Do you update your minhagim based on practicality?

amother

Mistyrose

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:06 pm

zohar wrote:

The reason ppl don't eat brown sugar, ice cream, ketchup, pickles etc. Is because they don't "mish". Not because Babby and Zeidy didn't have it "in der heim". Growing up, my family was very strict with not mishing. No oil, used schmaltz, no cocoa, no potato starch etc. But we did eat bananas and pineapple and kiwis and other fruits not available to our grandparents.

Can you explain "not mishing"? I'm not familiar with the term. Is it any product that has been processed?

zohar

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:13 pm

amother wrote:

Can you explain "not mishing"? I'm not familiar with the term. Is it any product that has been processed?

I explained earlier that it is the minhag or chumra, not really sure what category it falls under, where people are extra stringent on pesach and therefore will not eat food prepared and/or cooked by others even though throughout the rest of the year they would eat from their neighbor's homes and rely on hechsheirim (which is still good Prepared by others).

mommy3b2c

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:19 pm

amother wrote:

Pesach minhagim are a VERY touchy subject....

My parents don't use a lot of ingredients that their parents didn't use.... but of course, so much of this stuff wasn't available in Europe, so of course they didn't use them.

Current example: brown sugar.
Grandma - both in Europe and in NY - never used brown sugar. I don't think they had KLP brown sugar in Europe. However, we always used regular sugar, we didn't boil our sugar, etc.
Mom won't use brown sugar, because Grandma didn't.

I want to use brown sugar!

Next example: ice cream
MIL won't use ice cream on Pesach. She says they never had ice cream on Pesach. No duh. They didn't have cholov yisroel kosher l'pesach ice cream when she was growing up.

I want ice cream on pesach!

I'm not asking for advice at all... I'm just curious how steadfast you hold onto "minhagim" (I don't even know if these are REAL minhagim).

One of my pet peeves. My mil drives me crazy. Only orange juice, no lemon juice. Why? Because my father didn't use lemon juice. Duh!! There was no lemon juice.

My favorite is only oberlander cookies, because growing up they only ate oberlander klp cookies. lol. That was the only company that made klp cookies. Drives me nuts! But to be fair, she does buy the other company cookies for me.

amother

Mistyrose

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:25 pm

zohar wrote:

Okay - so like potato starch is mishing because a factory took the starch out of the potato, so that's a prepared food? (but potato starch 'extracted' at home is okay)? Interesting - thanks!

zohar

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:56 pm

amother wrote:

Okay - so like potato starch is mishing because a factory took the starch out of the potato, so that's a prepared food? (but potato starch 'extracted' at home is okay)? Interesting - thanks!

Exactly. There are actually people who make their own potato starch but my family didn't find it worth while, so we just did without. There are also different practices of "not mishing" in every family. Some people eat store bought, but don't eat in other's homes. Some eat single ingredients such as potato starch, cocoa etc. But not baked or cooked or multi ingredient foods like cookies, cakes, chocolate, ketchup and ice cream.

amother

Bronze

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:57 pm

amother wrote:

I used to keep the minhag of not using utensils that fell on the floor on pesach. It was making me insane. I finally decided my mental health was more important than this minhag.

We keep that minhag which was never mine, it was dh's mother's and yes, it drives me insane and I ALSO think my mental health is more important than his mother's minhag (and if he keeps his mom's minhagim, why can't our kids keep their mom's minhagim, which would be mine?!!?) Sadly, he doesn't agree with me and if I try not to keep it he says I'm not respecting him and his minhagim (which unfortunately I can't argue with, I just can't seem to respect that minhag embarrassed

amother

Oak

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:14 pm

amother wrote:

Both my DF and DFIL hold that you need to kasher a pesach'dig utensil that fell on the floor. Rolling Eyes

So you can do what my mother and my MIL both do. When it falls on the floor in front of DF/DFIL, it gets taken into the kitchen, washed off and replaced in the utensil box. And nobody is any the wiser. If they don't see it, it didn't happen.

IOW, Respect his minhag to his face but do what you need to do...

pizza4

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:18 pm

amother wrote:

Both my DF and DFIL hold that you need to kasher a pesach'dig utensil that fell on the floor. Rolling Eyes

I don't know about this, it could get sticky. If a kid sees you doing this and they know their father believes that it needs to be kashered and you're putting it back anyway... they will lose respect as well...

zohar

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:23 pm

We rinse off utensils they fall on the floor. I never found it to be a big deal but that's probably because I grew up with it and it wasn't made into a big deal. Your fork fell? Dump it into the sink and take a new one. But I can understand how annoying it could be too someone who is not used to it. Dh did not grow up with that minhag, but since he is a borderline germaphobe, and did not believe in the teen second rule, he practices this all year round.

amother

Oak

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:23 pm

pizza4 wrote:

They're all in on it. It's no big deal. They lose respect for the minhag but not for the people involved. I have no problem with that. (The boys don't see it happen, and the girls learn how to deal with their dh's burdensome minhagim.)

amother

Oak

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:25 pm

zohar wrote:

THat's still easy to deal with. Problem is when they believe that it cannot be used at all on pesach even after rinsed off. That you need to keep those utensils separate from the usable ones.

chocolate fondue

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:28 pm

zohar wrote:

Some people have the minhag to put aside any utensil that falls on the floor on Pesach and not use it again until the next Pesach. My parents used to have that minhag but it made everyone so tense that I made a firm decision not to take it on in my house.

zaq

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:53 pm

Cmon be nice wrote:

No. The brisket joke is about a lady who always cut off a piece of meat before she cooks it. When asked why she says because thats what her mother did. Finally the great grandmother explains that the pot they used was very small and therefore they had to cut the meat. This is turn became a minhag

No. this joke illustrates minhag shtus.

gp2.0

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 10:58 pm

I see it like this:

There are two separate terms being conflated here, minhag and chumrah.

One is that Pesach involves special minhagim that you keep depending on where your family is from. Kitniyos, for example, falls into this category. Not eating matzah for a specific amount of time before Pesach falls into this category.

Then there is the idea that Pesach is a time for taking extra chumros upon oneself. These chumros are different than minhagim because they aren't required to be passed down from one generation to another. Sometimes they are accepted community-wide, such as Gebrokts. But for the most part these are chumros that each individual must decide if they choose to keep or not, especially if they are chumros like not eating ice cream or holding the matzah with a napkin at the seder.

The line between them is hard to draw sometimes. Not eating Gebrokts the first 7 days of Pesach is a chumra, but specifically eating Gebrokts on the 8th day of Pesach is a minhag. So it's easy to confuse the two. But the whole reason why Gebrokts is eaten on the 8th day is to remind everyone that Gebrokts is NOT a requirement for keeping Pesach, rather it is a chumra people take upon themselves.

IMO, none of the examples in this thread qualify as minhagim. Rather, they all fall under the umbrella of chumros, which each individual can choose whether or not they want to keep.

amother

Copper

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 11:03 pm

Val titosh toras imecha-which means minhagim. You do whatever your husband tells you.
If we laugh or question our mesorah then we may as well not keep anything.
This discussion is for eighth graders.
My mother comes from a family that bruks they dunk the matzah into the soup -heaven! She married a chasidish guy that has seperate tables for matzah and regular food. We don't mish or bruk.
Keeping these chumros it doesn't restrict us, it makes us malachim-royal.

essie14

Tue, Mar 21 2017, 12:53 am

greenfire wrote:

too funny ... I make borscht only nobody drinks it ... [from my boiled beets for pesach potatoe salad] my kids might even think it's a minhag to make it just to throw it out after pesach

"Yes, I remember my dear mother making it and leaving it in the fridge all Pesach and then we symbolically threw it in the trash when we turned back over to chametz. It's a treasured family minhag."

greenfire

Tue, Mar 21 2017, 12:59 am

essie14 wrote:

"Yes, I remember my dear mother making it and leaving it in the fridge all Pesach and then we symbolically threw it in the trash when we turned back over to chametz. It's a treasured family minhag."

lol so it's definitely a minhag & looking at the majestic magenta colour is quite pleasing

[albeit the dxh used to love it - which is how I started reserving the liquids ... it's quite easy too a little lemon & sugar and leave some diced beets ~ voila]

amother

Coral

Tue, Mar 21 2017, 1:09 am

amother wrote:

Both my DF and DFIL hold that you need to kasher a pesach'dig utensil that fell on the floor. Rolling Eyes

So my minhag is the ung uns get plastic utensils all pesach

amother

Coffee

Tue, Mar 21 2017, 1:22 am

greenfire wrote:

We love the borsht!
My mom makes a huuuuge pot. My married brothers all come to pick it up ( together with some falsha fish and schmaltz) The wives don't touch it though! We drink it cold and shlug was interested and eat hot with potatoes in place of soup.
The beets get diced and turned into delicious beet salad. ( It also combats the matzah constipation!)

Re the fallen items- we call them "di gefalana soldoten" ( fallen soldiers) and have a designated spot where items r placed. We don't have a pressure about it it at all and joke about it all year (random shabbos with fork falling on floor gets an exclamation of " mazel tov! Yetzt Ken men was nisht nitzen biz nexta yur"!😁
(We don't kasher them again though)

I feel it's alot in the attitude. We're shtultz with our minhagim. And stick to them. We actually hold very many chumros, and yes of course many of them started because this or that specific product was not available in eastern Europe of pre war. But WHO CARES! It's EIGHT days, we totally survive without these million things...

Btw when we'rein school it was the biggest competition to compare which family keeps the most chumros! Lol! I always thought we were close to runner up till I got married and went to my in laws, and when I heard what my uncle does!!

Eta: we have 3 sets of cutlery, like 4 soup ladles etc. and alot more pot covers and containers then typically needed to replace the fallen items. (My parents have a pesach kitchen in the basement, very many utensils land on the stairs en route...)