Food of Non-Jews - Rabbi Binyomin Cohen shlita

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

00:09 Speaker 2 The prohibition of yayin nesech concerns wine of non-Jews. The original prohibition was wine poured as an offering to an idol, but the Sages also prohibited any wine of a non-Jew. This is called stam yeinam. It isn’t wine that a non-Jew poured as an offering to an idol; rather, if a non-Jew touched the wine, it becomes prohibited, even though he didn’t offer it to an idol. However, if the wine is unfit for the altar—for example, cooked wine, or wine mixed with honey or leaven—then even if a non-Jew touched it, it does not become prohibited, because it is unfit to be poured as an offering. Nowadays, wines that have not undergone cooking or pasteurization—pasteurization isn’t quite cooking; it’s eighty or eighty-five degrees. According to most halachic authorities, it has the status of cooked wine. So if a wine has not undergone cooking or pasteurization, it is given two coverings. There is the bottle’s stopper—these wines usually have a cork—and over it there is a plastic covering. This is called a seal within a seal: two closures. Because it has two closures, even if a non-Jew touched it or saw it, the wine does not become prohibited. Cooked or pasteurized wines do not need two closures. That’s why you can see in stores that most ordinary wines, the sweet wines that have undergone cooking or pasteurization, have only one closure. Even if a non-Jew touched them, they are cooked wine, and there is no problem using them. There is an opinion that cooked wine is unfit for Kiddush: since it is unfit for the altar, it is unfit for Kiddush. According to that, all pasteurized and cooked wines are unfit for Kiddush, but that is a

02:47 Speaker 2 stringent opinion. According to the basic halacha, cooked and pasteurized wine is kosher for Kiddush. Wine vinegar: if a non-Jew sells vinegar, it is also forbidden to use it, even though it isn’t wine. That’s because the vinegar was first wine and turned from wine into vinegar, so it had already become prohibited at the initial stage, when it was wine. For that reason, vinegar of a non-Jew is also prohibited. Although it is now vinegar, it was previously wine, so it remains prohibited. In other prohibitions, we have the rule of nullification, usually at a ratio of sixty to one and the like. But because of the severity of the prohibition of yayin nesech, it is not nullified at all. In other words, if yayin nesech becomes mixed with kosher wine, all the wine is prohibited; it is not nullified even at sixty to one, because the Sages were very stringent about yayin nesech. What happens when you hold a Shabbos meal and invite guests, some of whom do not keep Shabbos? What is the status of the wine? Although halacha says that wine handled by a Jew who does not keep Shabbos becomes prohibited, nowadays even someone who does not keep Shabbos does not do so deliberately to provoke. It is due to a lack of Jewish education: he hasn’t learned, and he isn’t aware of the value and holiness of Shabbos. Therefore, the practice today is not to prohibit wine that a Jew who desecrates Shabbos has looked at, even if it is uncooked wine. If he only looked at it, looking does not make it prohibited. Generally, in such situations, people try to use cooked or pasteurized wine, which poses no problem because it has already undergone cooking or pasteurization. The main problem

05:18 Speaker 2 is particularly at Chabad Houses around the world. Sometimes the people who come are not only Jews who do not keep Shabbos; unfortunately, sometimes a Jew comes with a non-Jewish girlfriend and the like, and non-Jews are actually present. So cooked or pasteurized wine is used to avoid the problem, or the awkwardness, of a non-Jew touching or seeing the wine. Once the wine is cooked or pasteurized, we don’t have that problem. More generally, it’s important to know that there are various leniencies people have relied on, mainly outside Israel and in places where the same product could not be obtained with better kashrus. For example, bread baked by a non-Jewish professional baker. What does that mean? After all, it is forbidden to eat bread baked by a non-Jew. The reason it was prohibited was to prevent Jews and non-Jews from becoming close. A non-Jew might invite a Jew to eat at his home, and that could lead to intermarriage or an improper relationship between a Jew and a non-Jew. So the Sages said that this applies to bread a non-Jew bakes privately in his home. But if it is a non-Jewish bakery, where the baker bakes bread to sell, he isn’t giving it to his friend or inviting him home. It’s an ordinary bakery: whoever comes in pays, buys, and takes the bread. In places where it is impossible to obtain pas Yisroel, bread baked by a Jew, they permitted bread from a non-Jewish professional baker. A professional baker means someone baking in a public bakery, not someone who made it privately at home. They permitted that where it is impossible to obtain pas Yisroel. Even regarding this, it says that at certain times, such as the Ten Days of Teshuvah, it is proper to be stringent and insist on pas Yisroel. But all this applies only to places outside Israel,

