Laws of Returning Food to the Fire on Shabbos - Rabbi Shneur Zalman Feldman shlita

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

00:09 Speaker 2 Shalom u’vrachah. Today we’ll learn the laws of returning food to the heat on Shabbos. In the previous lessons we discussed the laws of leaving food on the heat before Shabbos; now we’ll learn the laws of returning it. As we mentioned, the laws of leaving food on the heat concern actions taken before Shabbos, on Friday. At that point, there is no issue of cooking on Shabbos, since Shabbos has not yet begun. Nevertheless, the Sages decreed against certain practices out of concern that, once Shabbos begins, a person might stoke the coals to speed up the cooking. The laws of returning food to the heat concern actions taken during Shabbos. A person left food on the heat before Shabbos as required—either food that had reached the stage of being cooked like the food of Ben Derusai on an open flame, or food placed on a stove whose coals had been swept away or covered, as required. Now, during Shabbos, he removes the food and wants to put it back on the hotplate or the fire. Here, too, the Sages made a decree. Although, strictly speaking, there is no issue of cooking, nor a concern that he might stoke the coals, since the food is already cooked, there is an issue of appearing to cook. In other words, if a person takes food and places it on the fire in the ordinary way, it will look as though he is cooking on Shabbos, even though he is not. To an observer, it looks like someone placing food on a fire on Shabbos. There is also the issue of placing food on the heat anew. To avoid the appearance of cooking, we need to act in ways that show we are not placing food on the fire for the first time on Shabbos, but are merely continuing what we did before. This is called returning the food: we are continuing the previous arrangement of leaving it on the heat. The food was already there before

02:39 Speaker 2 Shabbos; we simply took it away for a few moments and are putting it back on the fire. For a person to be allowed to return food that was on the fire or hotplate so that it continues to stay warm on Shabbos, several conditions listed in the Shulchan Aruch must be met. Before we go through those conditions, we should make clear that with anything we want to return on Shabbos, we must first ensure there is no issue of cooking on Shabbos. That means making sure the food is fully cooked and observing all the details of the laws brought in section 318, including the stringencies mentioned there concerning a cooked food, a liquid food that has cooled and is subject to the law of cooking after cooking, and other laws concerning the prohibition of cooking on Shabbos. Here we are discussing food for which cooking is not an issue; the only issue is the Sages’ decree concerning the appearance of cooking. To address that concern, the Sages gave us the laws and conditions for returning food to the heat. First, the stove onto which the food is returned on Shabbos must be one whose coals have been swept away or covered. As we mentioned, food could theoretically have been left on an open flame permissibly. If it was placed there before Shabbos and was already cooked to the stage of the food of Ben Derusai, there is no problem with leaving it there before Shabbos. But under the laws of returning food on Shabbos, it may not be returned to an open flame, because that would appear to be cooking. Only when the coals have been swept away or covered is this not the normal way of cooking, resolving the concern that it appears to be cooking. Only then may the food be returned on

05:10 Speaker 2 Shabbos itself. The second condition is that the pot must still be hot. As we mentioned, returning it must look like a continuation of its original placement on the heat, not a new act, so the pot must still be hot. At the very least, it must not have cooled completely; it must still be warm enough that its warmth makes it pleasant to eat. If it is soup that is still warm, or any other food that is still warm and has not cooled completely, only then may it be returned to the heat. But if I removed the food, and even held it in my hand, as we’ll discuss later, but a long time has passed—or it is a food that cools very quickly, and by the time I want to return it, it is already cold—I may not return it to the fire or hotplate. It would look as though I were placing it there anew, as though I were taking something that had not been there before. It does not look like a continuation of the earlier act; it looks like an entirely new heating. The third condition is that the pot must still be in his hand; he must not put it down on the floor. Again, as we mentioned, we need to show that we are continuing the original act: the food was left on the heat before Shabbos, and on Shabbos we are merely returning it. So it must remain in his hands. He should not put it on the countertop, the table, or anything else. Some authorities do permit placing it on something where one does not normally put pots, such as a chair or stool, because that does not end the original act, and the pot may then be returned. But the Alter Rebbe did not mention this permission, so we do not put it down on anything. It must remain in his hand the whole time. If

07:09 Speaker 2 it is a heavy pot, he can set it on the countertop or table while holding it up on one side, so that without his grip the pot would not remain in place. In that way, he has not turned his attention away from it; it is still considered to be in his hand, and he is continuing the original act of leaving it on the heat. The Alter Rebbe mentions another stringency: he must have intended to return it. That is, when I lifted the pot off the hotplate, I already intended to put it back. It cannot be that after I removed it—even if it is still in my hand—someone suddenly says, “Hey, one of the guests hasn’t arrived. Let’s save him some cholent and keep it warm.” If I only found out after removing it from the heat, I had not intended to return it, so the condition for returning it has not been met. The fifth condition mentioned by the Shulchan Aruch—and, of course, by the Alter Rebbe; everyone agrees on this most basic condition—is that the food must be fully cooked. As we mentioned, returning food to the heat is permitted only when there is no issue of cooking on Shabbos. If the food is not yet fully cooked, it is forbidden to return it on Shabbos. Any action that advances its cooking is forbidden. Certainly, if I return it to the fire after removing it, that is forbidden on Shabbos itself: it is an actual violation of the prohibition against cooking on Shabbos, a serious prohibition. We need to know this law and this condition. Sometimes we stack pots on top of other pots. On Friday night, we put soup on the hotplate and a pot on top of it, with kugel on top, and things like that. If, during the meal, we want to take some of the pots and put them back on the hotplate, the first thing we need to check is that all the food in the pots.

