{"items": [{"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/249042838572598?comment_id=249060638570818", "anchor": "fb-249060638570818", "service": "fb", "text": "The answer to your question is messy. While wheat products may be allowed (if they are matza) or not allowed (if they are chametz), kitniyot are simply not allowed (for Ashkenazim). Kitniyot are not the same as chametz. The prohibition against chametz is biblical. The prohibition against kitniyot is customary, and only among Ashkenazim, as you note.
The question about what you can make matza from is also messy. For matza, there is a difference between \"allowed during the week of passover\" and \"allowed to be used to keep the commandment of eating matza during the seder.\" The rules for seder matza are stricter.
Your question about the timing of the water implies that you want to treat corn like wheat (or the other allowable matza grains, which corn/maize is not one). It is possible to make flatbreads about of corn, rice, or beans. They wouldn't be allowed as a replacement for wheat seder matza (as oat or spelt matza would be). I think the question about whether you can eat kitniyot if you treat it like matza grain is that torah-traditional Ashkenazi Jews say \"lo ploog\" - there's no difference, i.e., raw corn on the cob, cooked corn, cornbread, corn tortillas, it's all kitniyot, and all prohibited.
Note that there are some baked goods that are allowed on Passover. If you bake with matzo meal flour or potato flour, even some leavening agents (like baking soda and baking powder) are allowed on Passover.
Does any of this make sense or follow logic? I do not claim that it does, and there are many elements of Jewish law, kashrut law, and passover kashrut law, that are difficult to understand and/or accept.", "timestamp": "1365043214"}, {"author": "Yaron", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/249042838572598?comment_id=249068475236701", "anchor": "fb-249068475236701", "service": "fb", "text": "I don't know where the 18 minutes specified by the rabinnic tradition exactly comes from, but, corn is not wheat, and so you'd have to get a rabinnic rendering as to the process (various aspects of it) of creating kosher-for-Passover flour out of corn. (And if you want to market it, the rendering would have to be from a widely trusted authority...) And then there's not only the process of making the flatbread, but the storage and handling of the flour itself.
That is, of course, if you could get an Ashkenazi rabinnic authority to render that corn is legal to use to begin with. As Andrew points out, there's an inherent symbolism in there. It's not merely about the rising/baking - there are plenty of baked goods that the rabinnic establishment is apparently fine with us eating on Passover, generally made from potato flour, and egg noodles are used as well. So there is something symbolic about the grains proscribed by the liturgy, and then something symbolic about the products proscribed by the various traditions (legumes by the Ashkenazi tradition). (And quinoa has managed to escape that symbolism.)
You could ask along these same lines, would horsemeat be kosher if scientists could produce horses with cloven hooves... or pigs that chew their cud... or lobster with fins and scales... (incidentally, catfish is often considered non-kosher, even though it has fins and scales, b/c it's a bottom-feeder...)", "timestamp": "1365045146"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/249042838572598?comment_id=249072931902922", "anchor": "fb-249072931902922", "service": "fb", "text": "The 18 minutes is derived from a passage in the Talmud (Pesachim 46a) where Rabbi Shimeon ben Lakish says that the time of fermentation is the time it takes to walk a \"mil,\" the distance from Migdal Nunia to Tiberias. Later rabbis decide that the time to walk this distance is about 18 minutes. See, for example, http://www.steinsaltz.org/learning.php?pg=Daf_Yomi...", "timestamp": "1365046533"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/249042838572598?comment_id=249788375164711", "anchor": "fb-249788375164711", "service": "fb", "text": "@Andrew: \"The rules for seder matza are stricter\"
Right. I'm going for \"allowed during the week of passover\".", "timestamp": "1365186397"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/249042838572598?comment_id=249816701828545", "anchor": "fb-249816701828545", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, The prohibition against corn is a stringency beyond the biblical or talmudic rules. It seems to be from 13th century France (and is not held by Sephardi Jews), and the inclusion of maize as kitniyot is surely from after 1492. I think it's a straight prohibition, and to that extent, I don't think those rules would accommodate \"what if I treat it carefully, like shmurah matza grain?\" But that's just my thought as a casual observer, I can't say what strictly practicing Jews do or think.", "timestamp": "1365192396"}]}