Laws of Meat and Milk, Part 2 - Rabbi Binyomin Cohen shlita

00:10 What about fish with milk? Is there a problem with that or not? We said that everyone agrees there is a problem with fish and meat. But regarding fish with milk, the commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch discuss it. Some halachic authorities say that fish with milk may not be eaten either. Others argue that this is incorrect, that it is a printing error: it should have said fish with meat, but fish with milk was printed by mistake. In other words, they say the actual reference is to fish with meat, and there is no problem with fish and milk. Still, some halachic authorities say there is a problem with eating fish and milk together, and therefore a person should not eat them together. But there is a solution. I heard it in the name of Rabbi Landau, a"h, and it also appears in the commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch. The Be’er Heitev cites a ruling, I believe, that if a little butter is mixed in, there is no problem with having the fish with milk. Since the whole issue here is a matter of health, the concern is that fish with milk could cause harm. But if you add a little butter, the butter neutralizes the problem, and you can eat the fish with milk. For example, if someone wants to make a toasted cheese sandwich with tuna, or a pizza with tuna, that is fish with milk. So they should put a little butter on it. Once they do, the butter neutralizes the potential harm from combining fish and milk, and it is permitted to eat it even from the outset. Of course, those who follow the opinion that there is no problem at all do not observe any prohibition against fish with milk, as those halachic authorities say it was a printing error. But if we follow the stricter opinion, that it was not a printing

02:30 error and there is indeed a problem with eating fish with milk, then if a little butter has been mixed in, there is no problem and it may be eaten. Some say it does not have to be butter specifically, but can be any somewhat fatty food, such as cheese or cottage cheese. The main thing is that it should not be milk on its own. There may be lenient opinions even about that, but butter is certainly acceptable. It says explicitly that if there is butter together with the milk and fish, there is no problem and it may be eaten. Halachah says that butter cannot be produced from the milk of a non-kosher animal. Butter can be produced only from the milk of a kosher animal—a cow, a sheep, and so on. It cannot be produced from the milk of a non-kosher animal, which is why the prohibition concerning milk produced by non-Jews was not extended to their butter. With milk, we say that perhaps the non-Jew mixed in milk from a non-kosher animal. But with butter, since it cannot be made from such milk, that prohibition was not extended to butter produced by non-Jews. Today, we are strict about this because we cannot know what was previously in the equipment, how the non-Jew prepared it, and so on. But if it is not a product made by non-Jews—if it is made by Jews—there was a butter shortage a while back, about two years ago, and there was butter with kosher certification that did not say Badatz on it, but it had rabbinate certification. It was certified kosher, and it was locally produced, not imported—not butter from abroad. As far as milk produced by non-Jews is concerned, we have no problem here. If our only concern is that something else might be mixed into it, that cannot happen, because butter cannot be made from the milk of a non-kosher animal. And when we are talking about large production plants, there is also none of the concern you might have with a private individual, that perhaps the same pot was previously used to cook non-kosher

04:52 milk, and so on. These are factories producing butter. They do not mix other things into it, and there is kosher certification to ensure that nothing else is mixed in. So from that standpoint, there is no problem using the butter. Someone who wants to be strict might have a concern that the milk was milked on Shabbos. That is a different matter, though. It is a stringency concerning milk milked on Shabbos, not a concern about milk produced by non-Jews. As we said, butter cannot be made from the milk of a non-kosher animal, only from the milk of a kosher animal. The Rambam says the same thing regarding oil sold by non-Jews. If a non-Jew sells olive oil, since oil floats, nothing else can be mixed into it: if something else is mixed in, the oil will float to the top. So the Rambam says that oil sold by non-Jews is permitted. He even goes so far as to say that someone who forbids it is wasting Jewish money. We see the same principle here: since nothing else can be mixed into olive oil, there is no concern that something else was mixed in. Some argue that nowadays, with all the different substances put into oil, it may be possible to mix something in. Even if there is reason to be strict, though, that would only be regarding eating it. For example, if someone finds a non-Jew selling olive oil and uses it for a Chanukah light, there certainly should be no problem, because there is no concern that something else was mixed in. As we saw, the Rambam even permits eating it. He says there is no concern that something else was mixed in, because it is oil and nothing else can be mixed into it. Anything else added to it would cause the oil to float to the top, and they would not succeed in mixing it in. There are

