[Avodah] kitnoyot

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2017 at 04:23:37PM +0300, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
: It seems the OU is more interested in literal kitniyot even if no longer
: makes sense and not all in products that have the same rationale as
: kitniyot but are not literally kiniyot.
: 
: To my mind it is difficult to prohibit canola oil and allow cereals and
: bread sticks that look and sometimes even taste like the original.

In this era of packaged foods and heksheirim, the whole minhag makes no
sense. People aren't deciding on their own whether quinoa is qitniyos.
Or whether some sack contains pure peas with no wheat from the bottom
of the silo. Or would eat a porridge based on a guess about whether it
was pea or oatmeal.

(The fact that I get my *unflavored* gourmet whole-leaf teas without
a KLP symbol -- something little different than buying any [other]
vegetable -- makes my wife nervous.)

The main reason for Ashekanzim to avoid qitniyos today is because if we
start second-guessing minhagim in this day and age, the mimetic system
will collapse and all of halakhah will fall apart.

On Tue, Apr 04, 2017 at 11:58:06AM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: It's very simple: `al zeh gozru ve`al zeh lo gozru.  We have no
: authority to make up our own gezeros, but we are bound by those our
: predecessors made...

Well, they lacked that authority too. This is minhag, not gezeira.

And the notion that we should be bery mimetic and work with what our
ancestors actually did rather than what their rationale would imply
in our context works even better with minhagim than with gezeiros.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

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