Preparing Food on Shabbos - Rabbi Boruch Tzikvashvili shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lemaan Yishme’u,” a podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 Hello, everyone. In this series, with Hashem’s help, we’ll discuss practical Shabbos laws relating to handling food. There are many laws involved—as the Alter Rebbe says, “A major law of Shabbos.” We encounter many of them when handling food on Shabbos, and the aim of these classes is to cover the main, most common issues. We aren’t claiming to cover every law that applies to handling food on Shabbos, but rather the things each of us encounters week after week. Before we begin, I should point out that these classes won’t deal with the melacha of cooking. That’s a broad, complex subject that deserves its own treatment, and with Hashem’s help, we may discuss it another time. We’ll deal with preparing food and salads, setting the table, and the details of handling food—even cold food, not necessarily hot food and reheating, which fall under the melacha of cooking and won’t be discussed here. Also, we won’t necessarily follow the order of the melachos in these classes. We’ll follow the order of the activities, starting with the preparations for Shabbos on Friday, setting the table, preparing salads, and so on—as we encounter them in practice. So we’ll begin with preparing for Shabbos. The first thing to know is that anything that can be prepared before Shabbos should be prepared before Shabbos. We don’t leave things to prepare on Shabbos, even things that are permitted then. We should enter Shabbos with everything ready. The Shulchan Aruch says that one should get up early in the morning to begin preparing what is needed for Shabbos, and there’s even a source for this in the Torah. Regarding the manna, the Torah says, “And on the sixth day, they shall prepare what they bring in.” From this wording,

02:46 Speaker 2 it follows that the preparation should take place when they brought it in: when they brought it in, they prepared it too. Now, when did they bring in the manna? The Torah says explicitly, “They gathered it morning by morning.” Early in the morning they would already go out to gather the manna, and at that time they would begin preparing it as well. So this is an obligation. The Shulchan Aruch states explicitly that it is an absolute obligation to start preparing for Shabbos early in the morning and to enter Shabbos with everything ready. That’s the first thing to make an effort to do: get up early, start taking care of all the Shabbos preparations before Shabbos, and don’t leave them for Shabbos itself—even things that are permitted on Shabbos. Now, when setting out the places, plates, and cutlery for each person, if the cutlery is kept as it is in most homes, I assume, in a dedicated drawer with separate sections for the spoons, forks, and knives, there’s no problem. But suppose it’s in a drawer where everything is mixed together because no one had time to put each type in its place. Or perhaps it’s on the counter: it was washed, but there wasn’t time to dry it, and now it’s all mixed together and Shabbos has begun. In that case, you must take what you want to use out from among what you don’t want to use. For example, if you now need only forks and knives, not spoons, take the forks and knives. Don’t remove all the spoons from the mixture and put them aside, because that is considered separating waste from

05:07 Speaker 2 food. If you take the part you don’t need, it is considered “waste.” The melacha of borer, separating, applies to utensils too, and to anything mixed together when we want part of the mixture but not the rest. You must take the part you want out from among the part you don’t want. So if you need only knives and forks now, take only the knives and forks, and leave the spoons untouched. Of course, if the spoons are left on their own after you’ve removed the knives and forks, you may then take them and put them in their designated place in the drawer. But you shouldn’t initially remove them from the mixture; you should remove specifically the type you want. There’s another point to observe: even when removing the type you want, you must do it for immediate use. After all, even separating food from waste is permitted only when done by hand for immediate use. So you may—and must—do it only close to the meal. How close? Halacha says that half an hour before the meal is considered close to the meal. So someone may sort the mixed cutlery and set it out for each person for the imminent Shabbos meal. It’s permitted within half an hour of the meal, but not long before that. For example, you may not sort mixed cutlery at night for use in the morning. In the morning, after people return from davening and the Shabbos meal is about to begin, you may sort it close to the meal. Within half an hour of the meal, you may separate the type you want from what you don’t want—but don’t do

07:08 Speaker 2 it long before the meal. The same applies on Friday night: if the husband has only just left home and will be back in an hour, don’t sort the cutlery then. Don’t do it an hour, or any time more than half an hour, before the meal. Do it specifically within half an hour of the meal, so that it counts as immediate use. Even when separating food from waste, you must take care to do so within half an hour of the meal. Now, sometimes you suddenly discover that the table is too short and want to extend it, or guests arrive and you want to add places. On Shabbos itself, you want more seats and a longer table. Perhaps you’ll add leaves to an existing table, pull it open to extend it, or assemble a table from scratch. Or perhaps it’s a folding table or folding chair. Is that permitted? May we assemble a table from scratch or extend an existing one? There are several situations. If the table or chair is simply folded—meaning it’s already assembled and only needs to be opened—then it is certainly permitted to do that on Shabbos. Since it’s already assembled and only needs to be extended, opening it isn’t considered constructing a utensil, and of course it isn’t considered making a shelter. So it’s permitted on Shabbos. For the same reason, you may open a table and insert additional leaves to make it larger. There’s no problem with adding to a table that already exists. The same applies to folding chairs and folding tables. But what about a table that actually has to be assembled from scratch? It isn’t assembled or folded; it’s in separate pieces—for example, the tabletop is located