09:20 Speaker 2 That is, say the cholent was sitting on top of the soup pot: everything in it must be fully cooked, not just cooked to the degree of ma’achal ben Drusai. We should not confuse the two, because here it is no longer a concern that someone might come to transgress or anything like that. If it is not fully cooked, there is an actual issue of cooking on Shabbos. So moving a pot from one place to another, or from on top of another pot back onto the hotplate—any action that brings it closer to the heat source—is permitted only when the food is fully cooked. We also said that when the conditions for returning a pot are met, you can return it not only to the stove, hotplate, or blech where it originally stood, but to any other stove or hotplate. Likewise, the condition we discussed—that you must have intended to return it—applies only when you deliberately took it off the heat. It does not apply when the flame went out on its own, or when someone removed the pot without the homeowner’s knowledge. In that case, the person responsible for the food never intended to remove it from the heat, so it can be returned. Here are some common examples: if the hotplate turns off during Shabbos, or the gas runs out, and the pot is still hot, you can take the pot to the neighbors’ hotplate or gas stove. As we learned, you may move it from one stove to another, and this is not considered removing it from the heat without intending to return it, because nobody intended for the heat to go out. Another common example: someone wants to take down the soup pot on Friday night for the Shabbos evening meal,

11:55 Speaker 2 and after taking it down, he suddenly discovers that he actually took down the cholent pot, which was meant for the next day. If the cholent is already fully cooked—which, as we said, must be checked—he may return it. Although he did not take down that pot intending to return it, it turns out to have been a mistake. So he has not ended its original placement on the heat: he never intended to take down the cholent pot at all, but a different pot. He may return it to the hotplate or blech. The Alter Rebbe teaches another law: you may not transfer food from one heated vessel to another. In addition to all the conditions we learned—that you intended to return it, that it is still in your hand, that the heat source is covered, and everything else we mentioned—you may not transfer it from one vessel to another. Even if someone took down a pot intending to return the food and has not yet set it down anywhere, he may not transfer it to a different pot. For example, they take down the cholent pot and realize that someone has not arrived yet. They want to keep some hot cholent for him, so someone suggests putting a portion in a small pot and returning that pot to the heat, while serving the large pot to everyone already there. That is forbidden, because putting it in a new pot makes this a new act. As we have said throughout, returning it must be a continuation of its original placement on the heat, not something new. So if we see during Shabbos that the cholent has lost liquid and need to add hot water, we cannot draw hot water from the urn into a cup and pour it from the cup into the pot. That would mean transferring the hot water from one heated vessel to another, from one container

14:02 Speaker 2 to another. As we mentioned, that ends its original placement on the heat. The only solution is to take the cholent pot itself off the heat, hold it under the urn, and pour directly from the urn into the pot. But here you must be careful to avoid a problem involving meat and dairy. If the cholent is meaty and the hot water is used for everything, including coffee with milk, you need to hold the pot some distance from the hot-water tap, so that any steam reaching and touching the spout will no longer be hot. That way there will be no meat-and-dairy issue. Likewise, you may not transfer hot water from one urn to another with today’s urns. As we mentioned earlier, our urns today do not have the status of a covered heat source, because they have several heat settings. That gives them the status of an uncovered flame. So if I see that one urn is running out of water and has only a little hot water left, and I want to transfer it to another urn, that is forbidden. The first condition for returning something to the heat is that the heat source be covered, and today’s urns do not meet that condition. The Alter Rebbe cites a particular stringency from the early authorities: the conditions for returning food to the heat must be observed not only on Shabbos, as we have learned so far, but also in the minutes before Shabbos. This comes up often when we move pots from the refrigerator or the gas stove to the hotplate. If there is not enough time for the food to warm up between placing it on the hotplate and sunset on Friday, then all the conditions for returning it must be observed.

