Thanks JF02, but it is clear that the people who are misunderstanding, really do not know the halacha. My entire community has people whose old stoves were used that way, frum, ehrliche people, rabbonim, their rebbetzins, their Bubbies and Zaydies. My entire family were not following some off the mainstream heter. I am frankly shocked at the tone of some of the posts, because EVEN WERE IT THE CASE THAT I DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE P’SAK (and it is not the case), the very fact that there are (according to some of those posters)minority opinions that this is permissible, should be reason enough for them to stop trying to “convert” me to their thinking, and make me feel I have been mechalleles yom tov all my life, not to mention my parents’, family, and friends’ lives. It would be news to my grandfathers who were rabbonim, to their fathers, who were likewise musmachim, to my neighbors who until recent years all had the same type of stove and oven that I do and ALL cook the same way on Yom Tov.
I think I have been pretty tolerant of these somewhat smug “you must have misunderstood” comments, because it is not my nature to want machlokess. But I want to say something. If anyone holds a differing view as is your right, perhaps your view is the one that is based on a misunderstanding of something that you heard. Just because it is a more strict interpretation, does not make it THE one and only correct interpretation. It might be, but it just as easily might not be. I am not going to start enumerating the many, MANY foolish statements made by some people here over the course of time, in the misguided belief that what they were saying was halacha. Check with your own rabbonim about how to conduct your religious lives, but please do not try to “educate” me about something which I have learned over and over as being correct. Were I to change the type of oven that I now have, I takeh would have to completely change the manner in which I cook on Yom Tov, because the stoves do not work the same way as the one that I have used and that my mother and grandmothers used. But until that day comes, and until my poseik tells me otherwise, I will continue to do what I have always done. I hope this will bring an end to this lively discussion. At least I am glad that my apparently controversial position has kept us all so busy for the past few days. If it encouraged any one to actually look up the halachos related to m’avreir and ma’avir, then it was worth it.