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

[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.