Nullified Kitniyot
I received this image via WhatsApp the other day, and I just don’t get it.
I see it also on the 5 Towns Central website — though I have no idea who they are (on the Internet, no, but not (yet?) on the Star K’s website, among their kashrut alerts. So maybe they don’t stand behind this warning, or it is an urban legend. Because I just don’t get it.
Let us say that there was a minimal amount of actual chametz. Since it exists in the product before Pesach, it is batel (nullified), and that extends even into Pesach. Contrary to what some assert, the halacha should not be that it wakes up (chozer vene’ur) on Pesach. I’ve seen a concern about chametz flour regarding matzah, which a chumra based on a worry that since it is dry substance with dry substance (yavesh beyavesh) we are worried that it didn’t mix with the water in the dough and then would be an issue on Pesach, but even that is an extreme stretch.
Here, we aren’t dealing with chametz (where eating a kezayit of it deliberately within a specific time period is an issur karet, and from there people have adopted stringencies). We are dealing with kitniyot, a minhag, and before Pesach. On Pesach, chametz doesn’t nullify (afilu be’elef lo batel). But we don’t apply that to kitniyot!
And even as there are different levels of stringency, with many historically accepting mei kitniyot / kitnoyot derivatives, we may understand that the kashrut agencies don’t do so, to appeal to the most consumers, I don’t believe this should apply here. It was batel, as they stated. To then assert that the juices are “not kfp” strikes me as wrong. I can see some people getting upset, and not wanting even that. But we are Pharisees, who believe in Talmudic principles, and that includes bittul.
I would happily drink such juice on Pesach, were it offered to me. (So please send me your Ceres juices. They are delicious!)
On a somewhat related note, here is a Halacha Headlines podcast:
Does Medicine need to be Kosher L'pesach?
Machine Matzah VS Shmurah Matzah at expense of other Pesach needs ie: a new dress for your wife with Rabbi Dovid Heber – Expert in kosher pharmaceuticals for the Star K, Director of annual Passover Directory, Rav of Khal Ahavas Yisroel Tzemach Tzedek in Baltimore – 21:05 with Rabbi Gershon Bess – Rov and Poseik in LA – 39:00 with Rabbi
Boruch Hirschfeld – Renowned Rov, Rosh Hakollel and Poseik in Cleveland – 48:57 with Rabbi Yosef Veiner
Rabbi Yosef Veiner – Rav of Kehillas Sha'ar HaShamayim, noted author and lecturer – 52:00 Pesach Hotels - Is it better to stay at home? with Rabbi Leizer Ginzberg – Rosh Kollel in Flatbush – 57:28 מראי מקומות
Rabbi Dovid Lichtenstein speaks with each of these people, and asks several questions. Why we would even need lists of kosher lefesach medicines, given the stated positions of the Chazon Ish and Rav Moshe Feinstein. What arises is that much comes from levels of imposed chumrahs.
Also, a realization that such chumrot don’t come for free. Often, they come at the expense of even other mitzvot. So for instance, simchas yom tov with meat and wine. If you insist on hand-made shmurah matzah at $44 a pound, and not just during the seder but throughout Pesach, certain families will not have money for meat during Yom Tov. It is as much a matter of prioritization as Shabbos candles or Chanukkah candles (Shabbat 23b). Is it right to prioritize a minhag, or even a chumra, at the expense of a mitzvah or chovah?
He asks his third interlocutor about going away for Pesach, in part because of the difficulty of preparing the house for Pesach, especially because the women are working. The answer given is mesiras nefesh.
It is a pity, but he didn’t make the obvious connection. The reason so many people — and being honest here, it is typically the women who take this most seriously and upon whom the work is thrust — feel incapable of preparing the house for Pesach nowadays is a combination of a few factors.
Having bigger houses, rather than one room hut with a dirt floor which you could sweep out. In the more distant past, those with bigger houses would also have servants who could help.
Women having other obligations, such as wage-earner.
Most salient, the promotion of chumrot to the level of halacha. For instance, according to the true, basic halacha, there isn’t a concern of owning chametz less than a kezayit in any one place on Pesach. Yet the nation of Israel is holy and have accepted this as a stringency. Should this include opening up every book and sefer in your (often massive) collection and flipping through it to make sure there are no crumbs? See here for those who have the practice, and why it would seem to be unnecessary. Some of these do not accord with halacha but have been adopted by have been adopted by Jewish women, while others have been adopted by men who don’t have to suffer the consequences, because they have delegated the bulk of it to women.
And now we see the impact of adopting such chumros, that people feel incapable of meeting what they think is absolute halacha and must spend excessive money for what is often a worse alternative, religiously speaking, of Pesach hotels.