09:18 Speaker 2 In one place, while the legs are somewhere else entirely, and now they need to be assembled. You have to put the tabletop back on its legs. With a table like this, it depends on what kind of legs it has. If they’re just legs without side panels, like what people today call sawhorses, then there’s a flat tabletop—rectangular, round, it doesn’t matter—that rests on thin legs. You set up the sawhorses first and place the tabletop on them. That’s permitted. There’s no problem with it, and you don’t need to change the way you assemble the table. But once the legs have side panels—if they’re made like walls—then they have the status of partitions. When you place the tabletop on them, you create a sort of enclosed space beneath the table. In that case, it’s more stringent, and you have to assemble it in a different way. You may assemble this table only with a change from the usual way. In other words, if on weekdays we normally set up the base first—the legs, the side panels—and then put the tabletop on top, on Shabbos we first hold the tabletop in the air, and then we, or more likely someone else, because that’s easier, put the legs underneath it. Doing it in this different way is permitted. But you may not assemble a table whose legs are made like partitions in the usual way, with the base first and the tabletop afterward. Instead, you reverse the order: hold the tabletop in the air first and slide the legs underneath. As for the dishes, we’re now coming to set them on the table. Sometimes they’re still wet. They were washed just before Shabbos began, and we want to dry them.

11:17 Speaker 2 Of course, you may use a towel to dry the dishes and absorb the water on them. We aren’t concerned that someone will wring out the water, since we’re talking about small amounts of droplets and a towel that can absorb them without any concern of wringing. Of course, if it’s a towel that’s already been used a lot and is soaked with water, you may not even touch it, because touching it would squeeze water out. But with a dry towel that has room to absorb small droplets, there’s no problem drying dishes, even a lot of dishes, because it has enough room to absorb all those droplets. Halachah says, though, that you have to be careful not to dry a narrow space. If a cup is very narrow and has water in it, and you have to press the towel into it, there’s a concern that the pressure will inevitably squeeze out some part of the towel. So you shouldn’t dry a narrow cup. Many people ask whether it’s permitted to fold napkins into particular shapes. You want to place napkins on the table, folded nicely, but you didn’t prepare them before Shabbos. May you make those shapes on Shabbos? The answer is yes, because the shape isn’t meant to last. It’s going to be undone in just a few minutes when the napkin is used. You set the napkin aside and unfold it, if not immediately, then a few minutes later. Since it’s meant to be unfolded very soon, it isn’t lasting, and it’s permitted. You may fold napkins into all kinds of attractive shapes for the Shabbos table. Now we come to the food. Often, before we start setting the table,

13:18 Speaker 2 we suddenly remember that we haven’t put the drinks in the refrigerator. Of course, you may put drinks in the refrigerator on Shabbos. There’s no problem with chilling the drinks, the juice, or the water. But you have to be careful not to make ice on Shabbos. You can put a bottle in the freezer so that it cools quickly and is cold enough by the time everyone gets back from shul. But don’t put in ice-cube trays or water to turn it into ice, because we don’t make ice on Shabbos. More generally, when it comes to using ice on Shabbos, you should know that you may use ice cubes as long as you don’t crush them by hand. You may put ice cubes into a drink, even though they melt in it, or even into an empty glass—but you may not crush them by hand. The braisa says, “One may not crush snow or hail on Shabbos.” Why? Rashi says it’s because it looks like molid: it appears as though you’re creating water. It resembles a melachah. This is a rabbinic prohibition, but it’s still forbidden. When I take something and change its state of matter on Shabbos, there’s a prohibition of molid. I’m turning it into something in a different state from what it was before. Changing its state of matter is considered molid, and it’s forbidden on Shabbos. There’s also another prohibition here, the decree concerning liquids that flow out. The Sages were concerned that if people crushed ice on Shabbos, they would also come to crush other things—fruits intended for their juice—and then violate the prohibition of squeezing, which is a derivative of threshing. That’s why the Sages said not to crush ice on Shabbos. So you may use ice, but you mustn’t crush it

