[Avodah] kitniyot

[D&E-H Bannett]

Just a reminder that has been posted a number of times in 
the past.

When I was a youngster in the US many years ago, my mother 
bought oil for Pesach with a hekhsher.I don't know what type 
or what hekhsher. But,. the chareidim did not trust many 
heksherim and would use only the oil made by Zupnick. It was 
Zupnick Peanut Oil. In those days, I knew of nobody who did 
not eat peanuts on Pesach.

I met my first no-peanuts-on-Pesach man in the early '50's 
in Israel, Harav R' Menahem Ofen.  We laughed at him. His 
son sits one seat from me in shul and a few years ago, Reb 
Menahem visited for Shabbat.  When I greeted him I added. R' 
Menahem, nitzachta otanu!  He knew to what I was referring.

Some twenty years ago while I was cleaning in the cellar, my 
wife called me to show me the oil she had just bought. It 
was marked 'asui mikitnit.  I ran back downstairs to show 
her an empty bottle from the previous year I had just found; 
same company, same soybean oil. It was marked kasher 
l'feasch lim'hadrin.  I said the new marking was botanically 
correct. Soya is a legume, but it is as kosher as it was 
last year.  The marking was probably for Reb Menahem Ofen. 
A few years later the marking was changed to "l'okhlei 
itniyot" and after that it became 'L'okhlei kitniyot 
bilvad".

As to cottonseed oil,  when soya became chametz chareidim 
started to use cottonseed oil. But that was stopped soon 
afterward.  The story I heard was that shemen kutna (cotton 
oil in Hebrew) sounded too much like kitnit, kutna = kitnit.

BTW, I don't eat corn or its products on Pesach because that 
chumra was made before I was born and my mother told me not 
to.  The reason we didn't eat dried fruits, she said, was 
that they might have been dried in chametzdig ovens.  But 
then my grandmother didn't eat tomatoes on Pesach and I do, 
Go explain.

Pesach kasher v'sameach,

David