Avodah Mailing List

Volume 35: Number 45

Tue, 04 Apr 2017

• 1. The Halachic Adventures of the Potato (Joseph Kaplan)
• 2. kitnoyot (Eli Turkel)
• 3. Re: kitnoyot (Zev Sero)
• 4. Re: kitnoyot (Lisa Liel)
• 5. Re: kitnoyot (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: kitnoyot (Ben Waxman)
• 7. Re: Relying on the Avnei Nezer's Tenai for Afikoman (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: Aruch HaShulchan and pouring wine at the Seder (Ben Waxman)
• 9. The Fungibility of Mitzvos (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: kitnoyot (Simon Montagu)
• 11. Kitniyot (Eli Turkel)
• 12. Re: kitniyot (Micha Berger)
• 13. Re: Kitniyot (Zev Sero)
• 14. Re: Relying on the Avnei Nezer's Tenai for Afikoman (Prof. Levine)

"This doesn?t quite fit RZS?s request, but I heard a story from a friend
who gave a shiur making essentially RZS?s claim.  An elderly gentleman from
Morocco told him that in his (childhood) town no one ate potatoes on Pesah
because they puff up when they cook.  Admittedly my story is third hand,
and is not related to gezeiras kitniyos, but it is evidence that a
community in Morocco forbade potatoes."



This has nothing to do with potatoes but I was talking to the wife of a
Moroccan this morning and she said that he told her (third-hand again) that
many Moroccan towns had their own minhagim. For example, in one town they
didn't use sugar because it was stored in bags near grain. So it's
certainly possibly true about potatoes as well.

Joseph

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from an OU bulletin

My grandparents, may they rest in peace, would be startled to discover that
I can purchase OUP kosher for Passover items such as breakfast cereals,
pizza, bread sticks, rolls, blintzes, waffles, pierogis and farfel.
OTOH the OU has many chumrot on what is kitniyot

I just went to a shiur from R Aviner who was more mekil on kitniyot
products but felt that many of the foods that the OU gives a hechsher like
farfel, bread sticks etc should be prohibited for the same reasons as
kitniyot ie they can easily be mixed up with chametz.

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.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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On 04/04/17 09:23, 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.

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.   Thus the machlokes acharonim about newly discovered 
legumes and pseudo-grains: was the original gezera only on certain 
species, or was it on the entire class?  Most acharonim seem to say it 
was on the entire class, but then argue about how to define that class, 
and thus how to decide what it includes.  But very few if any say zil 
basar ta`ma to include new things that definitely don't fall in the 
original definition of the banned class.

-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
z...@sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all

On 4/4/2017 6:58 PM, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
> On 04/04/17 09:23, 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.
>
> 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.

I was under the impression that gezeirot weren't something that could be 
instituted after the Sanhedrin.  Even Rabbenu Gershom only instituted 
his rules as chramim, rather than gezeirot.  And the minhag (not gezeira 
by any stretch of the imagination) was made by local rabbis for local 
conditions and local situations.  Conditions and situations change.

I realize that the reason we differentiate between d'Orayta and 
d'Rabbanan law is because there's a meforash commandment of bal tosif.  
But we can learn out from that on some level that we shouldn't be 
jumbling up gezeirot and takkanot and cheramim and minhagim and siyagim 
and treating them like they're all the same.

Lisa

---
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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

-- 
Micha Berger             Feeling grateful  to or appreciative of  someone
mi...@aishdas.org        or something in your life actually attracts more
http://www.aishdas.org   of the things that you appreciate and value into
Fax: (270) 514-1507      your life.         - Christiane Northrup, M.D.

See my post a week ago in which I cited Rav Yoel Ben Nun and Rav Yosef 
Rimon as both taking the position that we need to ban flour substitutes 
and relax on kitniyot.

Ben

On 4/4/2017 3:23 PM, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
>
> 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.

On Tue, Apr 04, 2017 at 12:52:45PM +0000, Professor L. Levine via Avodah wrote:
: There is a shiur about this at
: http://tinyurl.com/lowndcz

So, I am listening to R' Aryeh Lebowitz's shiur on YUTorah at this link.

