General Kashrus Matters - Rabbi Binyomin Cohen shlita

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

00:09 Speaker 2 Halacha discusses the sale of chametz. In other words, if a person has chametz left over, he arranges the sale, sells it to a non-Jew, and keeps it in a closed-off place throughout Pesach. In Chabad, the sale is done with a kind of guarantor known as an arev kablan, which gives the sale greater validity. So there is no problem keeping things that are actual chametz if we arrange the sale properly. Of course, those things must be in a closed-off place that children cannot access, so they will not accidentally open those areas. If a person has no closed-off place to put the chametz and is concerned that children will get into it, then, if the quantities are small, it really is better not to keep it and to finish it before Pesach. Even though, according to the basic halacha, it is permitted to keep chametz, if we sell it to a non-Jew, it has been sold, and halachically that is perfectly fine. Something sold to a non-Jew belonged to the non-Jew during Pesach, and there is no problem using it afterward. One thing to pay attention to in the first days or weeks after Pesach, when buying things, is either to buy from a place known to have arranged the sale properly, or to check that chametz products were baked after Pesach. In other words, we do not want a situation where, during Pesach, the product was with the store, with the seller, and he had not arranged a sale. That would be a problem of chametz that was owned by a Jew during Pesach. But if we know the sale was done properly, there is no problem using it. It really is important to pay attention to this point, because many people think that after Pesach the main thing is simply to go out and buy chametz products, as long as they were not in their own home. But that is not the right way to look at it, because the fact that it was not in your home does not

02:25 Speaker 2 mean it was not in the possession of another Jew who did not sell his chametz. And if that grocery store—especially a small grocery or shop—may not have arranged the sale properly, then using its chametz products afterward really is a problem, because that is chametz that was owned by a Jew during Pesach. So it is better for a person to keep actual chametz at home, sell it properly according to halacha, and use that chametz after Pesach—chametz he knows was sold and was in the non-Jew’s possession throughout the holiday—than to enter into doubts by buying something from a store when he does not know whether it might be chametz that was owned by a Jew during Pesach, having not been sold to a non-Jew or not sold properly. Although we generally prepare meat for use through rinsing, salting, and rinsing again, there is one part for which salting does not work: the liver. Because the liver contains so much blood, the Shulchan Aruch says that salting does not work for it. No matter how much we salt the liver, it will not draw out the blood. So the only solution for liver is roasting. Roasting the liver is what permits it to be eaten. There are other parts, such as the spleen, that also look red, but they have the same halachic status as meat. Salting works for the spleen because its redness is not blood; it is red flesh. That is different from the liver, which is full of blood and can be made permissible to eat only by roasting. Before roasting it, the liver must be cut lengthwise and crosswise or pierced with holes. According to the basic halacha, this applies only to the liver of an animal, but

04:58 Speaker 2 some are stringent about making holes in poultry liver as well, even though the law does not require it. If we want to cook the liver after roasting it, several conditions must be met. First, it must have been roasted within three days of the slaughter. In other words, if the liver sat for three days before being roasted, roasting will still make it permissible to eat, but it cannot be cooked afterward. Some are lenient and say that if the liver was frozen during that time, the three days are counted from when it was thawed. But not everyone accepts that leniency; it is a leniency for after the fact. Ideally, liver should be roasted within three days. Under the more stringent kashrus certifications, such as the various batei din, Rabbi Landau’s and the like, if unroasted liver is sold, the date of slaughter is marked on it so people know how long they have to roast it within those three days. The Badatz of the Eidah Hachareidis does not sell unroasted liver in the first place, out of concern that people will not be careful or will fail to notice the date, roast it after three days, and then possibly cook it. So its guidelines are to sell only roasted liver. But those who do sell unroasted liver generally mark it with the date of slaughter, so that we know whether it was roasted within three days and can therefore be cooked afterward. For example, someone wants to make liver salad with eggs, onion, and the like. If the liver was roasted within three days of slaughter, it can be cooked after roasting. If it was not roasted within three days, it may only be roasted and cannot then be cooked. It can be mixed with eggs, but without cooking it after roasting. The Rema brings another condition: if we want to cook the liver,