16:28 Speaker 2 That is, when I take the food from the stove to the hotplate, I should not set it down somewhere along the way. I should pick it up intending to place it immediately on the hotplate, and observe all the conditions for returning it. This is only the preferred practice; after the fact, if you did not do so, it is still all right. But it is worth paying attention to this: when we do this in the minutes before Shabbos, if it is very close to Shabbos, it is proper to observe the conditions for returning food to the heat. The reason for this stringency, the Alter Rebbe explains, is that if we permit placing food on the heat without those conditions in the minutes before Shabbos, there is a concern that someone might also return it during Shabbos without meeting the required conditions. That is why they were stringent even in the minutes before Shabbos. As we mentioned, one of the conditions for returning food is that it was already on the heat before Shabbos. You cannot place food on the heat during Shabbos if it had never been there before, because that would look like placing it there for the first time. So it often happens, as we mentioned, that people stack food on top of a pot: they put kugel or bourekas on top of it, or one pot on top of another. Before Shabbos, they arrange one pot below and one above. During Shabbos, they want to remove the lower pot and put the upper pot directly on the hotplate. That can pose a problem of placing it there for the first time: the upper pot was not on the hotplate itself when Shabbos began, and now, in the middle of Shabbos, for the first time, they want to

18:44 Speaker 2 Leave it there, put it directly on the hotplate. To solve this problem, the best approach is to do the following before setting up two pots, one above the other, on Friday. Say someone wants to put a pot of soup on the bottom and a pot of cholent on top, then, after the Friday night Shabbos meal, remove the soup and leave the cholent directly on the hotplate. Before putting the cholent on top of the soup, he should first place the cholent on the hotplate for a short time, just a few seconds. Then he should lift it, ask someone else to put down the soup, and return the cholent on top of the soup in accordance with the conditions for returning a pot to the heat. That way, when he wants to put the cholent directly on the hotplate during Shabbos, it will not be the first time the cholent has been placed there directly. It will be a return to something he already did before Shabbos began. The Alter Rebbe states in halachah that if someone sees during Shabbos that his food is reducing and burning, he may take an empty pot, turn it upside down, and place the pot containing the food on top of it. This distances the food from the fire so it will not burn. From this halachah we learn how to address the problem of appearing to cook: we place the food in a way that is not a normal manner of cooking,

21:12 Speaker 2 as in this case, where we put the pot on top of an overturned pot, away from the fire. Since that is not a normal manner of cooking, it addresses the problem of appearing to cook, and one may put back any food for which cooking on Shabbos is not an issue, even without meeting the conditions for returning a pot. For example, dry food that has been fully cooked has no prohibition of cooking in this respect, as we learned when discussing what constitutes cooking on Shabbos. One may take it and heat it even if it was not on the heat before Shabbos, by placing it on that empty pot, in a manner that is not a normal way to cook. Or, if it is a liquid food that was taken off the heat but is still hot and has not yet cooled, one may heat it in this manner, even if it does not meet the conditions for returning a pot. So one may take any food for which cooking is not an issue and put it on a radiator, bring it close to an oven, or place it on another pot, because none of these is a normal manner of cooking. It is important to note that clearing or covering a fire does not automatically mean that cooking on it is no longer considered a normal manner of cooking. Even if the fire has been cleared or covered, we regularly cook on those burners throughout the week. So although clearing or covering the fire helps with other halachos, to place food there afresh on Shabbos it must be in a way that is not a normal manner of cooking at all. Regarding a Shabbos hotplate, some have indeed wanted to say that since no one ever cooks on it, food may be placed there without meeting the conditions for returning a pot.

23:50 Speaker 2 In practice, we are stringent even with a Shabbos hotplate. But if a pot was taken off it, as in the various mistakes we mentioned earlier, we can be more lenient after the fact with a Shabbos hotplate. The same applies to placing bread on the hotplate to warm challah. Some have written that it is permitted from the outset, because no one normally cooks or bakes bread on a hotplate or a blech. But ideally, even when warming bread, one should not put it directly on the hotplate. Instead, one should leave some distance between them, or put the bread on top of a pot or on a Shabbos warmer, and warm it only that way. It should be mentioned that, given all the Alter Rebbe’s stringencies concerning cooking on Shabbos, there are hardly any foods that can be heated on Shabbos from a cold state under the halachic definition of fully cooked, dry food. That is because we are stringent that anything with even a little moisture has the status of a liquid food. But if there is a food that is completely dry—not moist enough to moisten something else when touched—such as challah or anything else that has no oiliness or moisture and is fully cooked, we may place it where it will warm, provided it does not look as though we are cooking. We should not put it directly on the heat, but should keep it somewhat distant from the heat, so it does not look like cooking or like placing food on the heat afresh. The halachic authorities discussed whether one may place food on a hotplate during Shabbos while it is off, when it will later switch on by means of a Shabbos timer—or even place it there before Shabbos while the hotplate is off, when it will later switch on

26:22 Speaker 2 by means of a Shabbos timer. Some sought to permit this by comparing it to the halachah of a heated room mentioned in the Shulchan Aruch: non-Jews would light the ovens during Shabbos, and the pots would be brought in before they lit them, so the food would warm in the oven used to heat the room. In practice, we are stringent and do not rely on this leniency. We do not use any such arrangement to heat food during Shabbos, even if the pots and food were on the hotplate before Shabbos but the hotplate switched on during Shabbos by means of a Shabbos timer. We do not permit that arrangement. Rather, the hotplate must remain on from before Shabbos begins until the time we want to use the hot food.