He opens by saying that the afiqoman (epikomion) must be before chatzos,
and very likely the 4th cup too. So, kol hamarbeh means adding to the
END of the seder, not having a longer Maggid that will push past chatzos.

(Eg tzeis is 8:12pm in NY, as MyZmanim computes it -- 36 min as degrees,
and chatzos is 12:56. So, we're talking Qadeish to the end of Hallel in
4 hr 44 min. Unhitting pause...)

The Avnei Neizer (R Avrohom Bornsztain, the first Sochatchover Rebbe,
descendant of both the Ramah and the Shach) argues that if you are
finishing by chatzos to fulfil R Gamliel's shitah, then you could eat
other foods after chatzos. And if you are not eating the rest of the
night, that's because you're worried that if the mitzvah is indeed alkl
night (unlike RG), ein maftirin achar hapesach would also be all night.

So, the AN suggests that a moment before chatzos, eat a piece of matzah
al tenai that if the halakhah is like Rabban Gamliel, it will be your
afiqoman. Then, don't eat the minute or two until chatzos -- for R'
Gamliel's en maftirin. Then, go back to eating (as long as you finish
before alos), concluding with another afiqoman, also al tenai -- thus
fulfilling the other ein maftirin.

(BTW, note that the seder in the hagadah that went until zeman qeri'as
Shema didn't include Rabban Gamliel.)

R Meir Arik in Kol Torah uses this to answer a problematic Rashbam
(Pesachim 121). The Rashbam says you're allowed to bring qorbanos todah or
nedavah on erev Pesach. But you're not allowed to bring a qorban where you
are mema'et the zeman akhilah, and the zeman akhilah for these qorbanos
is until the morning. So how could you bring them on a day where ein
maftirin achar hapesach will limit the time in which they could be eaten?

But according to the Avnei Neizer, you can fulfill ein maftirin for both
shitos and only limit eating for a moment before chatzos, by eating that
2nd afiqoman at the last possible time.

However, there is a lot of opposition to the AN's chiddush. RALebowitz
says there are 6 questions, but he's running out of time.

1- The Baal haMaor and the Ran's explanation for why ein maftirin would
work with the AN. But the Ramban says the problem was that having so
many people needing to eat their kezayis qorban pesach bein hachomos
before chatzos, there was a worry that people would eat early, when still
famished. (Which is assur derabbanan, gezeirah maybe they'll break bones.
The question of why ein maftirin wouldn't then be a gezeira al hagezeira
was not raised in the shiur.)

Which means that even if the zeman for the qorban is until chatzos,
if people could still plan a late dinner, they could rely on that and
still eat their pesach while very hungry.

2- RMF (IM OC vol 5, pg 123) brings several objections. One basic one:
even the AN says he never saw anyone do this before. RMF found it tamuha
to rely on a sevara be'alma to change so many generations of mimeticism.

(An argument that touches on some hot topics today.)

3- RMF adds that one needs to prove that the zman akhilah and the zeman
ta'am are the same. Maybe the chiyuv of having the taste in your mouth
happens to run longer?

4- The Chasam Sofer writes against doing a mitzvah mitoras safeiq. Similar
to Rabbeinu Yonah's (on Berakhos) explanation for why an asham talui is
more expensive than a chatas. Because we need to correct the "I probably
didn't do anything wrong" attitude.

If you never know when you're fulfilling the mitzvah, kavah will be
lacking.

RALebowitz then gives eidus from R Wolf that R Willig finishes his 4th
kos right before chatzos. And timing then becomes a central theme during
the seder.

R' Avraham Pam said on many occations that we have to be aware of
those who spent all that time making the seder. (Typically the wives
and mothers.) Sometimes we spend so much time on Magid, that we then
rush through the beautiful se'udah they made to get to the last kos on
time. RAP thought that this bein adam lachaveiro issue is sufficient to
justify relying on the Avnei Neizer.


