[Avodah] K'zayis as weight not volume?

[Ken Bloom]

On Fri, 2008-04-11 at 08:07 -0400, R Davidovich wrote:
> I recently read a teshuva by R'Ovadia Yosef (Yechaveh Daat 1: 16) that
> gives the measurement for the k'zayis as a weight, not volume.
> Instead of saying that the k'zayis is 28cc, which comes out to about
> 1/6 of a hand-matza according to Rabbi Heinemann's water-displacing
> tests, ROY says that  it is 28 grams, which is the approximately the
> weight of half a hand-matza.  (With standard issue hand matza, you get
> about 8 matzos a pound, one slice is two ounces, or 56 grams.) 
> 
> I cannot figure out how ROY turned k'zayis and k'beitza into mass!
> 
> Does anyone have sources or answers?

Yalkut Yosef (in the halachot of the seder, Motzi Matzah) says that one
measures according to mass in all cases (even when it's not Pesach),
because measuring by mass is easier (just use a scale) than measuring by
volume (which requires compressing the air out of the food or grindingit
up or something). Since the Kaf HaHayyim says likewise, this is not
ROY's innovation -- it's accepted sephardic mesorah.

--Ken

-- 
Ken (Chanoch) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/

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