[Sca-cooks] Passover cakes

[David Friedman]

>It makes me wonder, though, about period Passover. Which of those
>rules were in effect when?

If you are sufficiently curious, I believe there are well over a 
hundred thousand surviving responsa, giving legal opinions across a 
very wide range of time and space.

Of course, most of them aren't available in English. There's an 
enormous surviving literature on Jewish law--I've been studying the 
subject in preparation for including it in a seminar I'm teaching 
next semester. Bits of it have been translated, large parts have not.

>How old is the Egyptian custom of avoiding chickpeas?

The Mishnah distinguishes, if I correctly remember what I have just 
been reading, among various sorts of beans for various legal 
purposes. I don't know if chickpeas are avoided at Passover or not, 
but the Mishnah is available in English.

In fact, quite a lot of it is available in English online:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mishnah

-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com