An Ultra-Orthodox Jew examines matzoth or unleavened bread, March 30, 2014, in a small bakery in the southern Israeli village Komemiyut, Israel, March 30, 2014. Matzah is traditionally of the few foods Jews can eat during the weeklong Jewish holiday of Passover, but a change to the rules of kitniyot this year means a greater variety of foods can be consumed, including legumes, corn, millet, beans and rice. File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI |
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NEW YORK, April 22 (UPI) -- Meals initiating Passover, the eight-day Jewish holiday which begins Friday, can include once-prohibited food this year after an 800-year ban on kitniyot was lifted by Conservative rabbis.
The New York-based Rabbinical Assembly's Committee for Jewish Law and Standards reversed a ruling which was influenced by Ashkenazic Jewish teaching and tradition, banning kitniyot from tables offering the Seder, the traditional meal which begins Passover. Kitniyot is a category of food including legumes, corn, millet, beans and rice.
Although the ban's lifting was announced in late 2015, Friday's Seder will be the first Passover meal to include the long-banned foods.
The ruling noted the tradition of avoiding kitniyot at Passover never spread to Sephardic Jews, who descended from Spain and Portugal, and it makes little sense to maintain different Passover traditions. The rules regarding Passover are meant to remind Jews of sacrifice; the practice of eating unleavened bread and no grain products for eight days is evocative of the biblical story of the Jews' escape from slavery, an exodus which permitted no time for bread to rise. The Hebrew term for leavened products, "chametz," also denotes arrogance and other types of behavior regarded as enslavement.
The ban included grain-derived foods, which indicated bread, cereal, pasta and beer were forbidden during Passover. While Jews around the world practice the tradition differently, the list of forbidden foods meant a very limited menu choice for eight days.
Jane Eisner, editor of The Forward, a U.S. newspaper of Jewish opinion, commented in an essay earlier this week, "This drive to connect -- to ancestors, to other Jews -- is a powerful motive, at Passover especially. But the kitniyot conundrum exposes its inconsistencies. Connect with whom? Given the massive disruption of European Jewry in the 20th century, some of us have no idea of our forebears' practices and can only imagine what was served at their seders, if there were seders at all. ... The burden of Passover is also its beauty. We eat differently that week, more simply (at least after the Seders), more attuned to absence and sacrifice. By the sixth day, matzo does, indeed, taste like the bread of affliction, but that's precisely the point."