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You are not a human being in search
mi...@aishdas.org        of a spiritual experience. You are a
http://www.aishdas.org   spiritual being immersed in a human
Fax: (270) 514-1507      experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Rav Rimon's Hagaddah specifies that the minhag is to pour the wine/grape 
juice of the ba'al habayit alone. He also notes that there are those who 
don't follow the custom. In the footnotes, he cites that when people put 
water in their wine, it wasn't derech cheirut for the home owner to do 
it himself. Today, that isn't the case and it is common for everyone to 
pour his own wine/grape juice. He also cites the AHS' opposition.

Ben

On 4/4/2017 5:11 AM, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> > 1. Am I right that this is most people's practice?
>
> The ArtScroll Haggadah says (in the instructions for Kiddush), "The 
> participants fill each others' cups", without mentioning any minhagim 
> to the contrary.

As y'all know, I'm obsessed with this topic. The notion of metaphysical
causality that interferes with "you get what you deserve / need" bothers
me.

So I appreciated RNSlifkin finding these sources.
http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2017/04/can-you-do-mitzvo
s-to-benefit-others.html

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Can You Do Mitzvos To Benefit Others?
April 03, 2017

Can you do mitzvos in such a way that the merit for them will benefit
other people? Can you designate them to receive the reward for your
mitzvah in their mitzvah bank account, such that they receive more
Divine favor?

A friend of mine recently forwarded to me a request on behalf of someone
who is tragically unwell. The community was requested to pray for his
recovery, which is certainly a time-honored Jewish response. But there
was also a request to do mitzvos on his behalf, as a merit for God to
heal him. My friend wanted to know if there was any classical Jewish
basis for this.

In my essay "What Can One Do For Someone Who Has Passed Away?" I noted
that classically, one's mitzvos are only a credit to those people who
had a formative influence on you. One's mitzvos cannot help the souls
of other people. Rashba cites a responsum from Rav Sherira Gaon on this:

  "A person cannot merit someone else with reward; his elevation and
  greatness and pleasure from the radiance of the Divine Presence is
  only in accordance with his deeds." (Rashba, Responsa, Vol. 7 #539)

Maharam Alashkar cites Rav Hai Gaon who firmly rejects the notion that
one can transfer the reward of a mitzvah to another person and explains
why this is impossible:

  "These concepts are nonsense and one should not rely upon them. How
  can one entertain the notion that the reward of good deeds performed
  by one person should go to another person? Surely the verse states,
  'The righteousness of a righteous person is on him,' (Ezek. 18:20)
  and likewise it states, 'And the wickedness of a wicked person is upon
  him.' Just as nobody can be punished on account of somebody else's sin,
  so too nobody can merit the reward of someone else. How could one think
  that the reward for mitzvos is something that a person can carry around
  with him, such that he can transfer it to another person?" (Maharam
  Alashkar, Responsa #101)

The same view is found explicitly and implicitly in other sources, as I
noted in my essay. There is simply no mechanism to transfer the reward
for one's own mitzvos to other people. It seems that only very recent
mystical-based sources claim otherwise.

Now, I don't see any reason why there should be any difference if the
person that one is trying to help is deceased or alive. Nor do I know of
any source in classical rabbinic literature that one can do a mitzvah
as a merit to help someone that is sick. Prayer, yes. And Tehillim are
also a form of prayer (though it may depend upon which Tehillim are
being recited). But I know of no classical source that one can honor
one's parents or learn Torah or send away a mother bird as a merit for
somebody else.

(The most common example of people attempting to do this may be the
custom of women to separate challah on behalf of a sick person. Here
too, though, it appears that the classical basis of this is not that the
mitzvah of separating challah is crediting the sick person, but rather
that the person separating the challah thereby has a special time of
power/inspiration, which makes their prayer more powerful.)

If I'm wrong in any of the above, I'll be glad to see sources showing
otherwise. But so far, I have found that while people are shocked
when one challenges the notion that you can learn Torah on behalf of
someone who is sick, nobody has yet actually come up with any classical
sources demonstrating otherwise. Furthermore, if this indeed was a part
of classical Judaism, we would certainly expect it to have prominent
mention in the writings of Chazal and the Rishonim. We appear to have
another situation of something widespread that is believed to be an
integral and classical part of Judaism, and yet is actually a modern
innovation that has no basis in classical Judaism whatsoever.