15:23 Speaker 2 by hand. Instead, put it into a drink and let it melt on its own. That’s permitted. And just as we may not crush ice, we also may not take a drink and turn it into ice. We don’t change the state of a liquid on Shabbos. We’ve reached the preparation of salads, as we said, and now we want to make a vegetable salad. Usually, in any normal home, the vegetables are already separated: there’s a special place for the cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions, and each vegetable is in its own place. But sometimes there’s a vegetable drawer where everything has been put in together—cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, lemons, peppers, eggplants, and other vegetables. Now we want to make a fresh vegetable salad with just tomatoes and cucumbers, or with peppers, but we don’t want the onions. Since there’s a mixture here—if there is a mixture, that is; if each type is arranged separately, there’s no problem, and you can take whichever ones you want, even the ones you don’t want, because there’s no mixture. But once they’re mixed together, you have to be careful to take out the types you want. If right now you only want cucumbers and tomatoes, not onions, you may not take the onions out of the mixture or put them aside so it’s easier to find the tomatoes. No, you need to take the tomatoes and cucumbers. You have to take the type you want out from among the type you don’t want, because the type you don’t want is considered waste from your perspective. The prohibition of borer applies even to two kinds of food. The type we want is considered food for us right now, and the type we don’t want

17:36 Speaker 2 In that situation, it is considered waste. So we have to make sure to take out the kinds we want for the salad we are making now, for this vegetable salad we want to prepare. And we must make sure to do that only immediately before the meal. As we said, that means within half an hour of the meal, not earlier. For example, in the morning, after the husband has gone to shul, his wife starts making a salad and sorts through the mixture. She takes out the kinds she wants, but it is not within half an hour of the meal. So even though she is taking food from waste, she is not doing it for immediate use. In that case, it would be forbidden. We may take out the kinds we want, but only within half an hour of the meal, not earlier. So there are two things to be careful about, as we said: taking out the kinds we want from those we do not want, and doing so immediately before the meal, within half an hour of it. Sometimes we also use lettuce in various mixed salads. A head of lettuce can have leaves that are perfectly good to eat, and other leaves that are only barely edible—wilted, decaying leaves. Certainly, if the leaves are completely rotten and are outright waste, it is forbidden to take the rotten leaves out from among the good ones; that is borer, sorting. We must always take the good leaves out from among the decaying ones. Even if some leaves are edible, but only with difficulty, and are not eaten the way the good lettuce leaves are, we may not take them out from among the good leaves. They too are considered waste relative to the leaves we want to eat. So we have to take the leaves that are good to eat, that we want and intend to use, out from among

19:47 Speaker 2 the leaves we do not want and do not intend to use, because those are considered waste for us. The same applies when washing grapes, for example. Some grapes in a bunch may be rotten, or they may be grapes we do not want. We should not take the rotten ones out from among the good ones, but the other way around: take the good ones out from among the rotten ones. Otherwise, taking out the rotten ones is, of course, borer. The same applies to food such as an apple that is partly rotten. If part of the apple is rotten and we want to remove the rotten part and use what is good, we must be careful not to remove it precisely at the boundary where the good part begins. Instead, simply cut without examining it too closely: cut away some of the good apple along with the rotten part. Then we are separating food from food, not waste from food. In other words, do not remove only the exact spot that is rotten. Cut away some of the good apple together with the rotten part, and in that way it is permitted. Now, when we come to wash vegetables or fruit before cutting them, sometimes vegetables have mud on them. It is permitted to remove the mud by holding the vegetable or fruit under the tap and washing it, but it is forbidden to soak it in water so that the dirt floats up. For example, we do not soak grapes in water to make the dirt float to the top. That is considered borer. We are causing the waste to float up so that it becomes distinct and sits on top. That involves a prohibition of borer. So we only wash the fruit or vegetable under the tap, removing the mud or dirt that way. That is considered like removing a peel.

21:51 Speaker 2 In practice, it is like holding a fruit or vegetable and peeling it. After all, peeling is permitted, even though it too removes waste from food, because that is the normal way to eat it. With certain foods—certain fruits or vegetables—you have to remove the peel to reach the inside of the fruit, so that is considered the normal way of eating. The same applies when you hold a fruit or vegetable under the tap and wash off the dirt. It is like removing the peel: that is the normal way to eat it. Accordingly, it is certainly permitted to peel vegetables that cannot be eaten without peeling them, such as an onion. We do not eat an onion’s skin, so to get to the inside of the onion, we have to remove the skin. That is the normal way to eat it. And of course, you may use a knife, but not a utensil made specifically for peeling, which is a utensil designed for sorting. In general, with Shabbos melachos, even when sorting is permitted by hand—when you take the food for immediate use—you may not do it with a utensil designed for that purpose. You may not sort with a strainer or with a perforated spoon that is also made for straining. Even though we are taking the food, we do not use utensils made specifically for sorting; we use our hands. So you may peel with a knife, but a peeler is a utensil designed for sorting. A knife is also made for cutting. True, we peel with it too, but a knife is a cutting utensil, and peeling is just one of its uses. A peeler, on the other hand, is made only for peeling—only for separating the waste from the food, removing the outer part of the fruit. That is precisely what a peeler is used for. It has no other uses, so it is considered a utensil made for sorting, and a utensil made for sorting

