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I thought only Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were High Holidays.
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ā¦
Last December, in an effort to harmonize the rules with the spirit of the law, and to finally unite the customs of all Passover observers, rabbis from the Conservative branch of Judaism issued a repeal of the notorious Legume Ban. ā¦
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If you are heterodox, you are covered
FWIW my rabbi has seen me in Judaica styled reggae t-shirts after selecting at all night sound system events. Then again heās Chabad so that cant be the weirdest thing heās ever seen.
Pretty much every Conservative Jew I know found this to be bizarre and unnecessary. Some rather strong language directed at the RA over this.
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In the video rabbi Chaim Kanievsky does look a little like a high priest.
Avi Steinberg also discussed the mixed reviews in the New Yorker article.
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While the social networks of many Reform and Conservative Jews have been aglimmer this week with enthusiastic legume-themed postsāmostly gloating about new Passover recipesāthe mood on my Orthodox social networks has darkened. āGreat news,ā one sarcastic commenter wrote. āSo now the rank and file can enjoy rice with their shrimp and cheeseburgers.ā
In a more diplomatic reply, an Orthodox man on one of my Facebook networks posted a long, elaborately argued essay in defense of the ban, penned by his rabbi, which would rival any federal-court decision in its attention to detail.
āI still canāt get myself too worked up about the [Legume] debates or why people feel so passionate one way or the other,ā the man wrote, ābut if one is going to indulge that as though itās an important conversation, this is the lens through which I think it should be discussed.ā
This attitude toward Jewish custom is very familiar to me: the Legume Ban might be minor, but itās far from trivial. Itās nothing to get passionate aboutāunless itās under attack, and then it must be defended vigorously, and with footnotes. ā¦
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It is unfortunate but true that some Orthodox Jews use unpleasant language when describing the kashrut of their heterodox brothers and sisters. A fair number of the heterodox Jews I know IRL or on the net dont actually keep kosher but still keep certain customs such as kitniyot. Reason being simply because their parents didnt eat kitniyot during Passover and they just got in the habit.
For Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews, this is a case of custom having the force of halacha, a rabbinic ban which can not be overturned. Whether it makes sense or not, whether the kitniyot classification gets extended or not, it is what it is. For example one of the reasons for the ban being that beans, corn, rice, etc. have likely been shipped & stored in containers which have been used previously for chametz and thus there is cross contamination. This is just as true now as it was 800 years ago in Europe when you consider the extensive industrial chain of custody of the modern food supply.
What about where that doesnt apply? For example here in Japan there is really absolutely zero likelihood of storage cross contamination of chametz in the domestic rice supply. So does that make rice permitted to Orthodox Jews here? Absolutely not because again, custom has the force of halacha.
Since heterodoxy is really only an Ashkenazi thing, none of this applies to Sephardim anyway.
Also, when I referred to strong language directed a the RA, that was actually coming from strongly self identifying Conservative Jews.
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As a reform Jew introduced to kashrut as an adult, the inconsistencies fascinate me. You can accidentally have 1/60 contamination of normal food, such as a bug falling into your cholent, but chametz is not to be tolerated on a molecular level! When I met my somewhat observant wife she expalined to me there are different Jewish holidays to appeal to different people. Purim is for drinkers and Passover is for the obsessive compulsive.
FWIW, she decided to eat kitniyot after living in Israel and seeing black hatted ultra orthodox Sefardim eating it.
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I actually did something like that as a kid.
Iām a gentile kid, brought along with my parents to a passover seder they were invited to by some jewish friends of theirs. I get invited to find the afikomanā¦but I donāt actually know what matzoh is and Iām a bit too shy to ask. I was also hungry, and I found this big saltine-looking thing hidden in the kitchenā¦
By the time the adults told me Iād won the game Iād eaten half of the matzoh.
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Youāre a natural! 
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I know you are just reporting something you read in āThe Independentā but the original story makes no sense as described. But if you dig into it you find that the pro-legalization Green Leaf Party (who you might think of as ānon-religiousā in a traditional sense, but probably includes all kinds) in fact did warn people away from Marijuana possession on Passover, on the grounds that it might be considered kitniyot. The explanation that is given for why they held that view seems absurd, from a legal/religious/halachic perspective. I suspect they raised that issue more out of ignorance and an excess of caution than a coherent analysis of the phylogeny of cannabis, compared to legumes (the primary kitniyot plants). But it is in THAT context that this Rabbinic permission to posses marijuana on Passover makes some sense. http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Is-marijuana-kosher-for-Pessah Basically you have a pro-legalization hippy dippy group warning people to be religiously conservative, and an orthodox rabbi saying ālighten up dudes.ā I guess thatās a fun story.
You want to see obsessive compulsive? Attend a seder with a family that holds of gebroktz 
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LOL. āChew quickly, before your mouthful of matzo becomes chametz!ā
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This is really the bigger Passover story this year.
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This is so wrong.
The shamash isnāt lit!
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Whatta you want, the guyās stonedā¦ 
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You have just illustrated to me the fractal nature of Kashrut. I had never heard of gebroktz! Thereās always a crazier level of this shit. When I finally make my still maybe Iāll make some matzah vodka just to be able to freak out some haredim.
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Pesach, in particular, brings out the Mandelbrot fractal nature. We keep zooming in, and yet itās always the same each yearā¦
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