Can you eat soybeans on passover

Respectfully, George. The details of implementation inform your question, which is an excellent one which comes up more and more frequently as people are committed to observing the mitzvah of shmirat haguf, "care of the body," and tzaar baalei chayyim, "prevention of cruelty to all life forms.

Passover traditions differ greatly by region. Sefardim Jews from countries bordering the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia customarily eat kitniyot legumes , which include beans, peas, rice, millet, sesame and sunflower seeds, corn, and peanuts.

Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe and Russia do not. Those who follow halachah, Jewish law, find these communities actually have created different rules for Pesach food preparation regarding these items.

Until our times, it was customary to follow the practice of the region of your family of origin. But today families are far more blended than at previous times, so choice is increasingly involved in setting up a Passover practice for oneself and one's family. AND, it is recommended by many rabbis and endorsed by some decisors of Jewish law for strict vegetarians to adopt the Sephardi practice of eating unfermented soy products on Passover. I hope that this helps you in your dilemma.

Please also see articles on eco-kosher on this website. Also, because cooked kitniyot porridges looked very similar to hametz, or because it was customary to prepare kitniyot and hametz together, the custom from the Middle Ages to avoid legumes took root. In a recent email to her congregants, Rabbi Annie Tucker of Beth Hillel Congregation B'nai Emunah in Wilmette asked: "Why must we still be bound by the restrictive practices of our ancestors? This "foolish" custom, many rabbis say, detracts from the joy of the holiday by limiting the number of permitted foods.

There's a lack of healthy packaged foods and an extremely inflated cost of products under Passover supervision. It causes unnecessary divisions among Jewish ethnic groups. It's not going to change things for me. What I do makes me feel connected to my parents and grandparents. Jonathan Lehrer, past president of Beth Hillel Congregation B'nai Emunah, said that he and his wife "respect and honor Jewish tradition, but as Conservative Jews, we respond to changing times.

Others say they'll do whatever the rules allow, even though they're still confused. Many couples are split: He wants to add kitniyot, for instance, and she doesn't. Levin has heard the entire range of voices, from "'Thank you, thank you; we've been waiting for this forever' to 'I intellectually understand what the case is that you're making, and I intellectually agree with you, but I don't think I could actually put rice on my Seder table.

And of course, Levin has heard the dissenting opinion. We're proud to be Ashkenazic, and we're not going to cross over to the dark side of kitniyot. Peggy Wolff is a freelance writer.

Skip to content. Certain foods must be made in certain ways or with rabbinic supervision. They also forbid the mixing of dairy products with meat products. Passover is a Jewish holiday which is celebrated for seven or eight days in the spring.

During Passover, observant Jews follow a second set of dietary laws. These laws are "overlaid" on top of the everyday kosher rules. The Passover dietary rules restrict the use of grains that can ferment and become leavened.

These grains are wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye. During Passover, people can only eat unleavened grains. Wheat flour is permitted only if it is baked into Matzah unleavened bread. Yet, in an interesting twist from the food allergy perspective , one can bake wheat flour into Matzah. You can then grind those Matzah back up to create "Matzah meal" to use as an ingredient in something else.

Therefore, foods that are Kosher for Passover are not necessarily free of these grains. To further confuse things, not all Jews follow the same set of Passover restrictions.

Ashkenazi Jews and their descendants follow a stringent set of restrictions. Sephardic Jews and their descendants follow different Passover rules. Ashkenazi Jews also do not eat corn, soybeans, legumes, rice, millet or other grains during Passover.

Some Ashkenazi communities also forbid eating dry peas, caraway, fennel seed, mustard, garlic and peanuts. They also forbid derivatives of any of the forbidden items such as soybean oil or flavors made from grain alcohol.

Most American Jews are from an Ashkenazi background. For this reason, American kosher foods generally follow the more stringent Ashkenazi rules.