07:22 Speaker 2 we must rinse it before roasting. That is a stringency brought by the Rema. Not everyone follows it, but ideally that is what we do: rinse the liver before roasting. The difference between poultry liver and the liver of an animal is this: as we said, an animal’s liver must be cut lengthwise and crosswise or pierced because it is a large mass, and cutting it releases the blood present in it. Poultry liver is relatively small and consists of separate pieces rather than one mass, so according to the basic halacha, it does not have to be cut beforehand. Nevertheless, some have the practice of at least piercing it with a matchstick or some other implement, so that if there is blood in it, the blood can come out through the holes during roasting. There is another halacha called kavush: something soaked is considered like something cooked. That means two things do not necessarily have to be cooked together to become prohibited—for example, meat and milk, or a prohibited food and a permitted food. Even if they were together in water for twenty-four hours, and even if the water was cold, they are considered to have soaked together, and something soaked is considered like something cooked. So if cold meat, even uncooked meat, was in water together with a dairy food for twenty-four hours, it is considered as though they were cooked together. It is forbidden to eat or derive benefit from it, and so on, because something soaked is considered like something cooked. But this rule applies only if they were together for at least twenty-four hours. Less than twenty-four hours is not considered soaking for this purpose. So if, for example, we took a piece of chicken that had not yet been prepared for use—it had not been salted—and it was in water for twenty-four

09:58 Speaker 2 hours, that meat is considered cooked, and salting it will no longer prepare it for use the way we salt ordinary meat. Normally, we put meat in water for half an hour, then in salt for an hour, and then rinse it three times. But if, for some reason, it was forgotten and remained in water for twenty-four hours, it is considered to have been cooked before salting, and it is forbidden to cook it. Salting will not help; only roasting will, because it is considered to have soaked in water. But what if we are talking about vegetables? For example, someone has a non-Jewish neighbor who makes pickled vegetables—say, he pickles a cucumber in water. Of course, that takes more than twenty-four hours. He brings it to his Jewish friend or neighbor and says, “Look, I made a delicious homemade pickle, and I’d like to offer you some.” At first glance, there is no problem with a vegetable. But must we be concerned that, since something soaked is considered like something cooked, the cucumber the non-Jew put in water is considered as though he cooked it? Perhaps that raises a question of bishul akum, food cooked by a non-Jew. A Jew is forbidden to eat food cooked by a non-Jew. So if something soaked is considered like something cooked, perhaps this, too, counts as the non-Jew having cooked it and would be forbidden for a Jew to eat. The answer is no: that is not the case, and a Jew may eat the cucumber the non-Jew pickled in water. It states explicitly in section 113, as the Rema brings in Yoreh De’ah, that although we say something soaked is considered like something cooked, that does not apply to vegetables pickled by a non-Jew. We do not consider them like food cooked by a non-Jew. Rather, a Jew may eat vegetables pickled by a non-Jew, because in this case we do not say that something soaked is considered like something cooked, and that

12:27 Speaker 2 It is not considered as though the non-Jew cooked it. In halachah, there is a concept of a first vessel and a second vessel. A first vessel cooks; a second vessel does not cook. Or, as Tosafos puts it in Tractate Shabbos, in the chapter Kirah: the walls of a first vessel retain heat, while the walls of a second vessel cool its contents. For example, suppose we take a pot that was on the fire, remove it, and transfer half its contents—say, soup or water—into another pot. The soup in the second pot will cool much faster than the soup left in the first. Why? Because the walls of the first pot, which was on the fire, retain the heat. The second pot, by contrast, was an ordinary cold pot that had not been on the fire. So even though the soup poured into it is boiling hot, it comes into contact with cold walls. The pot’s walls are cold, and the soup will therefore cool much faster than it will in the first pot. That is the difference between a first vessel and a second vessel. There are many laws connected with this, both regarding meat and milk and regarding the laws of Shabbos, as we will see later. If, for example, boiling-hot milk spills onto a countertop, the milk is hot, but the countertop is a second vessel. The countertop itself is not hot; it is cold. Then someone mistakenly places a hot pot containing meat on the part of the countertop where the hot milk spilled. In other words, a hot pot touched hot milk. The meat may be eaten. Why? Because this is a second vessel. The countertop is considered a second vessel. It was not hot in its own right. Although the milk spilled on it was boiling hot, it came into contact with a cold countertop, which has the status of a second vessel, like a cold pot. Therefore, the meat in the pot may be eaten. But the pot itself, which is a hot pot