23:56 Speaker 2 is not used on Shabbos, even when we are taking food from waste. Some are lenient and say that a peeler may be used, for example, to peel a cucumber or anything else whose peel is itself edible. When people do not insist on removing all the peel and do in fact eat it, this is considered separating food from food, rather than food from waste. But it is best not to use a peeler on Shabbos at all, even for vegetables whose peel may be edible, because ultimately we do not want to eat the peel right now. We want to peel it off and throw it away. So do not use a peeler on Shabbos; use a knife instead. You may peel anything with a knife. Of course, there is no prohibition in that. In discussing the peeling of fruits and vegetables, there is another issue besides borer, which we have discussed until now: another melachah called dosh, threshing. The melachah of dosh involves removing a food’s outer covering, but in the particular way we will now explain. Dosh applies only to a food that has two coverings: an individual, inner covering and an outer covering around it. This is the case when threshing grain, such as wheat or barley. Each wheat kernel has its own covering, which surrounds the individual kernel. But beyond that, the kernel and its own covering sit inside another husk belonging to the ear of grain, which surrounds each kernel. In threshing, we separate the wheat kernel from that outer husk, where it sits as though in a pocket. That is threshing. So since that is the melachah of threshing, any vegetable, legume or other food that has two coverings, and we

26:10 Speaker 2 Removing the outer husk involves the prohibition of threshing. The leniencies that apply to sorting—doing it by hand and for immediate use—do not apply to threshing. It is still considered threshing, because threshing is not an activity done in the course of eating. It is work that prepares food for eating, and it is generally done in the field or in designated places, not at the table. Peeling is different: sometimes you take a fruit, peel it and eat it, so peeling the fruit is not considered sorting. But once we are dealing with threshing, there is no allowance for doing it by hand for immediate use. So with any food where threshing is an issue, you need to prepare it before Shabbos. Take a head of garlic, for example, with its many cloves. Each clove has its own peel, and beyond that there is an outer covering around all the cloves. Removing that outer covering on Shabbos raises a problem of threshing. One must not do it; this is not merely a preference for the ideal situation. You need to separate the garlic cloves before Shabbos, leaving them ready to peel individually. There is no problem with peeling each clove’s own inner peel; you can do that with a knife. But the outer covering around all the cloves—the round covering that encloses them all—is a problem to remove on Shabbos because of threshing. When we remove an outer covering from around the garlic cloves, while each clove still has its own inner peel, that raises a problem of threshing, as with grain.

28:11 Speaker 2 As we explained, grain has an outer husk in which the wheat sits on the stalk, and threshing separates the wheat from the stalk. Beyond that, the wheat itself has a covering: each grain has its own individual husk. That is threshing—the original Torah prohibition of threshing. So with any vegetable, any... in fact, legumes too, if they have two coverings and we remove the outer one, there is a problem of threshing. That is why the garlic must be prepared by separating its cloves before Shabbos. Then, on Shabbos, you can take each clove individually and peel its own peel; that is fine. But you do not peel off the outer covering on Shabbos. That raises a problem of threshing, and threshing has no allowance for immediate use, so the garlic cloves must be separated before Shabbos. If, nevertheless, the cloves were not separated before Shabbos, what you should do is split the head of garlic in half: take a large knife and simply cut the whole head in half, then take the cloves out of the covering. In other words, we are not removing the covering with our hands. We are not handling the covering to take it off. Instead, we cut through the middle of the head and take out the cloves—the garlic cloves—with our hands, without removing the outer covering, which, as we said, raises a problem of threshing. Of course, you may cut garlic if you want to eat it, to make it easier to eat. You may also cut the garlic into smaller pieces, but you may not use utensils made for crushing, such as a garlic press[?]. We do not use a garlic press[?] on Shabbos. In general, on Shabbos we do not use any utensils made for grinding, or, for example, a grater. We do not

