Forbidden Food Mixed with Permitted Food - 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 When we say something is nullified in sixty, what does that mean? The Sages determined that sixty is enough to nullify the taste of one part in sixty. Strictly speaking, the Gemara says you can have a non-Jew taste it. For example, I have a pot of meat soup, and a cup of milk falls into it. I don’t know how to determine whether there’s sixty times as much soup as milk. So strictly speaking, the Gemara says to give it to a non-Jew who is a chef, who works in a kitchen and understands flavors, and ask him, “What do you taste here?” If he says, “I taste meat soup,” there’s no problem. But if he says, “There’s also an aftertaste of milk,” it’s forbidden. The Rema writes that nowadays we don’t rely on a non-Jew’s tasting it, so we calculate whether there is sixty. We can use a different example: terumah that fell into ordinary food. Only a kohen is permitted to eat terumah. When the Beis Hamikdash stood, a kohen was permitted to eat terumah. Now, if terumah fell into ordinary food, you can give it to a kohen to taste. We rely on a kohen. We don’t rely on a non-Jew, but we do rely on a kohen. If the kohen says there’s no taste of the terumah, then even if we don’t know whether there is sixty, his saying there’s no taste is enough. We don’t rely on a non-Jew. In the Shulchan Aruch, there’s a disagreement between the Beis Yosef and the Rema. The Beis Yosef writes that one can rely on a non-Jew, while the Rema writes that one cannot. That means someone who follows the Rema cannot rely on a non-Jew and needs sixty. But there could be a situation where even someone who follows the Rema could rely on a non-Jew’s tasting it. How? For example, there are two Jews here. One follows

02:32 Speaker 2 the Beis Yosef, as is Sephardic custom; let’s call him Reuven. Shimon follows Ashkenazic custom and follows the Rema. Shimon cooked a pot of meat soup, and a cup of milk fell into it. According to the Rema, you can’t give it to a non-Jew to taste, because we don’t rely on the non-Jew. We need to know whether there is sixty, but we can’t determine that. So what do we do? We give the pot to Reuven, and Reuven asks a non-Jew. Once the non-Jew tells Reuven that it has no taste of milk, then according to the Beis Yosef, one can rely on that. So Reuven can taste the dish, because according to the Beis Yosef, asking the non-Jew is sufficient, and Reuven follows the Beis Yosef, the Mechaber. Once the non-Jew says there’s no taste of milk, Reuven is permitted to taste it. Reuven then tastes it himself and tells Shimon, “I don’t taste any milk in it either.” Shimon relies on Reuven. The Rema says we don’t rely on a non-Jew, but we do rely on a Jew. So once the non-Jew’s statement that there’s no taste makes it permissible for Reuven to taste it, and Reuven tastes it and says there’s no taste of milk, Shimon is permitted to eat it. Shimon is relying on Reuven’s statement that it has no taste of milk. In other words, we’re working through a chain. Shimon can’t rely on the non-Jew, because the Rema writes that we don’t rely on a non-Jew and need sixty. If Shimon can determine that there is sixty, he does so. If he can’t, he has a problem. But he gives it to Reuven, who follows the Beis Yosef, according to whom one can give it to a non-Jew. And once the non-Jew tastes it

04:32 Speaker 2 and tells Reuven that there’s no taste of milk, Reuven can eat the dish, because he follows the Beis Yosef’s opinion that one can rely on a non-Jew. After Reuven tastes it, Shimon is permitted to eat the same food, because Shimon relies on the taste of Reuven, a Jew, not on the taste of the non-Jew. So although Reuven relied on the non-Jew’s tasting it, in accordance with the Beis Yosef, Shimon relies on Reuven’s tasting it. That is permitted even according to the Rema, because the Rema says we don’t rely on a non-Jew, but we can rely on a Jew. So Shimon relies on what Reuven said. The whole principle of nullification means that the Torah has determined that the thing becomes permissible. For example, when we know a food is forbidden, it’s forbidden to eat it. And if a person eats it, then, as the Alter Rebbe writes in Tanya, forbidden foods cause insensitivity of the heart and mind, and so on. But suppose there’s a food that isn’t kosher, and a person is ill, and a doctor says his life is at risk and he must eat it. There are pills or medications for heart conditions that are also made from substances derived from pigs. If a person’s life is at risk, he must take those medications. Here the Alter Rebbe says that if a person takes them on a doctor’s instructions, they won’t cause insensitivity of his heart and mind. Why? Because it becomes completely permissible. What does it mean that it becomes completely permissible? It’s pork. How can it become completely permissible? The same Torah that determined it was forbidden to eat also determined that when a life is at risk, he must eat it. Not only may he eat it; he must. It’s like an ill person who needs to eat on Yom Kippur. If an ordinary person eats on Yom Kippur, that is an offense punishable by kareis.