07:04 products labeled pareve that also say “may contain traces of milk.” Someone once asked me, “What does that mean? If it’s pareve, how can it contain traces of milk? Or is it dairy?” The answer is that it is, in fact, pareve. What happened is that the product—say, chocolate or some other sweet—was made on a production line that had previously been used for a dairy product. Then the pareve product was made on the same line. In halachic terms, any trace is nullified in sixty. The concern is that some dairy residue might remain, but even if it does, it is nullified in sixty. However, the law requires manufacturers to state that traces of milk may remain. Why? For people with milk allergies. If someone with a milk allergy eats something containing milk, it could cause a rash or other adverse reactions. So, to protect themselves against liability and lawsuits, manufacturers write that the product may contain traces of milk. That does not mean it is halachically dairy. In halachah, once the trace is nullified in sixty, it is nullified. A tiny particle of milk that might remain is no worse than prohibited food; it is no worse than pork, which is nullified in sixty. But for people who have a medical problem with consuming milk, nullification in sixty will not help. Sixty is a halachic concept, and halachah determines that such a trace is nullified. But where there is a medical issue, there can still be a problem even if the proportion is less than one in sixty. That is why they state that it may contain traces of milk. So it is important to know that it is not dairy from a halachic standpoint. If it says pareve and also says it may contain traces of milk, that does not mean it is halachically dairy

09:25 but that it could be a problem for someone with a milk allergy. Here is another example. There are different wafers, wafer rolls, and other products. Some are made with chalav Yisroel, some with powdered milk produced by non-Jews, and some are pareve. Sometimes a pareve product says it was made on a production line used for milk powder. In other words, milk powder was previously processed on the same machines, on the same production line. If we need to be concerned that the milk powder was made from milk produced by non-Jews, then perhaps the dairy product would be a problem, because perhaps the milk was not chalav Yisroel but powdered milk produced by non-Jews. On the other hand, the product says it is pareve. Again, the point is that if it is pareve, any trace is nullified in sixty. Any crumbs that may have remained are nullified in sixty, so the product is not dairy and does not contain powdered milk produced by non-Jews in halachic terms. But anyone who has a medical problem with milk needs to avoid those products, because they may contain traces of milk, even in quantities far smaller than one part in sixty. Again, we are talking about a medical issue, not a halachic one. Medically, for someone who cannot have milk, any amount of it could cause a rash or an allergic reaction. That is why factory owners must state this, to avoid a damages claim if, G-d forbid, someone with a milk allergy is harmed by the food. There have been cases like that. Just a few months ago, there was a case of a woman who went to a meat restaurant and asked for ice cream for dessert. The ice cream there is pareve, but they had run out of the pareve ice cream at the time. One of the workers went out and bought dairy ice cream for her, and it put her life in danger. So again, from her perspective, she knows that she came

11:52 To a place he knows, a kosher place that serves only meat meals, so surely they wouldn’t serve dairy ice cream after a meat meal. And indeed, the ice cream there is usually pareve. But on that particular occasion, it had run out, and one of the employees—who may even have been a non-Jew and not known about the prohibition of meat and milk at all—thought, “What’s the problem? We’re out of ice cream, so I’ll go buy some at the store next door.” Apart from the question of where he’s buying it and what its kashrus is, let’s assume it does have kosher certification. There’s still a problem for someone with a milk allergy: eating something dairy is a problem for him even if it’s kosher, all the more so when he eats it after meat. When we talk about a meat pot or pan in which milk was cooked by mistake, and we say it needs hagalah and can then go back to being a meat pot, the first point is that the hagalah must be done after twenty-four hours have passed since the milk was cooked in it. You can’t do the hagalah while it’s still within those twenty-four hours. Of course, you also have to clean the pot and so on. But after twenty-four hours have passed and the hagalah has been done, that pot returns to its previous status as a meat pot. It’s important to know that this is done as a one-time measure. In other words, if we mistakenly put something dairy in a meat pot and cooked it, we do hagalah on the pot and it becomes a meat pot again. But you can’t do this on a regular basis: take a meat pot, cook milk in it, do hagalah to make it meat again, then cook milk in it again, doing hagalah each time between meat and milk. We don’t do that. If it happened by mistake, then we do the hagalah, but we don’t deliberately use the same pot sometimes for meat and sometimes for milk

13:59 with hagalah in between—only if it happened by mistake. For example, someone receives pots as a gift from relatives or friends, and he doesn’t know exactly what they used them for, meat or dairy. So he does hagalah on them, and afterward decides that from then on a particular pot will be for meat or for dairy. All the hagalah here is because of uncertainty: he doesn’t know what they used the pots for or how they used them. But we don’t deliberately make the same pot serve sometimes for meat and sometimes for milk. Hagalah is done when I want to decide that from now on it will be a meat pot because I don’t know what was done with it before, or because I made a mistake and cooked milk in a meat pot or meat in a dairy pot. Because of that mistake, I do hagalah and change its status—that is, return it to its previous status. Or, if it’s a pot I received, I decide whether it will be a meat pot or a dairy pot from now on. But I don’t deliberately use it for both milk and meat, sometimes one and sometimes the other. It must be either for meat or for dairy. Say someone receives a pot or other utensils from a relative or friend. He knows the pot is a meat pot, but he doesn’t know how carefully they kept kosher. That is, they didn’t cook meat and milk in it, but they may have cooked meat whose kashrus is questionable. He needs to do hagalah on the pot, and it remains a meat pot. The hagalah removes the effect of any remnants or absorbed matter that may have come from that meat of questionable kashrus. But if he knows for certain that they used it only for kosher meat, then strictly speaking, he doesn’t even need to do hagalah on the pot. If he

