The Most Stressful Time of Year...Passover!

To eat or not to eat.  That is the question...OY!  

What are you going to eat for Passover?  Will you finally give in and eat the 'forbidden' legumes and other foods classified as kitniyot (literally, 'little things').  Or, will you break the bonds of slavery and eat...ENJOY, ESSEN.  Have some rice!  Have some peanuts!  Have some beans.  Have some popcorn!

Why not?  The ban on kitniyot is a symbol of everything that is wrong with Orthodox Judaism.  To start with, it is not based either in Torah or in the Talmud. The 'ban' doesn't apply to the Sephardic community at all, who go on quite happily eating all manners of 'forbidden' foods. It is an invention of increasingly stringent Orthodox Jews totally unrelated to anything Jewish.  How stupid is it?

Well, Rabbenu Yeruham ben Meshullam of Provence (14th century) said "those accustomed to not eating rice and various kinds of cooked kitniyot on Pesach abide by a stupid custom which makes it harder on themselves (meaning to observe the festival) and I have no idea why they do so."

But, wait!  That's not all.  Rav Yaakov ben Asher rejected the custom, saying "it is an excessive restriction and improper."  Rav Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi known as 'Zvi the Wise One' of the 17th/18th century, and his son, Rabbi Yaakov Amdan opposed the custom with all their might and wanted to eliminate it.

The Torah sets forth the forbidden grains:  wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye.  That's it.  Nothing more.  (Pesachim 35a explicates).  The restriction on eating kitniyot is actually not a 'law' it is a custom.  Ask yourself this:  did the Medieval commentators who started this nareshkeit know about corn?  Corn is from the New World.  Soy?  No, they weren't eating tofu.  

The Orthodox world, primarily the Ashkenazic Orthodox world, is becoming increasingly insane about all manners of restrictions, rules and laws that have absolutely no basis in anything other than their own mishigas!  The time is now to rebel!  Eat kitniyot this year!