06:31 Speaker 2 It says, “That soul shall be cut off.” But if an ill person eats on a doctor’s instructions, not only does it not cause insensitivity of the heart and mind; it becomes completely permissible, because he is eating on a doctor’s instructions. They tell a story about one of the tzaddikim who, at a very advanced age, was told by his doctors that he had to eat on Yom Kippur or his life would be in danger. Before washing his hands and eating on Yom Kippur, he put on his coat and hat, fastened his gartel, and washed his hands. They asked him, “What’s this? Are you about to daven? You’re eating. Why are you putting on a gartel too?” He said, “I am davening.” He said, “I’m about to fulfill the mitzvah of listening to the Sages. The Sages said I need to eat now. The Torah said, ‘You shall live by them.’ So I’m not eating because I like the food. I’m eating because the Torah commanded me to eat.” So when a person eats something because the Torah commands it, or on a doctor’s instructions, it becomes completely permissible. The same is true when we speak about nullification. Take, for example, a large kitchen, such as a yeshivah kitchen serving many students or an army kitchen serving many soldiers. There’s a huge pot of soup, and a cup of milk falls into it. There is sixty times as much soup as milk. That pot doesn’t contain just sixty cups of soup; it contains three hundred or four hundred cups. We say the milk is nullified in sixty. All the students or soldiers will consume everything in the pot. It’s not that they’ll drink most of it, leave a little, and say that perhaps what’s left is the milk. They’re permitted to consume everything there. So someone must certainly have consumed meat and milk together. After all, one cup of milk went in. Even if there were three hundred

08:31 Speaker 2 cups of meat soup, there are now three hundred and one cups, and three hundred people—or three hundred and one people—ate it. So at least one of them consumed meat and milk together. How is that permitted? The Ramban says that the same Torah that said meat and milk may not be eaten together also said that when it is nullified in sixty, it becomes permissible. In other words, just as we say that something becomes completely permissible when a life is at risk or an ill person needs it, so too the principle of nullification in sixty means that it becomes completely permissible. It is nullified in sixty and may be eaten from the outset. You don’t have to leave a little and say that perhaps what remains at the end is where the meat and milk ended up. You may eat it all, because that is the law of nullification in sixty: it is nullified and becomes truly permissible. If there isn’t sixty, then of course it’s forbidden, because the taste of the milk that fell into the meat—or the meat that fell into the milk—is present in the mixture. The story is told of a woman who once came to the Chofetz Chaim, I think, or perhaps it was another rabbi. I think it was the Chofetz Chaim. She told him that she had cooked meat soup for Shabbos, and a cup of milk, or half a cup, had fallen into it. There wasn’t sixty times as much soup as milk. What should she do? “How much is there?” he asked. She said, “I think there’s fifty times as much, but not sixty.” If there isn’t sixty, it would seem to be forbidden: the milk isn’t nullified. So he told her to wait a moment in the waiting room. Then he asked someone to summon the milkman, the man who sold the milk, urgently—the rabbi was calling for him. When he arrived, the rabbi said to him, “Listen, I

10:44 Speaker 2 “I’m not from the tax authorities, but I’m asking for a halachic purpose. How much water do you mix into the milk? Of the milk you sell, what percentage is actual milk, and what percentage is water?” He said, “Rabbi, I’ll tell you the truth. I put in sixty percent milk and forty percent water.” “Thank you very much. Be well.” Then he called the woman and told her, “The soup is permitted to eat.” Why? Because we don’t need sixty times the entire cup. Only sixty percent of that cup of milk was milk; the other forty percent was water. Water doesn’t make meat non-kosher. It’s meat and milk that make the dish non-kosher, not water with meat or water with milk. So we need sixty times only the milk that was in the cup, and the dish did have that: sixty times a little more than half a cup. So here again we see the rabbi’s wisdom in knowing to check whether the milk was actually one hundred percent milk, in which case there wasn’t sixty times the milk, or whether it was only fifty or sixty percent milk, in which case we need sixty times the amount of milk in that cup. That’s why, in this case, he permitted the dish: it contained sixty times the milk. We need sixty times only the milk that entered the meat dish in order to nullify it. When we speak about a forbidden food mixed with permitted food, we say we need sixty times the forbidden food. So even if a piece of forbidden food fell into permitted food and we removed it—seemingly, the forbidden food is already out—we still need sixty times the forbidden piece, because we don’t know how much flavor came out of it. So even when the forbidden food that fell into the permitted food was taken out of the pot of