30:23 Speaker 2 use a grater on Shabbos, because it is a utensil made for shredding food. That raises a problem of grinding, and we do not use a utensil made for grinding. A knife is made for cutting, not specifically for grinding, so cutting food and eating it is considered a normal way of eating. But using utensils made for crushing is forbidden. Some foods sometimes call for squeezing out juice, such as lemon juice. You want to squeeze lemon onto a salad or onto fish. The question is whether that is permitted. After all, squeezing fruit is part of the prohibition of threshing. Squeezing fruit is forbidden under the category of mefarek, extracting the liquid from the fruit, which is a derivative of threshing. So if you want to squeeze a lemon, how do you do it? Is squeezing a lemon forbidden? There is a principle: “Liquid that goes into food is considered food.” If, as I squeeze it, the liquid goes directly into food—into a dish containing food—and mixes with it, becoming part of the food as it is eaten and serving to flavor it, then it has the status of food. The prohibition of mefarek concerns producing a liquid. In other words, the focus of the prohibition is not the act of squeezing or the pressure applied to the fruit, but the fact that a liquid is actually produced. That would mean I produced a liquid on Shabbos. But if no separate liquid is produced—I squeezed it, but it went into food—then it was food before and remains food now. I have not produced anything new on Shabbos. So liquid that goes into food is considered food, and you may squeeze lemon into a salad to flavor it, or into a dish of food. But by that reasoning, it would be forbidden to squeeze lemon into tea, because tea

32:36 Speaker 2 is a drink, and the lemon increases the amount of liquid. The lemon juice is considered a liquid too, since it goes into a drink. It turns out that I produced a liquid on Shabbos: I took a lemon, which was food, and squeezed liquid out of it. I produced a liquid from food, and that is already called mefarek, a derivative of threshing, which is forbidden on Shabbos. So if the juice goes into food, there is no problem, because it has the status of food. But if it goes into a drink, it is certainly forbidden. Moreover, you may not squeeze it even into food that will then be mixed into a drink. For example, one of the halachic authorities wanted to permit squeezing lemon onto sugar, since sugar is food. True, you then mix it with water and make what we call lemonade, but at the moment of squeezing, it is being squeezed onto food—sugar is food—so it would count as liquid going into food and being considered food. That was his reasoning for permitting it. But we do not accept that leniency. We are stringent, because the whole purpose of squeezing it onto the sugar is ultimately to mix the sugar into water and drink the entire mixture of sugar and lemon with the water. So it is still considered a drink. Since the ultimate aim is to make a drink from it, it already has the status of a drink now, and you may not squeeze lemon onto sugar that will later be mixed into water, even though the sugar itself is presently considered food. In this case, the allowance for liquid that goes into food does not apply. Sometimes people eat citrus fruit with a spoon, and the spoon squeezes it a little. When you press on the fruit, some of its juice is squeezed out

34:43 Speaker 2 And so the juice sits either in the spoon or in the fruit. Actual juice, visibly there. So the first question is: Is it permitted? May you eat it with a spoon? Yes, you may. In practice, you may eat it because your aim is to eat, not to squeeze out juice. You have no such intention. Of course, if a person deliberately presses it to extract the juice, that is certainly forbidden. But if he only wants to eat, and as part of eating, some juice is squeezed out and mixes with the pieces of fruit, there is no problem. The main thing is not to intend to squeeze out the juice, and not to drink it, set it aside, or drink it on its own. Doing that would show that we actually want to extract the juice. Rather, eat it together with the fruit, as part of eating the fruit, and do not drink it as juice on its own. Now, as we said, when adding various ingredients to a salad and you want to make them easier to eat—for example, cutting garlic into smaller pieces—you may do so, but not with utensils designed for that purpose. This also means not using cutting tools that produce particular shapes, such as stars or letters, of course, or any other meaningful shape. We do not create shapes by cutting on Shabbos. There is an issue of writing involved, so we do not do that; instead, we cut specifically with a knife, not with tools that make shapes. When it comes time to cut the salad—we have cleaned and washed the vegetables, and now we are going to cut them—the question is whether we may cut the salad into small pieces. After all, one of the definitions of grinding, or really the definition of grinding, is taking one thing and dividing it into small pieces. So if

36:56 Speaker 2 we cut a cucumber into small pieces, seemingly that would be considered grinding. In practice, there is a disagreement about this among the early halachic authorities. Some say that cutting thin, small pieces is indeed forbidden, while others permit it. In practice, because there is a disagreement, the Alter Rebbe says—and this is the halachic ruling—that one should be stringent and not cut things into small pieces except close to the meal. In other words, if the meal is about to begin and we want to cut the salad, we may do so. But even then, when cutting it close to the meal, we should not cut the salad very finely. The halachah says to cut the salad into pieces a little larger than we normally would on a weekday. Right? Do not make a very finely chopped salad, even close to the meal. Rather, cut it a little more coarsely than we normally do on a weekday. Otherwise, we get into the issue of grinding through fine chopping, which some of the early authorities prohibit. So do not chop the salad very finely; cut it a little more coarsely than usual. Now we have made the salad, it is ready, and we want to sprinkle salt on it. We need to know that one of the types of work performed for the Mishkan, and forbidden on Shabbos, is called processing. Originally, this was done with hides. To remove the hair from a hide and smooth it, they used salt, lime, and other substances that remove hair. The salt processed the hide and prepared it for use, and this is prohibited by the Torah. The Sages then said that any activity resembling processing is forbidden on Shabbos. There are therefore various foods that salt helps prepare, improve, process, or preserve,

39:23 Speaker 2 such as cucumbers. We often make pickles, or pickle cabbage, and other things that are commonly pickled; the salt processes and improves them. The same applies to a radish, whose sharpness the salt reduces, or an onion: it reduces the sharpness and bitterness of the radish and onion. So anything that salt helps improve and process, and that begins to release moisture when salted, is subject to a rabbinic prohibition because it looks like processing. It resembles processing. Therefore, with any vegetable that salt helps process or preserve, there is a problem with sprinkling salt on many pieces of it at once, because that looks like processing. You may take one piece, dip it in salt, and eat it. That is the normal way to eat; it is permitted, not a forbidden form of work. But sprinkling salt on many pieces looks like processing. And it actually processes them, too: while we are eating the rest, those pieces sit in the salt, which draws out their juices, removes their bitterness, and improves and processes them. So doing that on Shabbos is forbidden. You may not salt several pieces together on Shabbos if they are foods that salt helps process. So what do we do? How do we salt a salad? The solution is simple: immediately after sprinkling on the salt, pour on oil, vinegar, or anything else that weakens the salt’s effect. Then it is permitted, because it no longer looks like processing. Someone who is processing something would not salt it and then weaken the salt’s effect. So when we add olive oil, any other oil, or vinegar after sprinkling on the salt, we show that we are not trying to process or preserve anything. The Sages’ restriction against salting several pieces together because it looks like processing therefore does not apply.

41:26 Speaker 2 There is another type of work that we often encounter when preparing salads on Shabbos: kneading. Kneading means taking two things that are not joined and using a liquid as a third element to bind and join them. For example, flour consists of many tiny, separate particles that we cannot see, and water brings all those particles together into one dough. That is what kneading is: taking separate things and bringing them together into one mixture. The same applies when preparing salads. Sometimes we take things that are crumbled and separate and use a liquid to bind them together. On a weekday, of course, this is permitted, but not on Shabbos. On Shabbos, you may not take separate pieces and bind them together with a liquid. For example, suppose you want to make tuna salad. The flakes of tuna are separate from one another, and when we add mayonnaise to the tuna and mix them, the tuna flakes bind together. That is considered kneading. Therefore, one may not make tuna salad with mayonnaise on Shabbos, because of the prohibition against kneading. The same applies to eggs: crumbling an egg, mixing it with mayonnaise, and binding the crumbled egg back together is considered kneading, so we do not do that on Shabbos. You may add mayonnaise or other dressings to salads when the mayonnaise or dressing only flavors them. It does not... it only gives them flavor. It

43:44 Speaker 2 It doesn’t turn them into one mass. Take a vegetable salad, for example: we pour on a dressing like Thousand Island or other dressings, or even mayonnaise, and it doesn’t bind the vegetables together. It’s not as though we can pick up one part of the salad and everything else comes with it. The pieces are still separate; we’ve just added flavor. We’ve seasoned the food, and that’s permitted. On Shabbos, you may season food and add flavor to it. But when it binds the salad into one mass, that becomes a problem of kneading. For the same reason, many halachic authorities have written that one should not make techina on Shabbos. When making techina, you mix water—and also seasonings and so on, but mainly water—into the raw techina. At first, when you begin mixing the water into the techina, the water makes it thicken and turns it into a firm, hard mass. Only afterward, as you continue mixing and add more water, does it become thinner and thinner. There’s no problem with its becoming thinner. The problem is that it first becomes thicker. Anyone who has made techina knows that at first, when you add the water and begin mixing, the techina—which was already a single, thick liquid—becomes even thicker and actually hardens. As soon as you start mixing, it really hardens, and only later, with more water, does it become thinner and thinner. That stage, when the techina hardens, presents a problem of kneading: we’ve taken particles that may not have been entirely separate, but were only weakly joined, and bound them firmly together into one solid mass.

45:49 Speaker 2 It becomes very hard. The techina really hardens, and you have to soften it by adding water several times. But at first it’s very hard. So because it hardens, it’s forbidden to make techina on Shabbos. Some opinions maintain that there is no prohibition, but most halachic authorities have written that one should refrain, especially where there is a question of a Torah prohibition. Jews are devoted to the mitzvos and are stringent so as not to stumble, G-d forbid, in matters prohibited by Torah law on Shabbos. So we don’t make techina salad on Shabbos. But it is permitted to add water to techina that has already been prepared. Anyone who has made techina knows that once it’s ready and has already been mixed with water, adding more water to increase the quantity only makes it thinner. It doesn’t harden. Raw techina hardens only at the beginning, when it first comes into contact with water. So there is a problem with making techina from scratch, but if it’s already prepared and you want to add water or thin it out a little—for example, because it has thickened in the refrigerator and no longer pours—you may add water on Shabbos to make it thinner. There is no prohibition of kneading in making techina thinner. On the contrary, we’re weakening the bond between its parts, not strengthening it. For the same reason, of course, it is forbidden to make pudding on Shabbos. When you add water to the pudding powder,

47:44 Speaker 2 within seconds it all comes together into one mass. That constitutes kneading, and there is no permission to do it on Shabbos. In practice, anything that becomes a single dough-like mass when water or another liquid is added—anything that binds the parts of a salad more firmly together—is not made on Shabbos. For the same reason, halachic authorities have written that one should be careful when preparing a bowl of cereal for children in the morning. It is permitted to put cereal in a bowl and pour milk over it; there’s no problem with that. But sometimes the child doesn’t eat it all, or leaves the bowl untouched, and what remains can become like a single mass. The cereal and milk turn into a mush, and if they sit for an hour or two, it can become quite thick. That presents a problem. So when preparing cereal for children on Shabbos morning, it’s a good idea to add more milk than you might on a weekday, when you don’t need to think about what will happen if the cereal sits. On Shabbos, you do need to consider the possibility that the child won’t finish it and it will thicken into one mass. Add enough milk that even if the child leaves some, it won’t become a thick, cohesive mush. That’s another point about kneading. Now, there’s another melachah we often encounter when preparing salads: grinding. Grinding doesn’t apply only to wheat ground into flour. It also applies to anything

49:47 Speaker 2 you take and break into small pieces, and certainly to something you actually grind or mash. The question is, when is it permitted to mash fruits or vegetables on Shabbos? For example, can you make avocado salad on Shabbos or mash a banana for a baby? First of all, as we mentioned in the previous discussions of the halachos, we don’t use tools made for mashing or grinding. We don’t use a grater, and we don’t use a masher. Even when mashing is permitted—and we’ll see in a moment how—it isn’t done with a tool made for that purpose. That’s the first thing to know. We mentioned it earlier, but even if we aren’t using a tool made for mashing, what if we use a fork? A fork isn’t a mashing tool; it’s an eating utensil. True, you can mash with it, but that isn’t what it’s made for. So it is permitted to mash an avocado with a fork. Sometimes, though, an avocado is hard. It isn’t soft, and it won’t turn into a thick, smooth mash. When you mash it with a fork, it breaks into small pieces. According to some halachic authorities, that presents a problem of grinding, so we are stringent and don’t mash an avocado like that. You could perhaps cut it with a knife into large pieces, put them in the salad, and eat them that way, but not break it down into small pieces. Instead of becoming one thick, cohesive mash, it remains separate small pieces. You’ve taken one piece and broken it into many pieces, which is essentially the definition

51:55 Speaker 2 of grinding, so we do not do it even right before the meal. As we mentioned regarding preparing a salad, we do not cut it into thin, small pieces even right before the meal, because of the prohibition of grinding. The same applies to an avocado that does not mash into a single purée, but instead breaks apart into small pieces. We do not mash such an avocado on Shabbos. It is permissible to mash an avocado that is very soft, so that mashing turns it into one thick, cohesive mixture, rather than separate pieces. The same applies to a banana. A banana turns into one purée, one mass, so it is permissible to mash it. You may mash a banana, or an avocado that will become one purée rather than separate pieces. As for mashing vegetables in general, we do not take a fruit or vegetable and crush it into small pieces. That is a real issue of grinding, even if we do it with a fork. But if it only needs to be pressed down and then becomes one thick mixture, it is permissible. For example, a cooked potato taken out of the cholent or the soup is soft, so it may be mashed. It is already considered mashed: it is fully cooked and soft, and you are essentially just finishing the mashing. You may mash it until it becomes like mashed potatoes. So you may take a potato and mash it into a purée, but we do not crush raw fruits and vegetables that break into many small pieces without becoming one mixture. We do not do that. On the other hand, there is a well-known rule concerning the melachah of grinding, and it is an important allowance that we need to know. Many people may think it is forbidden, but we need to know what is permitted too, not only what is forbidden. There is a rule