16:18 wants to be stringent, he can do hagalah. But strictly speaking, if he knows it was a meat pot and was used for kosher meat, he can designate it for meat and has no problem using it for meat. Unless, as we said, he’s concerned that it may have been used for non-kosher food, or for meat and milk together—that’s a different story. But as long as it was used only for meat, the pot retains its status as a meat pot, and he can use it for meat. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t even need hagalah. The Mishnah in the fourth chapter of Pesachim gives us a rule: if someone comes from a place with one custom and goes to a place with a different custom, he must observe the stringencies of both the place he left and the place he came to. For example, the Mishnah in Pesachim says: “In a place where the custom is to do work on Erev Pesach, they do work; in a place where the custom is not to do work, they do not do work.” So if someone who lives in a place where the custom is to work on Erev Pesach travels for Pesach to a place where the custom is not to, he can’t say, “I come from a place where people do work, so I’ll do work.” He has to follow the custom of the place he’s in, where they are stringent and don’t work on Erev Pesach. And the reverse is also true: he must follow the more stringent custom. If he comes from a place where the custom is not to work on Erev Pesach and arrives somewhere where people do work, he can’t say, “Here they work, so I’ll start following the custom of the place I’ve come to.” He’s not allowed to do work, because he comes from a place where the custom is not to. This is called applying to him “the stringencies of the place he left and the stringencies of the place he came to.” How is this relevant to us? For example, someone who

18:38 follows the practice of most people and waits six hours between meat and milk travels to a city or country abroad where the custom is to wait three hours. At least with chicken, some have the custom to wait three hours, as the Rema mentions, and some wait one hour. So he might say, “Great, I’ve come to a place where they wait one hour. I’ll follow the local custom. People here wait an hour, so after an hour I can eat dairy—or after three hours. I don’t need to wait six hours.” No. You came from a place where the custom is to wait six hours. Even if you’re now somewhere where people wait less, you remain bound by the stringencies of the place you came from. There’s a nice story connected to this that’s worth mentioning. It took place during the period of the Inquisition. There were places Jews were forbidden to enter, certain cities, including Rome. A Jew was forbidden to enter Rome. If someone entered Rome and was caught, the penalty was death. Of course, in those days it wasn’t like today, when you have a passport or ID card and people can see your name. If people didn’t know you were Jewish and you concealed the fact, no one would be expected to know. And of course, as always, Jews used their ingenuity. Merchants who needed to get to Rome found ways to do it: they disguised themselves, dressed like non-Jews, and went to Rome for their business. There was a merchant who arrived in Rome during the month of Adar. He needed to finish his business there, but he saw that he was being delayed. People who owed him money told him, one after another, “I’ll have it in a month,” “I’ll have it in three weeks.” He needed to stay, and Pesach was approaching. What could he do? During the rest of the year, he could manage with vegetables and bread. Here it was a different story. It was Pesach,

20:56 and there was chametz. He needed matzah. He needed food without any concern of chametz. Where would he spend Pesach? On the other hand, he had to stay because he hadn’t finished his business. If he left now, it would be a real waste, and coming back another time would be a whole undertaking. So he said to himself, “Surely, just as I’m here, there are other Jews here who are also concealing their Jewish identity. I need to find some local Jew and be his guest for Pesach.” How do you find out who’s Jewish? After all, Jews aren’t allowed to be in this city. So he decided to go to the local market on Erev Pesach and see who was buying things for the Seder night—karpas, lettuce, maror, horseradish. Whoever he saw buying those things, he would follow and ask to be his guest. He walked around the market among the stalls and saw people buying vegetables, peppers, tomatoes—not what he was looking for. Suddenly there was a commotion in the market. He asked, “What’s going on?” They told him the mayor had come to tour the market. Well, he saw a splendid carriage arrive with the mayor. The mayor said, “I’ve come to see the residents, the market, the trading here.” The merchant saw the mayor whisper something to his assistant, who went off to buy things. He watched what the assistant bought: a sack full of horseradish, a sack full of potatoes, a sack full of karpas, a sack full of lettuce. Unmistakable Seder-night items. He said to himself, “Could it be that the mayor of Rome, a city where a Jew is forbidden to set foot, is himself Jewish? But all the signs point to it.” Well, he followed the mayor’s carriage. The mayor arrived home. A few minutes later, the merchant knocked on the door. Out came the mayor

