[Avodah] kitniyot

[Zev Sero]

Eli Turkel wrote:
> << And who says rapeseed wasn't in the original minhag, at least in theory,
> as something that we wouldn't eat on Pesach if it were edible?
>  And who says rapeseed
> wasn't in the original minhag, at least in theory, as something that we
> wouldn't eat on Pesach if it were edible?>>
> 
> RMF says peanuts and cottenseed oil  were not prohibited.

Cottonseed is completely out of the question, because it grows on a
tree, and everyone agrees that tree fruit are not included.  And on
peanuts RMF's opinion is not universally accepted, because it has a
big flaw: corn, which *all* the poskim (including him) accept is
included even though it wasn't known at the time of the original
gezera.


> Why should rapeseed be different than cottenseed both are inedible and
> used in modern oils only by new technology (canola oil goes back to the 1970s)

Rapeseed was certainly a known crop, although inedible to humans.
The original gezera did *not* ban individual species, but rather whole
classes of species; mustard is explicitly included only because it
grows in a pod, rather than for its own properties.  Nobody cooks
mustard as a porridge, and yet it's forbidden because of how it grows.
Therefore the gezera was against: 1) anything that is cooked as a
porridge; and 2) anything in the same families even if it isn't used
that way.  If you'd asked a Jewish rapeseed farmer 500 years ago whether
his crop was kitniyos he'd have agreed that it was, and so would his rov,
even though it was only a theoretical question.

As for peanuts, how do you distinguish them from mustard?  They too grow
in a pod, of course, since they're just funny-shaped peas.  And in fact
they *are* boiled as a porridge in the Southern USA, just like peas.


> Besides there never was a formal gezera to outlaw kitniyot as we see
> rishonim like Rabbenu Yechiel from Paris and others wouldn't have
> disagreed.

On the contrary, the poskim all assume that there must have been an
actual gezera at some point, even though we don't know when.  R Yechiel
either disagreed with it or was unaware of it.


> Since this is just a minhag that developed over time how could it
> include nonedible foods? ie there cant be a minhag to not eat inedible
> foods.

There can, if it covers a broadly defined class of plants, or rather
several classes (legumes, cereals, as well as plants such as buckwheat).

By the way, try coming up with a logical distinction between quinoa and
buckwheat (which is lechol hade'os forbidden), and which also explains
the universally accepted issur on corn.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher