Once again, I'm not sleeping

I'm so tired.

But between this toothache and our cat, who bangs on my wastebasket every time I nearly fall asleep, I can't sleep.

And it gets to the point that my sleep schedule is so messed up that I can't sleep, anyway. I'm tired, I'm not sleepy.

I don't think I've fallen asleep before three AM this week. I pulled one all-nighter, Saturday night, in order to do class prep for Sunday morning. I didn't get anything done on it -- I spent six hours staring at the computer screen trying to come up with stuff, and failed. And I had to improvise my entire class. Which went okay, mainly because my kids are great -- as we finished up the class, the two kids had, on their own, laid out three different, consistent positions on kitnyot -- 1. they're not chametz, so they should be allowable on Pesach; 2. they're similar to things that are chametz, so they should be forbidden, just to be on the safe side; and 3. corn-on-the-cob should be allowable, since it's clearly a vegetable, but cornmeail and things made out of cornmeal should be forbidden, since they're too close to bread.

As class ended, Benjamin had just asked, "But what about corn fritters, where you have kernels of corn?"

I swear, this class teaches itself. These are the sorts of questions THEY come up with.

See, for those of you who are not Jewish:

During Pesach, we don't eat chametz, which, broadly, consists of anything made from oats, barley, wheat, spelt, or rye, UNLESS you first turn the oats, barley, wheat, spelt, or rye into matzah (by grinding it into flour, mixing it with water, and baking it very quickly into flat, crunchy sheets). That's perhaps a bit of an oversimplification, but that's the idea. Matzah has to be baked quickly, because, if you take time with it, it could pick up naturally-occuring airborne yeasts and rise. And the whole point of it is that it doesn't rise.

But after this, it gets tricky.

Most authorities think it's fine to take that matzah and then do stuff with it -- you can grind it back into matzah meal and use matzah meal the way you'd use cream of wheat, for instance. You can make matzah balls out of matzah meal. You can even grind it finely enough to, sort of, use it like flour. And that's okay, according to most authorities. (There are some people that don't do this, and, in fact, go to extreme lengths to make sure that their matzahs don't even get WET.) And according to everybody, there are things that are NOT chametz, like potatoes, that you can make flour out of, and you can make stuff with that.

Anyway, that's a digression -- that's not where I was intending to go with this, but I'm writing this because I'm really tired and not tracking well, so there.

What I was INTENDING to say is that there are a whole bunch of grains and so forth that are not mentioned as chametz, but which many Jewish communities decided to treat as chametz, anyway. Most obvious among these are rice, corn, and beans -- they're obvious because in OTHER Jewish communities, many favorite dishes are MADE with rice, corn and beans.

Mostly, Ashkenazic Jews (Jews whose ancestors came from Gemany and points east of there -- Poland, Russia, Lithuania, &ct) avoid these kitnyot. And Sephardic Jews (ancestors from Spain, northern Africa, generally around the Mediterranian, and so forth) have favorite Pesach dishes that involve rice, corn, or beans.

But the list of what is kitnyot goes way, way beyond those things. In some communities, it could include peanuts, garlic, mustard, all sorts of things. There's no actual LIST of what's kitnyot, because it varies from community to community. It's really random. I mean, you find a lot of people avoid garlic, but consider garlic powder to be okay. Or, who consider peanut butter to be okay, but whole peanuts to not be. Or consider whole peanuts to be okay, but not peanut butter. Whiskey tango foxtrot, over?

Basically, there's no actual halachic definition of what is or is not kitnyot. It's more or less an emotional response to, "this thing feels like it is similar to things which are chametz."

Which is why all three of the answers which the two kids who showed up for Hebrew School on Easter Sunday are really good, plausible, consistent answers, and why the question of corn fritters is so interesting.

They also asked me how come almost nobody showed up, and I said, "Probably because it's Easter." They said, "But we're Jewish." I said, "Yes, but lots of us have non-Jewish families, and we tend to spend Christian holidays with non-Christian relatives."

Which is true. Both the kids who were there are from intermarriages. As, for that matter, am I. Although I'm not, anymore. My father converted about six years ago. I actually like to present that one as a brain-teaser when the subject comes up in class.

They managed to distract me a lot from the lesson plan I'd worked up (about counting the Omer). Mainly because I was tired, therefore easily sidetracked.

I need to get to sleep. I'm tired, and have to pack up Pesach dishes tomorrow -- no, it's 5 am. Today. And I have to go to work in the afternoon.