23:15 of the city. “Yes, sir? What do you need? How can I help you?” So he says, “Listen, let’s get straight to the point. I’m Jewish, and I’ve ended up here. I have nowhere to be for the Seder. Do me a favor and host me. At the Seder you say, ‘Let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who need come and celebrate Pesach.’ I’m your guest.” The mayor says, “How do you even know I’m Jewish?” “Listen, don’t tell me stories. I saw you at the market today. I saw what you bought. You bought everything for the Seder plate. I have nowhere to be. Do me a favor.” All right, the mayor takes him by the hand and brings him into the house. They go inside, through another room and another hallway. There’s a picture hanging on the wall. The mayor presses a button, the picture moves, and he sees a staircase leading down. They go downstairs. There’s a room—a shul. Not a big one, a small one, but a shul with everything it needs. There are Torah scrolls there. And it’s a very beautiful shul, with gold and silver chandeliers, siddurim, everything. In his wildest dreams, he hadn’t imagined that on Seder night he would have a minyan and davening. He had thought the main thing was not to transgress the prohibition of chametz. And now he sees there are actually at least a minyan of Jews here. In the adjoining room there’s a dining room, and there he sees a set table with Seder plates, everything. The mayor tells him, “Sit here. People will gather soon. We’ll daven Minchah, then Maariv for Yom Tov, and we’ll hold the Seder here. You’ll be our guest.” So he sits there and can’t stop thanking Hakadosh Boruch Hu for the miracle that brought him to this place and enabled him to observe

25:27 Pesach properly. It starts getting dark. People arrive and daven Minchah, then Maariv for the first night of Yom Tov. They say Hallel, everything. Afterward they go in for the meal, and everyone sits down with his own Seder plate. He keeps thanking them and blessing them: “You should be well. I truly didn’t know where I could spend Pesach without stumbling over chametz. And now, boruch Hashem, I’ve been so fortunate.” How did Yaakov Avinu put it to Yosef? “I never expected to see your face, and now G-d has shown me even your children.” That I should be here in the city of Rome, where Jews are forbidden to be, and have a Seder with a minyan, with davening, with a Torah scroll—the kindness of Hashem. They start the Seder, read the Haggadah, reach Shulchan Orech, and eat the meal. At the end of the meal they bring out something that looks like dairy ice cream. Very white, with lots of whipped cream. He says, “Wait a minute, we just ate meat.” So he asks the person next to him, “Tell me, isn’t this ice cream dairy?” He says, “Yes, it’s dairy.” “What do you mean, dairy? We ate meat.” “It’s all right, rinse out your mouth.” “What do you mean, rinse out my mouth? We ate meat. You have to wait six hours. Rinsing your mouth might work when going from dairy to meat, not from meat to dairy.” So he asks the person on his other side, “Tell me, what is this? Is it dairy? Don’t you know you’re not allowed to eat dairy after meat?” He says, “Listen, we’re not particular about that.” “What do you mean, you’re not particular? It’s halachah. Don’t you know halachah? You have to wait six hours!” “Eat, eat. Bring him more ice cream. Bring him two. Eat.” He starts crying, sobbing bitterly. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” “I thought I’d come to a place with observant Jews. Who knows what I’ve eaten? Who knows

27:33 whether the meat I ate was even slaughtered properly? Who knows whether I’ve eaten nonkosher meat here? If you don’t know the laws of meat and dairy, can I rely on the food here?” So he cries and cries. “Master of the Universe, it would have been better if I hadn’t come here. I should have stayed in my hotel and eaten vegetables, that’s all. And who knows whether I’ve eaten chametz here, whether I’ve eaten nonkosher food?” After he’s been shedding tears for about fifteen minutes, they say to him, “Tell me, haven’t you heard of pareve? This ice cream is pareve.” “Are you out of your minds? Couldn’t you have told me that from the start? You let me cry for half an hour, thinking I’d eaten forbidden food. If you eat dairy ice cream after meat, how do I know the meat is kosher?” “Rest assured, the meat is kosher. We have a G-d-fearing shochet. Come, do you want to see his knives? We’ll show you the slaughtering knives. Come see the sharpening stones. You’ll see, everything is perfectly fine.” “Then why did you put me through this? Why didn’t you tell me from the start that it was pareve?” They said, “Listen carefully. We don’t know who you are. You came to the mayor’s house and said explicitly that you’d seen the mayor buying things for Seder night. Your story may be true, and you really may be a visitor who happened to end up here. But you might be an agent of the Church. You might be an agent of the accursed Inquisition, and tomorrow you might hand over all our names to the Inquisition and say, ‘Yes, these are the hidden Jews, and the mayor himself held a Seder here.’ So we decided to put you to the test: to serve you this ice cream, make it look dairy, and see whether

