[Avodah] kitniyot

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2013 at 03:25:41PM +0200, Eli Turkel wrote:
: RSZA states that the "Sar shel Torah" of his generation is RMF since he can
: find the solution to new problems and not just quote old opinions.

Although in this case, that's exactly what he does. "We used to eat
peanuts in Eastern Europe, why should people from similar arears start
prohibiting it now?"

And peanut oil... Here we have something that requires being machmir on
the scope of qitniyos, combined with being machmir not only on mei qitniyos
but on shemen qitniyos (which some who don't use mei qitniyos permit, since
it won't mix with water)! How did that ever get accepted as assur.

Me, my ancestors consumed mei qitniyos in Litta. (And go not that much
further back, qitnios too.) So shouldn't it (in theory) be mutar for me
to consume all those "OU Kitniyot" products that only show
corn syrup or corn oil?

As for relying on the ingredients list, qitniyos are batul berov, and
to quote R David Cohen from last year
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol30/v30n010.shtml#07>:
> One of the best known advocates of this lenient position was R' Yitzchak
> Elchanan Spektor (Be'er Yitzchak OC 11), who makes the case that "ein
> mevatlin issur lechatchila" does not apply to kitniyos, and thus permits an
> alcoholic beverage whose majority ingredient is honey, and whose
> minority ingredient is buckwheat .  He was disputing the conclusion of the
> Nishmas Adam (Shabbos uMoadim 119: 33) who maintains that this beverage is
> forbidden.  What is interesting, though, is that the Nishmas Adam does not
> actually base his opposition on "ein mevatlin isur lechatchila" at all, but
> rather on the fact that in this particular beverage, the
> kitniyos ingredient is what gives it its taste  ...

So, if it's not a similar issue of noticing the taste, we really have
no one choleiq on SYES. RDC reported that when he asked, the OU invoked
common practice, not din.

-Micha