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Rabbi, I have heard that some Jews don’t eat rice or corn during Passover, while others do. How do I decide what I can and can’t eat while participating in the holiday?
This is one of the most important questions for how people engage with Passover every year. We know that bread and pasta is an easy no-go for keeping kosher for Passover, but what about some of those other grains and legumes that don’t exactly fit into the “leavening” department?
To find our answer, let’s start with the original Torah text. In the book of Exodus, we read “In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at the evening. No leaven shall be found in your houses for seven days.” (Ex. 12:18-19) That’s all we get as to description of the eating restrictions: no leavening. This is, of course, where we get the concept of matzah, a flat cake of bread that is devoid of any leavening agent.
But why, then, are there questions regarding corn or rice or peanuts? After all, none of those materials use leavening in the preparation of the food items that involve them. But they do fall under a category of foods that Jewish tradition calls kitniyot, which literally means “little things.” And rabbis and scholars have been debating kitniyot for generations.
Up until the 13th century, it was generally agreed that kitniyot were perfectly acceptable for consumption during Passover. Later, though, the debate began to center around the Jewish practice of “building a fence around the Torah,” a practice that involves creating a system of observance that prevented any possibility of accidentally breaking a Jewish law. At that time, it was a concern that kitniyot, which were most often transported in barrels, might accidentally contained a particle of grain or prohibited material, and thus render the entire barrel a violation. The fear of this kind of inadvertent sin led Orthodox thinkers to ban all kitniyot in order to guarantee that no desecration would occur.
Many Sephardic traditions have maintained the acceptance of kitniyot, primarily because of the starring role that rice and similar grains play in their cuisine. This has led many American Jews to claim that they are “Sephardic during Passover,” a way of validating their choice in a tradition that corroborates their own personal expression of the holiday. This, though, can feel a little like appropriating another person’s tradition, and is entirely unnecessary, seeing as history backs up the inclusion of kitniyot in Passover diets without having to engage in cultural borrowing.
All of this is to say that kitniyot are not, by their very nature, prohibited on Passover. Instead, some have chosen to refrain from engaging with them for fear of accidental violation, a problem that is resoundingly unlikely in the realities of modern food distribution. That being said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with observing the holiday to the level of specificity that feels natural and meaningful to you. If refraining from corn and rice makes you feel more authentic in your expression of the holiday, or if further restriction deepens the investment into changing your daily behavior, those are perfectly acceptable reasons to do so. But we need not create an environment of fear in order to make Passover as strenuous as possible; my experience shows that this kind of hurdle-building only makes it harder for people to connect meaningfully with their tradition.
However you choose to celebrate the holiday, I hope this coming week brings you a powerful sense of liberation and celebration of our sacred identity. Regardless of what we choose to eat, the most powerful tradition we inherit from Passover is our call to repeat the story of our people’s liberation from bondage, with a constant awareness and calling to seek out oppression wherever it exists and help to bring freedom and justice to all.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.