29:21 you would insist that there was no way you’d eat dairy after meat. Then we’d know you were a Torah-observant Jew and that your story was true, that you really had ended up here by chance. But if you’d said, ‘Everyone else is eating it. Why should I be more religious than everyone else? They’re all eating it, so I’ll eat it too,’ we would have known you were an agent of the Inquisition. We would have killed you, and you wouldn’t have left here alive. We have to protect ourselves. Our lives come first; you would have the status of a rodef, a pursuer. If you’d come to hand us over to the Church and the Inquisition, we would have killed you here, and you wouldn’t have left. But now that we’ve seen you crying and distressed because you think you may have transgressed, we can see that you’re a Torah-observant Jew. You haven’t transgressed, and everything is fine.” Of course, he was overjoyed. And here again we see that although he came to this place, he could have said, “Wait, this is how they do things here. Well, what can I do? I’m a guest here; I’ll do what everyone else does. Apparently, for them half an hour is enough, or rinsing your mouth is enough. I’ll do the same.” That would have cost him his life; they would have killed him. Why? Because they would have suspected that he was an informer for the Church, perhaps sent by a priest to find the hidden Jews who were concealing their Judaism. Only when he showed that he truly cared, that it genuinely pained him, and that he was unwilling to transgress a Torah prohibition, did he prove that he really was a Torah-observant Jew who cared about his Judaism and about what he was doing. Again we see the same principle: a person shouldn’t say, “Oh, this is how they do things here, so I’ll set aside my own practices and start doing everything others do.” No. This is your practice; stick with it. On the other hand, your practice is what the Torah says, what halachah says. Don’t add to it. If a person

31:11 Someone might come along and say, “Fine, our Sages established that you have to wait six hours between meat and milk. I’ll be stringent and wait seven hours.” Is that a stringency? It isn’t. If you don’t want to eat, if you’re full, eat an hour later. But that isn’t a stringency. A stringency means there’s a lenient opinion and a stringent opinion, and you follow the stringent one. But to add something that has no source whatsoever—and then present it as though you’re being stringent? What are you being stringent about? A person could say, “Our Sages said to light for eight days of Chanukah. I’ll light for nine days of Chanukah. I’m being stringent.” What stringency? You’re violating “Do not add”: “You shall not add to it, nor shall you subtract from it.” You have to stick to halachah, neither to the right nor to the left. Things that are brought in halachah as stringencies are different. Does halachah say there’s room to be stringent? Please, if you want to be stringent, may you be blessed for it. There are Jews who wait until Rabbeinu Tam’s time to end Shabbos. The halachah was not decided according to Rabbeinu Tam; Shabbos ends according to the Geonim. You want to be stringent for another twenty minutes, another half hour, and extend Shabbos? That’s your right. But don’t say, “I end Shabbos according to Rabbeinu Tam, because Shabbos has only just ended.” No, Shabbos ended according to the Geonim. You want to be stringent? That’s your right, but a stringency has to be of the kind where there is a stringent opinion and you follow it. Don’t turn something with no basis or source into your own stringency. Or someone might say, “I’m stringent not to eat—I don’t know—an apple with milk. Just as the Torah says not to eat meat with milk, I won’t eat an apple with milk.” Is that a stringency? It isn’t; it’s nonsense. Apart from things that, of course, do have a source, including other matters of maris ayin, the appearance of wrongdoing. In recent years, with all the advances in food products, they’ve begun producing all sorts of products

32:58 for Pesach that resemble chametz products, which didn’t exist in the past. They make Bisli that’s made from—not chametz, of course. I’ve seen wafers made from potato flour. They look like wafers, but they’re made from potato flour, so their blessing is shehakol, not mezonos. I’ve seen rolls made from potato flour. If someone buys potato flour and makes a cake at home, that’s different. Then everyone knows, everyone in the household knows, that Mom made a cake from potato flour. When you buy an industrially produced item that looks like a chametz product, there’s an issue of maris ayin. There’s also the matter of teaching your children all year that Pesach is Pesach and we don’t eat this and we don’t eat that, and then bringing them all the substitutes that resemble chametz products. So there’s kosher-for-Pesach Bamba and kosher-for-Pesach Bisli, and a kosher-for-Pesach roll and wafer. That already takes away the whole effect of the holiday. So with something like that, it really is appropriate to be stringent. But with things a person simply makes up on his own, a person shouldn’t invent halachos or stringencies that have no basis in Shulchan Aruch, in the halachic authorities, or in halachah. Only when something really has a basis in halachah—as it says in halachah about many things, “A person of spiritual sensitivity should be stringent for himself,” or “One who wishes to be stringent will be blessed.” But that’s a stringency that truly has a source, a stringency with a basis, not things that have no basis or place at all. We need to understand that when we’re talking about something being forbidden, there’s a tendency—sometimes people want to say, “Let’s be stringent and forbid it; let’s be stringent and forbid that.” Being stringent isn’t always the right thing. The Shach says in Yoreh De’ah that just as it’s forbidden to say something forbidden is permitted, it’s equally forbidden to say something permitted

34:55 is forbidden. A person can’t just say, “That’s forbidden,” when it isn’t. Why is it forbidden? It isn’t forbidden. You have to examine things properly and precisely and see whether they’re forbidden or not. One of the reasons a nazir has to bring an offering is that he needs atonement for abstaining from wine. All he wanted was to be stringent with himself, to abstain from wine and become more holy. Fine, but when you forbid yourself things the Torah didn’t forbid you, you need to repent for that. That’s why the nazir had to bring an offering for abstaining from wine. There was a story in the United States from which we can learn a little about not forbidding something without checking it and knowing for certain. Of course, if we have a concern, we have to investigate and be stringent while there’s doubt. But we shouldn’t leave it at that, say, “Oh, it’s doubtful, so it’s forbidden,” and write the thing off. There are several dairy companies in the United States. I’m not familiar with their names, but let’s compare them to Tera and Tnuva in Israel, for example. They have different names there, of course, but as an example, imagine Tera and Tnuva. Both had good kosher supervision, and the religious and chareidi public used products from both companies, both dairies. One day a rumor spread that one of them was not as good and shouldn’t be used. And that rumor spread in the name of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. He’s a familiar figure, one of the great halachic authorities of the previous generation. Supposedly, it was said in his name that the second company wasn’t as good, or wasn’t good at all, and couldn’t be relied upon. People then stopped buying from the second company and began buying only from the first—yeshivos, schools, and ordinary members of

37:02 the chareidi public who were particular about the highest standard of kosher supervision. Naturally, the second company’s sales began to fall. They started looking into what had happened: why were sales suddenly dropping? They learned that people had been told there was a problem with their company. Who said there was a problem? “They’re saying in Rabbi Feinstein’s name that there’s a problem with your company, so people are buying only from the other one.” Well, the company’s owners got together and went to Rabbi Feinstein. “Rabbi, is there a problem with our company? If there is, tell us. We’re ready to improve, ready to fix it. But everyone has abandoned us and says there’s a problem with our products. What is the problem? We want to hear it.” Rabbi Feinstein said to them, “Who said there’s a problem? There’s no problem at all.” “They’re saying in your name that there’s a problem.” “They’re saying that in my name? Come, please, into the kitchen.” He opened the door of his refrigerator at home and showed them that he had products from both their company and the other company. “As far as I’m concerned, you both have the same standard of kosher supervision. Sometimes I buy one, sometimes the other. I don’t see a difference between your company and its competitor.” So how did a rumor spread in Rabbi Feinstein’s name that this company wasn’t good? They began investigating. It turned out there had once been a rabbinical conference. There were refreshments on the table, including pitchers of milk. Someone saw Rabbi Feinstein pick up a pitcher from this company, lift it, put it back, and take a pitcher from the other company. So they put two and two together: Rabbi Feinstein picked it up, apparently saw that it was from this company, set it aside, and took the other company’s milk. Rabbi Feinstein said to them, “Do you know why I took the second pitcher? Because I picked up the first one and saw that it was simply empty.”

39:04 The milk had run out. It was an empty bag, so I took the other company’s milk. But what did people see? That he picked up company A’s pitcher and put it back. That must mean it wasn’t good. That’s why the Torah says, “You shall inquire, investigate, and ask thoroughly.” Check. Don’t just say, “Yes, there’s a problem; you can’t use it.” Check it. You think there’s a problem? You need to investigate. Of course you need to investigate. Certainly, you shouldn’t say, “It’s doubtful, but it’s fine anyway.” If there’s a problem, you need to check it, but you shouldn’t forbid something just on the basis of rumors that are unfounded, inaccurate, and have no basis whatsoever. Check everything and see whether there really is a problem. So yes, investigate, but don’t turn a mere rumor of a problem into an actual problem. It’s a good idea always to have some identifying mark to distinguish dairy utensils from meat utensils, whether a particular color or some other feature. In institutions, for example, they might have the letter D written on them, or a hole in the cutlery—some way to avoid confusion so people know what’s dairy and what’s meat. And again, if they get mixed up while cold, there’s no problem; the issue is only if they get mixed up while hot. Someone takes a cup of hot coffee, a cup with something hot in it—then there could be a problem. But when it’s cold, rinsing is enough. Once it’s been washed, that’s sufficient and it becomes permitted. It’s a good idea to have a dedicated utensil—that is, a dedicated spoon for taking sugar or coffee, rather than using the same spoon you stir the coffee or milk with. Because often a person puts the spoon into the sugar, puts it into the coffee, and then wants to add more sugar. He puts that same spoon, which has already been in the hot coffee containing milk, back into the sugar. Then there could be a problem with the sugar that touches the spoon

