[Avodah] popcorn

[Zev Sero]

kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
> R' David Riceman wrote:
>> I think this is a source of a lot of confusion.  "Kitniyos"
>> and "legumes" are not synonyms (neither rice nor corn, for
>> example, is a legume).

Nor are they called "kitniyos" in Hebrew, although they are included in
the gezera against kitniyos on Pesach.


> Were legumes banned at the same time as the non-chometz grains

Yes.  Otherwise the gezera wouldn't be known by the name "kitniyos".
>From the name we can know that they were the ikkar of the gezera, and
the non-leguminous species that were included were the tafel.

Also, if the reason is that they are cooked as a porridge ("daysa",
"maaseh kederah"), then all species that are cooked in that way would
have been banned at the same time.


> That's my guess, anyway. Rice is not a species of the kitniyos family.
> But rice is banned as part of the kitniyos minhag.

Rice *may* have been banned earlier, to be choshesh for R Yochanan ben
Nuri's opinion.  This *may* also explain those Sefardi communities that
ban rice but not kitniyot.  (A more popular explanation is the difficulty
of checking rice, and that may well be the correct one, but this is at
least a possible alternative explanation.)


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