15:14 Speaker 2 and touched the hot milk, will need to be kashered by hagalah. The meat that was cooked in it, however, may be eaten without reservation. Again, this follows the principle that a second vessel does not cook: its walls cool its contents, and therefore the meat is permitted. Let’s take another example from the laws of Shabbos. Suppose we have a pot of soup that was on the fire or on a hotplate, and we serve it into bowls. Here, it makes a difference how we serve it. If we pour directly from the pot into a bowl—say it is a small pot and we are not using a ladle—the bowl is a second vessel. If we use a ladle and transfer the soup from the ladle to the bowl, the pot is a first vessel, the ladle is a second vessel, and the bowl is a third vessel. That is provided we put the ladle in and immediately take it out with the soup; we did not leave it in the pot. If we leave the ladle in the pot, it takes on the status of the pot and becomes a first vessel. The bowl will then be a second vessel, not a third. Why does it matter whether the bowl is a second or third vessel? After all, we said that a second vessel does not cook. But there is another question in halachah: can something be cooked after it has already been cooked? In other words, can something that has already been cooked be cooked a second time, so that halachically it is considered to be cooking on Shabbos? Or is there no cooking after cooking? The general rule in halachah is that there is no cooking after cooking. But the Beis Yosef, author of the Shulchan Aruch, and the Rema disagree about whether this applies to every form of cooking. In other words, just as we say there is no cooking after cooking, do we also say there is no cooking after roasting, baking, frying, and so on? Or is the rule limited to cooking itself: there is no cooking after cooking, but there is cooking

17:55 Speaker 2 after baking, cooking after roasting, and cooking after frying? What difference does this make in practice? Suppose we want to put soup croutons into a bowl. If we say that there is cooking after baking and after frying, soup croutons are considered foods that cook quickly. So it would be forbidden to put them even into a second vessel. If we serve the soup with a ladle, without leaving the ladle in the pot, but instead transfer the soup immediately from the ladle to the bowl, the bowl will be a third vessel, because the ladle is a second vessel. According to the opinion that there is no cooking after cooking, the soup croutons have already been cooked, so there is no problem with having them in the hot bowl of hot soup. But if there is cooking after baking, frying, or roasting, there would be a problem putting those croutons into a bowl that has the status of a second vessel; they could only be put into a bowl that has the status of a third vessel. So if you want to put soup croutons into the bowl, you need to use a ladle and not leave it in the pot. Rather, take the ladle out of the pot right away and pour the soup into the bowls. The ladle is then considered a second vessel, the pot a first vessel, and the bowl a third vessel, and there is no problem putting the croutons in it. With soup croutons certified kosher by Rabbi Landau, they make sure the croutons undergo a particular cooking process. Then there is no problem putting them into the bowl even if it is a second vessel. Not every kosher certification requires this, so if there is any doubt whether the croutons went through that process, you should, as we said, add them only after taking the soup from the pot with