07:51 Speaker 2 small, remote places where it is impossible to obtain pas Yisroel. Where pas Yisroel is available—for example, in Israel or in places with a large Jewish community—there is no permission to eat bread baked by a non-Jew, even if it comes from a professional baker, because bread baked by a Jew is available. So why would we permit bread baked by a non-Jew when bread baked by a Jew is available? Therefore, one must be careful: if you buy things baked by a non-Jew from a non-Jewish bakery, it is a problem, and you may not eat that bread, pita, or other baked goods, since the same thing can be obtained when a Jew has baked it. Beyond that, even in places where it was permitted, the permission is not so straightforward. Suppose someone travels abroad and says, “I’m here in a foreign country—Turkey or somewhere else—and there’s no Jewish bakery here.” Would he be allowed to rely on the leniency we mentioned, that where pas Yisroel cannot be obtained, bread baked by a non-Jew is permitted? Here there is another problem: checking the flour for worms and insects. The non-Jew certainly does not check the flour. Even if he does, he won’t check it as it needs to be checked, one hundred percent; nor can we rely on a non-Jew’s inspection. So we already have another concern, the possibility of worms and insects in the bread. Thus, even if we permit bread from a non-Jewish bakery under the rules concerning food cooked by non-Jews, here we would prohibit it because of the concern about insects. That leniency applied in cold regions of Russia and Poland, where insects were not commonly found in flour because they could not survive the cold. But in hot countries, such as those in the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, and the like, there certainly is a concern about worms, and even

10:24 Speaker 2 when there is no problem with bread baked by a non-Jew because it comes from a bakery, there is still a problem no less serious, and perhaps even more serious: the concern about worms. One must be very careful about that. Today, thank G-d, the situation is much better. Goods can be shipped from country to country, so in most places it is possible to obtain products with reliable kashrus, including pas Yisroel and goods from Jewish bakeries. With perhaps a little effort, those products can be obtained with reliable kashrus, and there is no need to rely on the various leniencies that the Sages did permit in their time. Nowadays, we can manage without those leniencies, so there is no reason today to permit what was permitted in the past. Of course, if a large supermarket receives packaged goods bearing a kosher certification and a seal indicating that they are pas Yisroel, one may rely on that where nothing else can be obtained. But one should not rely on the leniency concerning bread baked by non-Jews, because nowadays there is no need to resort to it. Halacha states that butter cannot be made from the milk of a non-kosher animal. Butter can be made only from the milk of a kosher animal—a cow, a sheep, and so on. It cannot be made from the milk of a non-kosher animal, and therefore it says that the Sages did not prohibit butter made by non-Jews. With milk, we are concerned that the non-Jew might mix in milk from a non-kosher animal. But since butter cannot be made from such milk, they did not prohibit butter made by non-Jews. Nowadays, we are stringent about this, because we cannot know what was previously in the equipment, how the non-Jew prepared it, and so on. But if it’s something that isn’t made by non-Jews, but by Jews—some time ago, about two years ago, there was a shortage of butter, there was

13:07 Speaker 2 Butter with a kosher certification that didn’t say Badatz, but it did have a rabbinate certification. It was certified. It was produced in Israel, not imported—not butter from abroad. So from the standpoint of milk from a non-Jew, we don’t have a problem here. If our only concern is that something else might be mixed into it, that can’t happen, because butter cannot be made from the milk of a non-kosher animal. And when we’re talking about large production plants, there’s also no concern like there might be with an individual, who may have previously cooked non-kosher milk in that pot, and so on. We’re talking about plants that produce only butter. They don’t mix other things into it, and it has a kosher certification to ensure that nothing else is mixed in. So in that respect, there’s no problem using the butter. Someone who wants to be stringent might be concerned that perhaps the milk was milked on Shabbos. That’s a different matter, though: a stringency concerning milk that was milked on Shabbos, not a problem of milk from a non-Jew. There is no such problem here because, as we said, butter can only be made from the milk of a kosher animal, not from the milk of a non-kosher animal. The Rambam says the same thing about oil sold by non-Jews. If a non-Jew sells olive oil, since oil floats, nothing else can be mixed into it; if anything else is added, the oil will float on top. So the Rambam says that oil sold by non-Jews is permitted. The Rambam goes so far as to say that someone who forbids oil sold by non-Jews is wasting Jewish money. Seemingly, we see the same principle: since nothing else can be mixed into olive oil, there’s no concern that something else will be mixed into it. Some argue that today, with the various substances that can be put into oil, perhaps something could be mixed into it after all. So even if there is room to be stringent, that would apply only to eating it. But

15:23 Speaker 2 for Chanukah lights, for example, if someone finds a non-Jew selling olive oil, he can use it. There certainly shouldn’t be a problem, because there’s no concern that something else was mixed into it. As we saw, the Rambam permits it even for eating. He says there’s no concern that something else was mixed into it, because oil can’t be mixed with anything else. If anything else is added, the oil will float to the top, and they won’t be able to mix anything else into it.