[Avodah] kitniyot

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2017 at 09:33:22PM +0300, Simon Montagu wrote:
: We change minhagim all the time, for good and/or bad reasons and halacha
: hasn't fallen apart yet. Why is this minhag different from all other
: minhagim that people are so set against any change?

Sorry if this will sound like circular reasoning, but it isn't because
of the time lag:

Minhagim that are *currently* treated very seriously can't be broken
*going forward* as readliy simply because of the psychological
/ experiential impact of bending or breaking something that is so
vehemently held.

Since my argument is about mimetics, halakhah-as-culture, you can't
necessarily get a textual / theory-based answer.


On Tue, Apr 04, 2017 at 07:22:32PM +0000, Eli Turkel wrote:
: We are not talking about eliminating Kitniyot laws but limiting them
: My personal observation is that very few of my friends avoid lecithin and
: many modern oils    RMF and others already allowed peanut oil and
: cottonseed oil  and this is being expanded by many ..

Well, RMF didn't actively permit peanut oil as much as report that back
in Litta, peanuts were commonly consumed on Pesach. According to R/Dr
Bannet, within my lifetime peanut oil was THE go-to oil for Pesach.

But that's Litta. Minhag Litta didn't expand qitniyos to legumes found
in the New World, after the original minhag formed. (Although they did
take on avoiding New World grain -- maize / corn.) Minhag Litta was
also lenient on mei qitniyos, and a far broader range of the northern
half of Eastern Europe (I don't know what Yekkes hold) were lenient on
shemes qitniyos in particular.

Yes, by my minhagim, there are two reasons not to need a special formula
for KLP Coke. If we could get anyone to give a hekhsher to certify there
is nothing "worse" than mei New World qitniyos in it.

But other parts of Europe went by reasoning, and did have stringencies
including liquids and oils. That's their minhag, and it always was
their minhag.

Which gets me to my point: It's not really that any rav is expanding
minhagim. It's that the heksher industry is going to be cost efficient.
Heksheirim that say something is okay for 2/3 of their audience don't
survive. Causing a lest-common-denominator approach to the spread of
minhagim. Like trying to find reliable non-glatt meat in the US; the
larger hekhsheirim don't even try. And so, as more move into the area
whose minhagim exclude using peanut oil on Pesach, it becomes harder to
find KLP certified peanut oil, and all too quickly people forget what
was once the norm.

I think that framing it as pesaqim and machloqes is imprecise. It's more
like watching the evolution of new minhagim as our new communities from
mixtures of the old ones. Not necessarily in directions we would like,
but at least that's the framework in question.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A wise man is careful during the Purim banquet
micha at aishdas.org        about things most people don't watch even on
http://www.aishdas.org   Yom Kippur.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rav Yisrael Salanter