12:57 Speaker 2 permitted food, and we removed it, we still need sixty times the entire forbidden piece. Again, that’s because we don’t know how much flavor came out of it. You also need to know that the forbidden piece doesn’t have to be a kezayis. It could be less than a kezayis. For example, if half a kezayis of forbidden food fell into a pot of permitted food, you need sixty half-kezaysim to permit it—sixty times that forbidden half-kezayis. In other words, we always need sixty times the forbidden food, even if it’s less than a kezayis. To nullify the forbidden food that fell into permitted food, the entire mixture doesn’t have to be permitted food. For example, suppose fifty-nine kezaysim of permitted food are cooking, and a kezayis of blood and a kezayis of cheilev, forbidden fat, fall in. Both are forbidden: blood is forbidden, and cheilev is forbidden. Seemingly, we would need a hundred and twenty kezaysim here—sixty times the blood and sixty times the cheilev—because each is forbidden. But precisely because they’re two different things, it’s easier. What we need to nullify is the flavor of the forbidden food. The cheilev helps nullify the flavor of the blood, and the blood helps nullify the flavor of the cheilev. So each joins the fifty-nine kezaysim of permitted food, because they have two different flavors. In other words, if we have fifty-nine kezaysim of permitted food and two kezaysim of forbidden food fall in, each with a different flavor—blood and cheilev, for example—the blood joins the permitted food to nullify the cheilev, and the cheilev joins the permitted food to nullify the blood. So forbidden food joins permitted food to nullify the flavor of forbidden food. This is what’s called...

15:36 Speaker 2 “Its drawback is its remedy.” Even though there are two—two kezaysim of forbidden food here, each has a different flavor, and each flavor counteracts the flavor of the other forbidden food. So each joins the fifty-nine kezaysim of permitted food to nullify the other. One may not deliberately nullify forbidden food. What does that mean? If, for example, a cup or half a cup of milk falls into my meat soup, and there isn’t sixty times the milk in the soup, I may not add more soup to make it sixty times the milk. That’s called deliberately nullifying forbidden food: taking something that is now forbidden because it doesn’t contain sixty times the milk, and adding permitted food to reach sixty times. What if someone added the permitted food without knowing? He did it unintentionally. Then the dish may be used, even though he added food and nullified the forbidden food, something he was not allowed to do deliberately. Since he did it unintentionally, the dish is permitted; he wasn’t trying to nullify forbidden food. But if he did it intentionally—he said, “Wait, there isn’t enough permitted food here; let’s add some,” and deliberately added it—then the person who did so may not eat that food, nor may the person for whom he did it. If I prepared this dish for Reuven and now see that forbidden food has entered it, and I add permitted food for Reuven’s sake, Reuven may not eat the dish either, because one may not deliberately nullify forbidden food. Other people may eat it, since it wasn’t nullified for them. There is a dispute whether the prohibition against deliberately nullifying forbidden food applies only to a Torah prohibition or also to a rabbinic prohibition. Some say it applies only to a Torah prohibition. Something prohibited by rabbinic law

18:11 Speaker 2 may be deliberately nullified. Others say that one may not deliberately nullify even something prohibited by rabbinic law. In practice, we are stringent: one may not deliberately nullify a rabbinic prohibition either, not just a Torah prohibition. Forbidden food is nullified in a majority. If there is sixty times the forbidden food, it is nullified. But new grain mixed with old grain is not nullified. Even if there is sixty times as much old grain as new grain, the new grain is not nullified. Why? Because it is something that will become permitted. Even if we treat all this grain as new grain, it will become permitted after the omer offering. So if old grain and new grain become mixed, it’s true that the old grain may already be eaten, because it was permitted by the omer offering of the previous year. But now that the old and new grain are mixed together, everything is mixed—and all of it will be permitted after the omer offering. That is called something that will become permitted. Such a thing is not nullified, because the law of nullification applies to a prohibition that cannot otherwise become permitted. Take, for example, meat that fell into milk. Meat mixed with milk is always forbidden. If there is sixty times the forbidden amount, that permits the mixture; if there isn’t, it doesn’t. But here the grain will become permitted. Wait a little longer, until the omer offering, and all of it will be permitted, because the new grain will also be permitted after the omer offering. So it may not be eaten now, because it is something that will become permitted. Another example is an egg laid on Yom Tov. There is a dispute between Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel about whether an egg laid on Yom Tov may be eaten that day, because of the law of nolad, something that came into being on Yom Tov. The halachah is that an egg laid on Yom Tov is forbidden. If an egg