41:18 Hot. That is why each container of sugar, coffee, or cocoa should have its own spoon, used only for the sugar, only for the coffee, or only for the cocoa. A person should stir whatever he wants to drink in his dairy cup with a dairy spoon, rather than stirring it with a spoon that someone might later use for something eaten at a meat meal or for something pareve. Otherwise, meat and milk could become mixed together. Suppose someone ate meat, six hours have not passed, and he forgets and says the blessing Shehakol over a cup of milk or a dairy food. While saying, “By Whose word everything came to be,” he remembers that he cannot eat the dairy food, because six hours have not yet passed since he ate meat. There is an opinion that he should taste a drop of the milk, despite the fact that six hours have not passed, so that the blessing will not have been said in vain. In practice, we do not rule that way, and that is not our custom. He cannot taste it, since he has remembered that he is still meat, and he should say, “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever,” because he has mentioned Hashem’s name. It will not help to take a glass of water, for example, and say, “Fine, I said Shehakol for the milk; I’ll drink the water instead.” When we say a blessing, we need to know what we are saying it over. When he said, “Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, by Whose word everything came to be”—and what matters here is his intention when he said “Blessed are You, Hashem,” when he mentioned Hashem’s name—he intended to drink milk. He had not intended the water when he began the blessing, so the water cannot replace the milk he wanted to drink. He cannot say, “Okay, I

43:23 can’t drink milk because I’m meat, so I’ll take water now and the Shehakol blessing will apply to the water.” The Shehakol blessing cannot apply to the water, because he did not intend the water when he said the blessing. He intended the milk, and the milk is forbidden to him because six hours have not passed since his meat meal. So the solution is to say, “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever,” so that the blessing he just said will not have been in vain. More generally, if a person begins a blessing and remembers that he should not be saying it—either because he has already said it or because he cannot say it—and he has said only “Blessed are You, Hashem,” without continuing “our G-d, King of the universe,” he should say, “Teach me Your statutes.” “Blessed are You, Hashem; teach me Your statutes” is a verse in Tehillim, chapter 119. He has thus recited a verse. When do we say that he should say, “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever”? When he has already continued the blessing and said, “our G-d, King of the universe.” But if he has said only “Blessed are You, Hashem,” he says “Teach me Your statutes,” and he does not need to say “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever,” because he has recited a verse. Even if he went a little further but has not actually said “our G-d”—if he said, “Blessed are You, Hashem, G-d of...” and then remembered—there is a verse for that too: “Blessed are You, Hashem, G-d of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.” He can say that verse. In other words, if he has said “Blessed are You, Hashem,” he says “Teach me Your statutes.” If he has said “Blessed are You, Hashem, G-d of...” he continues, “G-d of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting,” and so on. Only if he has already said “our G-d” can he

45:20 no longer continue with a verse, because there is no verse with “our G-d” there, and he says, “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever.” When saying blessings with children so that they will learn them, or saying blessings with people during mivtzoim who do not know the blessing, one may say the blessing to them using Hashem’s name. If we tell them to say “Blessed are You, Hashem,” they will also say “Blessed are You, Hashem”; they will not know how to say Hashem’s name properly. Since this is for a necessary purpose, it is not considered saying Hashem’s name in vain. Likewise, when saying blessings with young children to accustom them to making blessings—whether blessings over food or drink, the Asher Yatzar blessing, or any other blessing—one may say Hashem’s name with them. We are doing it to teach the child to say the blessing properly, so we may say the blessing with Hashem’s name. It is important to know that all this applies when the pareve food was cooked in a clean pot, without meat or milk. But if it was cooked together with meat—for example, an egg was placed in the cholent—even if that egg was inside a sealed bag, a roasting bag or the like, it is forbidden to eat it with milk. The egg has the status of meat because it was cooked together with meat. In other words, we distinguish between something cooked in a clean meat pot, which is the case of “fish placed in a bowl” that we mentioned earlier, and something cooked with actual meat, or, conversely, with an actual dairy food. So something cooked with meat—for example, the egg cooked in cholent—may not

47:41 be eaten with milk. It has the status of meat, and one must wait six hours from eating that egg before eating dairy food. The reverse is also true: an egg cooked with milk has the status of milk itself, and one must observe the customary wait between dairy and meat, according to the different opinions and each person’s custom—whether rinsing is enough, or one waits half an hour or an hour. The Chabad custom is to wait an hour, following the opinion of the Shelah and the holy Zohar, and we treat that egg as an actual dairy food. There is a situation that many people sometimes do not notice, especially in restaurants and public eating places. For example, schnitzels were fried in oil, and after the schnitzels were done, French fries were fried in the same oil. Those fries do not fall under the category we discussed of “fish placed in a meat bowl.” They have the status of actual meat. Why? Because they were fried in oil in which meat was fried. This is not like food cooked in a pot in which meat was previously cooked. We are talking about the very same oil in which schnitzels—or sausages, hamburgers, or any other meat food—were previously fried. Whatever we then fry in that same oil is not merely considered meat; it is actually meat. Here, too, one must wait six hours before having dairy, because this is considered actually meat, not merely treated as meat. Only when we are talking about a clean pot in which food was cooked does the law mentioned earlier apply. But when the food was cooked or fried in the same substance as meat or dairy, the food itself becomes meat or dairy, as the case may be. There is a discussion in Tractate Chullin called “fish placed in a bowl.” “Fish” here means a pareve food. Why fish specifically? The fish were cooked in a meat pot. There is a dispute in the Gemara between Rav and Shmuel about whether that pareve food, cooked in a meat pot, may be eaten together with milk. The Gemara speaks of kutach, a food common in the time of the Gemara, something like cultured milk with breadcrumbs. The point is that it is a dairy food. We are not now addressing the question of eating fish with milk—whether according to the opinion that permits it outright or the opinion we mentioned that permits it if a little butter is mixed in. We are looking at the question of a pareve food cooked in a meat pot. As we said, the Gemara records a dispute, and the halachic ruling is that those fish may be eaten with milk. This is called nosen taam bar nosen taam: flavor imparted by something that itself received flavor, meaning flavor transferred at a second remove. The meat imparted flavor to the pot, and the pot imparts flavor to the fish or other pareve food now being cooked in that meat pot. Most of the Rishonim explain that “fish placed in a bowl” means fish cooked in a meat vessel, and the halachic ruling is that they may be eaten with kutach—that is, with milk or a dairy food—because this is nosen taam bar nosen taam. The food does not receive the flavor directly: the pot absorbed it from the meat, and now the pot transfers what it absorbed to the pareve food. Therefore, the food may be eaten with milk. There is a different opinion, a lone opinion, that of the Rivan, Rashi’s son-in-law, cited by Tosafos. He explains that “fish placed in a bowl” does not mean fish cooked in a meat vessel; in his view, that is forbidden. Rather, it means fish placed in a meat bowl, even if they were very hot or boiling, but not actually cooked in the bowl. Only in that case is it permitted. If they were cooked in it, the Rivan holds that it is forbidden. The Shulchan Aruch rules according to most of the Rishonim, that the reference is to fish cooked in a meat pot, or another pareve food cooked in a meat pot. And the question regarding

50:42 That was cooked in a meat pot together with milk. The Gemara discusses kutach, a food common in the time of the Gemara. It was something like a type of yogurt with bread crumbs. In other words, it was a dairy food. We’re not getting into the question of eating fish with milk right now. Either we’re following the opinion that permits it altogether, or the opinion we mentioned that permits it if a little butter is mixed in. Right now, we’re looking at the question of a pareve food cooked in a meat pot. So, as we said, the Gemara records a disagreement, and the halachic ruling is that those fish may be eaten with milk. This is called nosen taam bar nosen taam—one imparted flavor derived from another imparted flavor. In other words, the flavor is transferred at a second remove: the meat imparted flavor to the pot, and the pot imparts flavor to the fish or other pareve food now cooking in that meat pot. Most of the Rishonim explain that when the Gemara speaks of “fish that were placed in a bowl,” it means fish cooked in a meat bowl. The halachic ruling is that they may be eaten with kutach—that is, with milk or a dairy food—because this is nosen taam bar nosen taam. The food does not receive the flavor directly. Rather, the pot absorbed flavor from the meat, and now the pot transfers what it absorbed to the pareve food. That is why it may be eaten with milk. There is a different opinion, a minority opinion: that of the Rivan, Rashi’s son-in-law, cited by Tosafos. He explains that “fish that were placed in a bowl” does not mean fish cooked in a meat bowl. In his view, that would be forbidden. Rather, it means fish placed in a meat bowl, even if they were very hot or boiling, but not actually cooked in the bowl. Only in that case is it permitted. If they were cooked in it, the Rivan holds that it is forbidden. The Shulchan Aruch rules according to the majority of the Rishonim, that the reference is to fish or another pareve food cooked in a meat pot. And he asked about

53:20 In that case, we say they may be eaten with dairy. The Rema notes that some have the custom to be stringent, following the Rivan: if the food was actually cooked in the meat pot, they do not eat it with dairy. They permit it only if it was placed in the meat pot, even if it was put in while hot or boiling. Even according to the Rema, who is stringent like the Rivan, this applies only to a ben yomo pot—that is, a pot in which meat was cooked within the past twenty-four hours. If it is not ben yomo, it is permitted even according to the Rema. The stringency applies only to a ben yomo pot in which meat was cooked within twenty-four hours before the pareve food was placed or cooked in it. An egg cooked in a dairy pot may likewise be eaten with meat for the same reason: this is called nat bar nat. Even though an egg comes from a chicken, it is pareve, and it may be eaten with meat under the same rules we discussed earlier. According to most of the Rishonim, and as ruled in halachah, it is permitted even if it was cooked in a meat pot—meaning a clean pot. According to the Rivan, however, and the Rema says it is proper to be stringent this way, it is permitted only if it was merely placed in a meat pot or if the pot was not ben yomo. With Hashem’s help, may we merit the complete Geulah and the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu immediately, right now. Amen and amen.