Whenever
I am told, as I am now and then, that there are people in the community who
perceive Midway to be Orthodox, I have to chuckle. We are about as far from Orthodoxy as the
moon is from the earth. But the unfunny
dimension of this observation is that the Jewish people have moved so far away
from tradition, that for many it is all but impossible to distinguish between
Orthodoxy and people who are just plain serious about their Jewish
identities. Those crazy observant
people—they’re all the same. But we’re
not all the same. Midway is not
Orthodox, though it is a place for Jews who are serious about their Jewish
identities, and Jewish education, and Jewish tradition as well. The sad truth is such seriousness scares a
few people off. We do our best to be
welcoming, but it is a Conservative synagogue and we’ve got our standards.
We
have also been accused of being Reform.
It’s a silly accusation, sort of like calling a banana a kiwi, but there
you have it: condemnation from both ends of the religious spectrum. In truth, we do change and there are those
who see the specter of Reform behind ever change made. But this is the nature of Conservative
Judaism, a Judaism of both tradition and change. We embrace tradition because it defines our
congregation as Jewish. We look to that
tradition to determine how we are going to define ourselves as Jews. And we believe that the traditions are so
constructed as to enrich our lives. The
truths of these traditions are undeniable: prayer is about living life with
gratitude, which alters how well we deal with adversity; kashrut demands that
we think about what goes into our bodies, its importance reflected in the
multi-billion dollar international business focused on nutrition and
healthy-eating; Shabbat is about giving our bodies and minds a much needed
break, which labor movements fought for, sometimes to the death, in order to
secure that most fundamental right: rest.
And so it is important to remember that tradition endures not because of
mindless habit, but because people have seen the value in it and the good it
brings to life.
This
preceding brief prologue is by way of introducing you to a change, a really big
change in the ritual practice of Conservative Judaism: the decision to permit the eating of rice,
beans, corn, etc., during Pesah. These
were foods that were known as kitniyot—a term poorly translated as
legumes—which Ashkenazic Jews largely refrained from during Pesah, and Jews of
Sefardic provenance would unhesitatingly have on their Pesah tables.
It
was the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), a committee of the
Rabbinical Assembly instituted to deliberate over questions of Jewish law, that
has made this change. The CJLS examined
the Ashkenazic minhag (custom) of refraining from kitnityot during Pesah and concluded
that there was abundant reason to no longer promote it. In order for a teshuvah to become an official
position of the CJLS, it must garner six positive votes out of its membership
of 25 voting rabbis and five non-voting laypeople. As such, it is possible for the CJLS to adopt
as official positions two contradictory opinions, one permitting and one
prohibiting a specific ritual, which it has done in the past. In the case of dropping kitniyot, the
teshuvah (a paper which answers a specific question, typically translated as
“responsum”) passed by a vote of 19 in favor, 1 opposed, and 2 abstaining. That’s a big margin of yeas. A paper was also written in support of
maintaining the traditional prohibition against kitnityot, but it failed to
receive the necessary six votes, and is thus not an official position of the
CJLS. For some challenging Torah study,
just click below for the full teshuvah:
So
what do I think about all this?
Among
serious Jews, which I believe we all are, there is a very strong sentiment to
be protective of Jewish custom. As the
phrase goes—minhag avoteinu b’yadeinu, the custom of our ancestors rest in our
hands. That is to say, if you and I do
not take these customs seriously, who will?
In order to be a link in the chain of tradition, you better like to
link, otherwise the chain is broken and we may alter Judaism irrevocably or
worse yet, abandon it altogether. All
this is by way of saying minhagim (literally: customs) must be taken
seriously. And yet if our ancestors’
custom is in our hands, the fate of the custom also rests in our hands. Do we ever abandon minhagim? We do indeed.
There
was a widespread minhag, for example, to rely on amulets for good fortune, or refuse
to eat bread baked by a gentile, or refrain from writing down the Oral
Torah. These minhagim were abandoned
because they were deemed to be minhag shtut (a silly custom) or in some other
way offensive to the times, or even inimical to Jewish education. Were the Oral Torah not written down, it
could well have been lost. So we wrote
it down and ended up with 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud, a continuing
source of Jewish inspiration to students of Torah the world over. And most of us no longer swing a chicken
around our heads during the time of the High Holidays (kapparot), out of a
distaste for superstition and huge respect for poultry. But
what about kitniyot?
