Questions

[magid]

1. Why would a radio station bleep sh** but not bleep cr**? Same length word meaning essentially the same thing.
   
   
2. For the Passover observers:
   Why is mustard considered kitniyot? (Yes, it can be powdered, but I cannot imagine anyone ever making crackers/bread wholly out of mustard powder!)
   Why is baking powder permissible? (Since it, like yeast, makes things rise.)
   And why is wild rice considered kitniyot, given that it is a grass like quinoa, which is permissible?
   
   
3. For those who have read Sheri Tepper's Gibbon's Decline and Fall:
   Which vial do you think Carolyn chose in the end? (Ruby = mated pairs with few children, topaz = parthenogenic, emerald = only chosen pregnancies, sapphire = extended youth without adolescence until later maturity, lapis = as it was.)

Comments

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

1. It is more socially acceptable. Don't know why, but it is....

2. quick google answer:
Talmud: It grows in a pod
Not sure: It is often grown/harvested with a bunch of the Forbidden Grains

yeah. annoys me every year...

[magid.livejournal.com]

1. I don't understand why that should be. I guess I'll have to put it with all the other things I don't understand about modern society.

2.
a. Pods = kitniyot? I never knew that.
b. That one bugs me, always, in these days of hyper-vigilance in kashrut.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

2) because the kitniyot rules are gibberish… as are a number of the auxiliary pesadic rules… that's why I've given up on most of them and am down to 'the big 5 grains, and yeast'

[magid.livejournal.com]

I find enough to eat that I function fine, but when I try to think about the kitniyot customs, it annoys, so I end up leaving it alone again.

[gingicat]

3. I would have chosen sapphire, but I don't know what she chose.

[magid.livejournal.com]

My guess is that she didn't choose topaz or lapis, given that she was a happily-married woman who'd seen what the status quo had done to friends. And probably not emerald, which might over time lead to less anti-women sentiment, but perhaps not.

I can see why the question was left open, but, o, how tantalizing!

(If I wrote fanfic, this calls out for something.)

[(Anonymous)]

It is not leaveners that are forbidden but leavened five-grain products.

Yeast exists in the air. If we have no five-grain products other than matza products, we do not risk having any five-grain products rise. So, we get rid of the non-matza five-grain products, not the leaveners.

Quinoa is no where near universally permitted, is it?

[magid.livejournal.com]

No one allows yeast, though that's 'just' a leavener. If both yeast and baking powder were in the same category (mutar/assur), then it would be easier for me. And while yeast is in the air, I can see that it would be reasonable to distinguish between the yeast one can see and the yeast one can't (rather like with bugs, how I was taught, anyway: if you can't see them, they aren't there).

When I last looked around, quinoa was accepted by the Star-K and some other fairly respected agencies. My impression is that the Age of Automatic Kitniyotizing of Non-Potato Starches has passed, though I know that there are those who do not accept quinoa. (It's a boon for kosher vegan people on Pesach, though.)

[(Anonymous)]

As far as I know, yeast itself is not forbidden. The bit of fermenting dough saved from the previous batch of bread and used to provide yeast for the next batch is forbidden.

In modern times, there are kosher l'Pesach commercial yeasts available. These, unlike some of today's commercial yeasts, are not and were never grown on five-grains media.

It is not true that "no one allows yeast." Wine, after all, is fermented with yeast. To make kosher l'Pesach wine and other kosher l'Pesach alcoholic drinks, kosher l'Pesach yeast is used.

In any case, there is no doubt a distinction between biological and chemical leaveners, if that helps. Um, and then there are eggs.

It wouldn't feel right to me to state with no qualifications that quinoa is permissible.

[rethought.livejournal.com]

1. I don't understand censoring reasoning at all. *sigh*

[magid.livejournal.com]

Neither do I. The world is such a strange place.

[bz-mahrabu.livejournal.com]

2. Yeast doesn't make things rise - water does! (I know, I know, but let's not let reality get in the way.)