On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 9:13 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah <
avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
Mehila, but aren't you being rather Chicken Little (or is your tongue
somewhere in the direction of your cheek?)

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?
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> 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.

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   I don't see this as
destroying a Mimetic tradition        the reason to include canola oil is
that it is similar to Kitniyot even though it or even corn oil did not
exist at the time of the generation

So the question is why extend the minhagim to canola oil when the problem
of the confusion doesn't exist but we don't extend it to non chametz cereal
or breadstick where the possibility of mistakes is greater
As previously mentioned rsza was against these chametz look a like products
as are several contemporary rabbis  OTOH the outside is nachman in lecithin
in candies where there are many reasons to be making and they are making in
chametz looking and tasting products where many are machmir

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
mi...@aishdas.org        about things most people don't watch even on
http://www.aishdas.org   Yom Kippur.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On 04/04/17 15:22, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
> We are not talking about eliminating Kitniyot laws but limiting them

We have no more authority to limit them than to eliminate them altogether.


> My personal observation is that very few of my friends avoid lecithin and
> many modern oils

What people do has no relation to what they have the right to do.


> RMF and others already allowed peanut oil and cottonseed oil

RMF (almost alone) holds that the original gezera was on particular 
species, and peanuts were never included.  The machlokes about 
cottonseed oil is precisely about whether it is a kind of kitnis or not.


> the reason to include canola oil is that it is similar to Kitniyot
> even though it or even corn oil did not exist at the time of the
> generation

Whether the oil existed then is lechol hade'os irrelevant.  If the 
species is included in the ban then all forms are included.  RMF however 
would presumably say that since rapeseed was not an edible species at 
the time, it was not included.  Most acharonim, who hold that the ban 
was on the whole category,  would presumably include it.


> So the question is why extend the minhagim to canola oil when the problem
> of the confusion doesn't exist but we don't extend it to non chametz cereal
> or breadstick where the possibility of mistakes is greater

Once again, because no individual rav or group of rabbanim have the 
authority to permit what is already forbidden, or to forbid for the 
entire people what is currently permitted.


> As previously mentioned rsza was against these chametz look a like products

That he was against something doesn't make it assur.

> as are several contemporary rabbis  OTOH the outside is nachman in lecithin
> in candies where there are many reasons to be making and they are making in
> chametz looking and tasting products where many are machmir

But what authority do they have for this?

-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
z...@sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all

At 02:01 PM 4/4/2017, Micha Berger wrote:
>On Tue, Apr 04, 2017 at 12:52:45PM +0000, Professor L. Levine via 
>Avodah wrote:
>: There is a shiur about this at
>: http://tinyurl.com/lowndcz
>
>So, I am listening to R' Aryeh Lebowitz's shiur on YUTorah at this link.

<Snip>


>R' Avraham Pam said on many occations that we have to be aware of
>those who spent all that time making the seder. (Typically the wives
>and mothers.) Sometimes we spend so much time on Magid, that we then
>rush through the beautiful se'udah they made to get to the last kos on
>time. RAP thought that this bein adam lachaveiro issue is sufficient to
>justify relying on the Avnei Neizer.

Rav Schwab in his shiur on the seder (to be found in Rav Schwab on 
Prayer)  suggests eating very little during the Seder besides the 
required amounts of Matzah and Moror,  so that one will have room and 
appetite for the Afikoman and not have to "force" oneself to eat 
it.  I do not know what Rebbetzen Schwab prepared for the Seder 
meal,  but I assume it was not an elaborate meal based on what she 
knew Rav Schwab would eat.

I know that R. Miller would not allow his children or grandchildren 
to read from the sheets that they came home with from Yeshiva.  He 
told them to save it for later,  probably the next day.

And since I mentioned all of the material that the kids come home 
with from school,  let me say that IMO the schools "spoil"  the 
seder.  To me it is clear from the Gemara in Pesachim that the 
children are not supposed to be "primed"  with all sorts of knowledge 
about the Seder.  The things we do are supposed to be new to them so 
that they will ask questions.  My children when they were young and 
my younger grandchildren now know enough to conduct the Seder 
themselves!  There is nothing new for them.

YL 
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