No
religious authority thinks of kitniyot as hametz, which is clearly prohibited
on Pesah. Kitniyot is simply not hametz. There are only five grains that can become
hametz, and they are: wheat, barley,
spelt, rye and oats. Corn, beans and
rice—not hametz. Oddly enough, corn,
beans and rice cannot be used as ingredients in matzah. Only that which can become hametz can be used
in the baking of matzah. The Sefardic
Jews who emanated from Spain and Portugal never had this minhag of kitniyot and
happily could eat rice and beans over the festival. So why did the Ashknazim adopt what can only
be thought of as an unusual stringency?
Several reasons are suggested in the literature.
Some
thought that it had to do with how it was made or how it was stored. If the rice were made like a porridge, for
example, perhaps it could be confused as oatmeal and then lead people to eat oatmeal,
farina, etc., over Pesah, which you should not do. Or perhaps the preparation of a bean or rice
meal included its mixture with some sort of grain, and the thought of preparing
the dish sans oats or absent rye was unthinkable. Or perhaps the beans were stored in bins
formerly used for wheat, in which case the beans would be covered with hametz
dust. It is interesting that the
literature itself can offer no single answer on the why of the prohibition
against kitniyot.
For
as many years as I have tried to explain this prohibition, I have gotten a host
of puzzled facial expressions. A photo
anthology of people trying to discern the meaning of kitniyot would be most
amusing. People get hametz; they don’t
get kitniyot, and they especially don’t get it when learning that Sefardim
happily consume it free of rabbinic objection.
The kitniyot prohibition ends up being a gratuitous distinction between
one major group of Jews and another. The
prohibition also inhibits unnecessarily the food choices available to
vegetarians, some of whom use beans, corn and soy as significant protein
substitutes for the meat, fish or cheese they do not consume. The prohibition further limits everyone’s
choice in Pesah-friendly foods complicating those who are adopting healthier
modes of eating as they move away from red meats or eggs. And the prohibition removes from the shopping
list a host of substantially less expensive food items, which could bring down
the total cost involved in our pre-Pesah shops.
Really—during the seder, when it comes to marror (bitter herbs) we could
just pull out the pre-Pesah grocery receipt and gaze at it, allow everyone to
scream in horror, and then go on with the seder. That grocery receipt is one tough piece of
marror.
For
all these reasons, I want to let you know that I fully endorse the CJLS’
teshuvah, and over Pesah, I would happily partake of beans (if I ate them, but
I don’t) or corn (which I do eat) or encourage others to do the same. This is not a slippery slide toward Reform
Judaism. It is a decision based on the
idea that Jewish law (Halakhah) is a reflection of God’s will, and that God’s
will is always of value and meaning. To
the extent that the kitnityot minhag does not seem to be of value or meaning,
or reflective of God at all, there is no reason to promote it any longer. But… (isn’t there always a but?)
You
know what is more important than eating kitniyot on Pesah? Shalom bayit, peace within the home. Now that the CJLS has redefined kashrut of over
Pesah, you have to find out which members of your family can actually stomach
this teshuvah (sorry—I couldn’t resist).
Just because the CJLS approves of something, doesn’t mean your family
will. Or even should. Toward that end, as for the synagogue, I
think we will keep it kitnityot-free (at least for now) so that no one is made
to feel uncomfortable. What the
CJLS decision will allow all of us to do is open a conversation about kitniyot
with the family. That would be a great
discussion. Some questions to get the
conversation going:
What
does the observance of the prohibition against kitniyot mean to me?
How
governed am I by the decisions of the CJLS?
If I
abandon this minhag, what will I lose?
What will I gain?
Who
within our family will we be discouraged from our Pesah table if we abandon the
kitniyot prohibition?
Good
questions. Now just to throw a little
reality check into this article… I may
permit kitniyot over Pesah, but my primary mission has always been and remains
to increase the numbers of Jews who fully observe Pesah by refraining from real
hametz for the eight days of the festival. That concern will not make us Orthodox, but
some in the community will certainly think it does.
