Monday, March 23, 2009
OU Transliteration Humor
It's nice when a blog people actually read picks up on important news like the OU's kitniyot waffling on quinoa.
In my last post, I pointed out the different spellings of kitni[y]?o(t|s|th) on the same site, and had simply assumed that there were just a lot of articles with different authors and no style guide. I could easily excuse the headline writer of this article for not carefully reading the article. What I hadn't noticed last time is this page (which is very similar, but not identical to, the content of the PDF Passover Guide), which includes all of the following words, all within two paragraphs:
Why not just throw in some "kitnios" for good measure?
In my last post, I pointed out the different spellings of kitni[y]?o(t|s|th) on the same site, and had simply assumed that there were just a lot of articles with different authors and no style guide. I could easily excuse the headline writer of this article for not carefully reading the article. What I hadn't noticed last time is this page (which is very similar, but not identical to, the content of the PDF Passover Guide), which includes all of the following words, all within two paragraphs:
- machloketh
- kitniyoth
- kitniyot
- kitniyos
Why not just throw in some "kitnios" for good measure?
Labels: judaism, kashrut, kitniyos, kitniyot, kitniyoth, orthodox judaism
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Quinoa 2009
Once again, it's time for the annual check on the status of quinoa for Passover. This year, instead of Aish Hatorah, the source of bafflement is the OU.
Their Passover Guide is out and online. The full PDF quotes the now common and relatively safe "ask your Rabbi" (yes, Rabbi is capitalized) position. One article attempts to define "kitnios" (or is it "kitniyot?") logically by reference to the Mishnah Brura, thus stating that quinoa "logically" should be kitniyot, despite all the exceptions that lead to the conclusion that kitniyot defies logic.* (Another baffling statement in the article is that if kitniyot are prepared on Pesach for a permissible reason, "they should be prepared in special non-Pesach and non-chametz utensils, which should not be washed with the Pesach dishes" -- anyone know where that comes from?) The other quinoa-related news on the OU website is the short kitniyot list, which, despite the official "ask your Rabbi" position, says (drumroll please):
Huh?
* The article was prepared in a word processor with autocorrect turned on. Anyone want to guess how I knew that? :-)
Their Passover Guide is out and online. The full PDF quotes the now common and relatively safe "ask your Rabbi" (yes, Rabbi is capitalized) position. One article attempts to define "kitnios" (or is it "kitniyot?") logically by reference to the Mishnah Brura, thus stating that quinoa "logically" should be kitniyot, despite all the exceptions that lead to the conclusion that kitniyot defies logic.* (Another baffling statement in the article is that if kitniyot are prepared on Pesach for a permissible reason, "they should be prepared in special non-Pesach and non-chametz utensils, which should not be washed with the Pesach dishes" -- anyone know where that comes from?) The other quinoa-related news on the OU website is the short kitniyot list, which, despite the official "ask your Rabbi" position, says (drumroll please):
The following may be Kitniyot and are therefore not used:
Quinoa
Amaranth
Huh?
* The article was prepared in a word processor with autocorrect turned on. Anyone want to guess how I knew that? :-)
Labels: judaism, kitniyot, passover, quinoa