20:25 Speaker 2 a ladle—and not leaving the ladle in the pot, but taking it out immediately. Then the pot is a first vessel, the ladle a second vessel, and the bowl a third vessel. Even when we say that a second vessel does not cook, a solid piece of food can cook something even in a second vessel. For example, suppose you take a hot hard-boiled egg, say one that was in cholent, and you want to cool it by putting it into a container of cold water. Because the egg is a solid piece of food, it can cook: it will cook the water that first comes into contact with it. So you may not take the boiling-hot egg from the cholent pot and put it into a container of cold water. What you can do is hold it under running tap water. Turn on the tap and peel the egg while water runs over it. The water keeps flowing; it does not remain in contact with the egg long enough to cook. Therefore, although the egg is a solid piece of food, you may rinse and peel it under a stream of cold water. But putting it into a container of cold water is forbidden. Because it is a solid piece of food, it cooks even in a second vessel: it retains its own heat. Even though the walls of a second vessel do not heat its contents, the solid food itself does, and therefore you may not put the egg into cold water. It is very important to observe all the laws of kashrus carefully, in every detail. We’ll tell a story that shows how, when a person is careful, Heaven helps him. The Gemara says, “One who comes to purify himself is helped.” In other words, when a person makes an effort,

22:50 Speaker 2 he receives help. There was once an incident involving two merchants who sailed on a ship. They were traveling on business. During the voyage, the ship sank, and of course many of the passengers died, drowning at sea. Somehow, the two merchants managed to swim ashore with only the clothes they were wearing. All their possessions had gone down into the depths of the sea, but they somehow reached the shore. They did not know where they had landed—what country or what place. People passing by saw them. After all, they had nearly drowned. The people helped them and brought them clothes, and the merchants asked, “Where are we? What place is this?” It turned out to be a country where Jews were hated. Today, for example, we might say a place like Iran, where it is dangerous to be Jewish. So they hid the fact that they were Jews. They did not say they were Jewish, so as not to endanger their lives. A local resident took each of them into his home and hosted him for the time being, until they could get organized and another ship arrived to take them back to where they had come from. Of course, they could not ask about kashrus. They ate whatever they were given so as not to arouse suspicion that they were Jews. It was a matter of saving their lives. If people found out they were Jewish, they might kill them. So they ate everything with heavy hearts, assuming that their lives were at stake and they had no choice. A few days, or perhaps two or three weeks, passed like that, until a ship arrived that was sailing from that place. The locals gave them a little money and accompanied them to the ship that would take them home. Before one of the men parted from the person who had hosted him, his host began speaking to him in Hebrew. He was stunned. He had understood from the start that there were no Jews here, that people here hated Jews. His host said to him, “You should know that I am a Jew, just like you. I could tell that you were Jewish. Everything you ate in my home

25:32 Speaker 2 Everything is kosher to the highest standard. I, like you, have to hide my Jewish identity. My neighbors don’t know I’m Jewish, but everything in my home is kosher, and nothing you ate here involved anything forbidden.” Of course, he was overjoyed. He thanked Hashem for bringing him to such a place, to a Jewish home. The other merchant, however, had stayed in a non-Jewish home and had indeed eaten everything because he had no choice. When they spoke on the way, the first merchant told him that he had stayed in a Jewish home and that everything there had been kosher. “How wonderful for you,” the other said. “Unfortunately, in the house where I stayed, I saw that the food was treif. I saw that none of it was kosher, but I had no choice. It was a matter of saving my life. The slightest hint that I was Jewish would have put my life in danger.” He felt a certain grievance against Heaven: Why hadn’t Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought him to a home like the one He had brought his friend to? When the two merchants returned to their city, the merchant who had stayed in the non-Jewish home went to the local rabbi. “I don’t understand this discrimination,” he said. “Why couldn’t Hakadosh Boruch Hu look after me as He looked after my friend? He brought my friend to a Jewish home, where he ate only kosher food. He could have brought me to a home like that too. I stayed in a non-Jewish home, and I’m sure I ate non-kosher food. Granted, it was a matter of saving my life, and they couldn’t be allowed to find out I was Jewish, but He still could have brought me to a home like my friend’s.” The rabbi asked him, “Tell me, are you careful about keeping kosher?” “Of course I am.”