20:42 Speaker 2 An egg like that got mixed in with sixty other eggs. Even though we have sixty against the egg, why should this egg be any different from any other prohibited food? Just as any prohibited food is nullified in sixty, it would seem that this egg should also be nullified in sixty, and therefore permitted. But the halachah is that it is not: this egg is prohibited. Why? Because it is something that will eventually become permitted. We do not have to eat these eggs on Yom Tov. After Yom Tov, the egg laid on Yom Tov will also be permitted to eat. So we can wait another day, until after Yom Tov, and all the eggs will be permitted. That is the definition. This is an example of something that will eventually become permitted and is not nullified, because the whole principle of nullification is meant to nullify a prohibition that we have no other way to remove except through a majority. Here, though, we can wait until the egg itself becomes permitted, when Yom Tov has passed. Since it is something that will eventually become permitted, it is not nullified. Although we say that something that will eventually become permitted is not nullified, that applies only if the prohibition will lapse on its own. Take the examples we mentioned: new grain mixed with old grain, or an egg laid on Yom Tov mixed with other eggs. With the grain, what do we say? At most, we will wait until after the Omer offering is brought, and the new grain will also be permitted. The same applies to an egg laid on Yom Tov: we will wait until after Yom Tov, and that egg will also be permitted. But if the prohibition will not lapse on its own and instead requires us to take action, the rule of nullification does apply. For example, I have a plate that has not been immersed—a new plate that was never immersed—and it got mixed in with sixty other plates that have

23:05 Speaker 2 been immersed. This could happen, say, in a banquet hall, a yeshivah’s communal kitchen, or a military base. There was one plate that had not been immersed. They set it aside so they would remember to immerse it. It was a new plate that looked like all the others, and someone accidentally mixed it in with all the plates. Seemingly, this is something that can become permitted: take all the plates and immerse them again, and then you will also have immersed the plate that had not been immersed. So it would seem to fall under the rule of something that will eventually become permitted. But that is not the halachah. Why? Because the prohibition here does not lapse on its own. That plate will not become permitted by itself. If we take all the plates and immerse them, then this plate will also be permitted. So yes, it is something that can become permitted, but only through an action on my part—an action we have to take, something we have to actively do. It will not happen on its own, as it does with an egg laid on Yom Tov that got mixed in, or with new grain mixed with old grain. This plate will not become permitted on its own unless we take all the plates, all the utensils, and immerse them. The same goes for a cup that has not been immersed and got mixed in with other cups. That cup will not become permitted on its own unless we take all the cups and immerse them. Then we can say that we immersed that cup too, and it is permitted because we immersed all the cups. Since this is an action we have to actively take, not something that happens on its own—we have to take the cups or plates and go immerse them—it is treated like other prohibitions and is nullified by a majority. And if

25:11 Speaker 2 the plate got mixed in with sixty plates, or the cup with sixty cups, there are sixty against the cup or plate, so everything is permitted and there is no need to immerse them all. This is not called something that will eventually become permitted, because the prohibition remains in place and will not lapse unless we take a concrete action: going and immersing all the cups or all the plates. The Sages therefore did not require a person to go to that trouble and take that action. Instead, if there are sixty, it is nullified. In other words, although something that will eventually become permitted is not nullified, because we say that the time will come when it becomes permitted on its own, that is only when it will indeed become permitted on its own. If we have to take action, it is not considered something that will eventually become permitted, because it will not become permitted by itself unless we do something. We therefore treat it like an ordinary prohibition that is nullified in sixty. There is another concept in halachah called chanan. What does chanan mean? It is an acronym for “the piece itself becomes prohibited.” For example, a piece of meat was cooked with milk and absorbed some of the milk. That piece is prohibited to eat because meat and milk were cooked together. If that piece falls into another pot, a meat pot, sixty times the amount of milk absorbed into the meat will not suffice. We need sixty times the size of the entire piece, because the entire piece has become prohibited. The whole piece of meat, with the milk absorbed into it, is meat and milk together, so we need sixty against the entire piece of meat, not just against the absorbed milk. This is called “the piece becomes prohibited,” or “the piece itself becomes prohibited.” In short, the halachic authorities refer to it by the acronym chanan. It means that we require sixty against the entire piece, not just against the prohibited substance it absorbed. There is an opinion

