04/09
  48.   whats the argument about dietary matters 20:17  |  max bernstein 25/04/09
  49.   An Ashkenazi rabbi asks... 17:59  |  Michael Greenberg 13/05/09
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