27:32 Speaker 2 “What do you do,” the rabbi asked, “when you close a deal with a non-Jewish merchant and you’re expected to raise a glass of wine to seal the deal? It’s a non-Jew’s wine, yayin nesech. What do you do?” The merchant replied, “I have no choice. It’s my business, my livelihood. I take a tiny sip of wine, just a little, and that’s it.” The rabbi said, “But it’s yayin nesech.” “True, but I have no choice. Otherwise they won’t do business with me.” The rabbi said, “Well, let’s hear what your friend does.” They called in the other merchant, his friend. The rabbi asked him, “Are you careful about keeping kosher?” “Yes, of course I am.” Then he asked him the same question: “What do you do when you’re closing a deal with a non-Jew and they bring you a glass of wine for a toast?” The merchant said, “I can’t tell the non-Jew that I won’t drink it because it’s yayin nesech; he’d be offended. So I tell him something else. I say that I’m not allowed to drink wine for health reasons. My doctor has forbidden me to drink alcohol, so he can have wine and they can bring me water or fruit juice, orange juice. I simply can’t drink wine.” The rabbi said to the first merchant, “You see, that’s the difference between you and your friend. Your friend is careful even in uncomfortable situations, even when he’s closing a deal with a non-Jew. He says that for medical reasons he can’t drink wine. So when he found himself in a situation where his life really was in danger and he would have been permitted to eat anything, Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought him to a kosher home, a Jewish home. You, on the other hand, say yourself that you aren’t careful when you

29:31 Speaker 2 close a deal with a non-Jew. Hakadosh Boruch Hu saved you. Be grateful that He saved you, that you’re alive and didn’t drown at sea. And you want the added luxury of being brought to a Jewish home? If you made more of an effort, like your friend, perhaps that would have been done for you too.” In other words, we see here the principle our Sages taught: “One who comes to purify himself is assisted.” When a person makes an effort, Heaven meets him halfway and helps him. But when a person doesn’t give it his all, what complaint can he bring against Heaven? Why wasn’t he helped the way the other man was? Make the same effort as the other man, and you’ll be helped. This applies not only to kashrus but to everything. If we want to ensure that our children grow up as they should, with yiras Shamayim and Chassidus, they need to see an example in their parents’ conduct. They need to see their father say a bracha over everything out loud, their mother say a bracha over everything out loud, and bentching said from a siddur. They need to see that during davening, their father davens properly and doesn’t, G-d forbid, talk about other things. The personal example a boy or girl sees stays etched in their mind. As King Shlomo said, “Educate a child according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not depart from it.” When children see a personal example in their parents, it is better than a thousand and one lectures or explanations. They’ve seen it for themselves. A personal example is the best lesson we can give our children. That’s why all these things are so important—whether in kashrus, davening, or anything else. Set a personal example so they can see how a chossid should conduct himself, how a G-d-fearing person conducts himself: someone who cares about the Shulchan Aruch and doesn’t look for leniencies, who

31:42 Speaker 2 doesn’t look for allowances that apply only after the fact. Even if one could perhaps rely on such an allowance after the fact, he wants to do things in the best possible way from the outset. When a person goes to buy a product, he doesn’t look for second grade; he looks for first grade. So too in matters of Yiddishkeit, he looks only for the very best. Today, many products look alike on the outside but have different kosher certifications. If they’re sold in a store with a mashgiach, it’s the mashgiach’s job to make sure no products without a high standard of kosher certification are brought in. But in a large city store without a mashgiach checking what comes in—where the main thing is that a product is kosher, not treif, G-d forbid—there may be products that look almost identical. One may be kosher to the highest standard, while the other is kosher only after the fact, perhaps because it contains powdered non-Jewish milk or because of other concerns that keep it from receiving the highest level of kosher certification. So when shopping in such places, you have to pay close attention and check exactly which product you’re buying. Don’t assume that because you bought something like it yesterday, this must be the same thing. As I said, many products look almost identical, but one has the highest level of kosher certification and the other has ordinary or basic certification. It’s very important to pay attention to that. When a person does his part, Heaven helps him too, so that he encounters only good things and can also educate his sons and daughters in the ways of Torah and in the path he wants them to follow. And with Hashem’s help, may we all merit the complete Geulah and the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu speedily in our days, amen and amen.