27:36 Speaker 2 that this applies only to meat and milk. Why is this rule applied only to meat and milk? Because each one is permitted on its own. The meat itself is permitted; one may eat meat. Milk itself is also permitted. When meat and milk are cooked together, they become prohibited. Their combination is what causes the prohibition, and all the meat becomes prohibited. We therefore need sixty against the entire piece of meat. But with other prohibitions—take, for example, meat that absorbed milk—we would not need sixty against the entire piece of meat that absorbed the milk, only against the milk absorbed into it. So if that piece of meat fell into another pot containing pieces of meat or other things, and we have sixty against the amount of milk absorbed into the piece of meat, it would be nullified in sixty. Here we would not need to say, uh, that we require sixty against the entire piece itself, only against the milk. This is a dispute among the Rishonim. Some say that chanan applies to other prohibitions as well, not just to meat and milk. For example, even with meat that absorbed milk, we would need sixty against the entire piece of meat, because according to that opinion, the concept of chanan was stated not only regarding meat and milk but also regarding other prohibitions. Ideally, it is proper to be stringent in accordance with this opinion as well. In certain cases, one may be lenient and rely on the opinion that chanan applies only to meat and milk. Of course, each case depends on the need, the rabbi’s judgment, and the circumstances of the person asking. Although we have seen an opinion that chanan applies to other prohibitions too, not just meat and milk, we do not apply chanan to the pot itself. So, for example, if a utensil became prohibited because it absorbed a prohibited substance—if food was cooked in a pot and it later turned out that the food was not kosher—we do not need sixty against the entire pot,

30:17 Speaker 2 Rather, we need sixty times only the amount of forbidden substance absorbed into the pot. We do not apply the principle of chatichah na’asis neveilah—the entire item becoming forbidden—to a utensil, only to the food itself. And as we saw, there is a disagreement about whether this applies only to meat and milk or also to other forbidden foods. But again, it applies only to the food itself, not to the pot or the utensil. When a utensil becomes forbidden because it has absorbed a forbidden substance, we do not apply that principle to the pot; we need sixty times only the amount of forbidden substance. More generally, when a pot or any other utensil needs hagalah, we must wait twenty-four hours from the time it was used for cooking before performing hagalah. Even if water or other liquids—soup or milk—were heated in the pot, and even if it was water that became forbidden because of meat and milk or through an absorbed forbidden substance, we must wait twenty-four hours before performing hagalah on the utensil. Of course, we must also clean it and make sure there are no remnants, dirt, manufacturer’s stickers, or the like on it. But even after removing all the stickers, dirt, and anything else on the pot, we must wait twenty-four hours before performing hagalah and kashering it. This applies even if ordinary water was heated in it—water that had not absorbed a forbidden substance. Suppose a pot absorbed a forbidden substance, and afterward water was heated in it to make coffee or tea. Ideally, we must wait twenty-four hours from when the water was heated as well, even though the water contained nothing forbidden in its own right, only the forbidden substance absorbed in the pot. But where waiting would cause a loss, we may be lenient and count twenty-four hours from when the forbidden substance itself was cooked, rather than from when the water was heated. For example, if we need the pot to cook for Shabbos, and waiting twenty-four hours from when the water was heated in it would leave us unable to use the pot for

32:52 Speaker 2 Shabbos, we may be lenient and rely on the fact that twenty-four hours have passed since the forbidden substance was cooked in the pot. We would not need to wait twenty-four hours from when the water was heated. But again, this leniency applies only where waiting would cause a loss. What constitutes a loss depends on the person asking and the circumstances of each case. Something that would be considered a loss for one person might not be a loss for another; the definition varies from person to person. That is for the rabbi being asked to decide. He examines the case and determines whether it truly involves a loss, or whether one can be stringent.