53:51 Speaker 2 that says there is no grinding after grinding. In other words, if something was already ground and was then formed into a solid mass, there is no problem crumbling it again, because it had already been ground and was artificially formed into one mass. True, it is solid now, but I am not grinding something that is naturally that way. It was already ground, and even though it was formed into a mass, there is no problem crumbling it on Shabbos. Therefore, it is permissible to crumble bread for babies, or even for adults. There is no problem crumbling bread, because it was already ground before being kneaded into one dough and baked. So there is no problem crumbling it, since it had already been ground. The same applies to a biscuit. You may crumble a biscuit into leben or into anything else you want. The act of crumbling it is not a problem, because there is no grinding after grinding. The same applies to a lump of meat, such as a meatball made from ground meat. You may crumble it for babies; there is no problem, because there is no grinding after grinding. There is an exception: it is forbidden to crumble a clod of earth, or mud that has stuck to a shoe or a garment. Even though it was previously loose dirt and the water formed it into mud, we do not say that there is no grinding after grinding in this case. That rule applies specifically to food. But mud, and anything else that has been formed into a mass by water, certainly may not be crumbled. It is completely forbidden to grind or crumble it on Shabbos. So we do not crumble clods of earth on Shabbos, or mud on a garment.

55:47 Speaker 2 Therefore, we do not scrape it off or crumble it. That really is considered grinding, so it is forbidden. We need to be careful when there is mud, as sometimes happens in the winter. If mud on a shoe has hardened, do not crumble it. If it is soft, you can wipe it off, but if it is dry, the question is whether you can remove it in one piece. What you must not do is crumble the piece of mud that has hardened, because of the issue of grinding. With salads, we sometimes encounter other melachos that are, of course, forbidden on Shabbos. For example, the melachah of smoothing originally applied to hides: they would smooth them and remove the hair to improve the hide and make it suitable for writing or other use. But in practice, smoothing and leveling the surface of anything can be a problem. Some instances are forbidden by Torah law and some by rabbinic law, but we do not smooth things on Shabbos. So there are various salads that we want to put on a plate and make look nice. After putting them down, we smooth the surface. With hummus or avocado, for example, on a weekday we smooth it to make it look nice. We need to know not to do that on Shabbos. True, there is a rule that the prohibition of spreading does not apply to food, but that is specifically when the purpose is eating. For example, you may take hummus, chocolate spread, or spreadable cheese and spread it on bread. There is no problem of spreading, because the purpose is for the spread to reach all parts of the bread so it can be eaten, not to smooth it for its own sake. That is why it is not a problem.

58:00 Speaker 2 But when you put a salad on a plate, you can eat it without smoothing it. The smoothing is only for appearance, so we do not do that on Shabbos. Of course you may put the salads on the plate, but you should not smooth them to make them look nice. A cake with letters on it—well, everyone has surely heard this question: May you eat that cake or not? The issue is erasing the letters. It is not erasing prohibited by Torah law, because that applies only to erasing in order to write, and here there is no intention to write where the letters were erased. The only purpose is to eat. But the Alter Rebbe, and Ashkenazic halachic authorities generally, forbid erasing the letters even in order to eat. Although erasing is not the intention, it is nevertheless inevitable. In other words, we know for certain that if you eat that part of the cake, the letters will be erased. An inevitable result is forbidden even when the prohibition is rabbinic. Therefore, there is a problem with a cake that has letters on it: it is forbidden to erase the letters even while eating. You may eat the other parts of the cake around the letters. You may cut around the letters and eat those parts; there is no problem. The cake is not muktzeh or anything like that. You may eat the cake, but you may not cut through the letters or break them. Around the letters is permitted; the letters themselves are not. According to the Alter Rebbe, it makes no difference whether the letters were written with another substance or are part of the cake itself. In practice, it is forbidden to break the letters and eat them. But it is permissible to give a young child who has not yet reached the age of chinuch a cake or biscuits with letters on them, even though we know the child will eat

59:58 Speaker 2 them. You may place them before a young child who has not yet reached the age of chinuch, and the child can eat them independently. We may not put the food into the child’s mouth with our own hands. That is considered directly giving the child something forbidden, and we may not do that. But we may place it before the child and let the child act independently. Putting it directly into the child’s mouth is forbidden, because part of our obligation is to make sure that we do not directly cause the erasure or personally cause the child to do something forbidden. We place it before the child, and if the child eats it independently, that is the child’s action. But we may not take part in erasing the letters on the cake. So a cake with letters on it may be given to a child who has not yet reached the age of chinuch, but adults refrain from eating the letters. Of course, as we said, the cake around them may be eaten. The only problem is breaking the letters themselves.