Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: Borer -- The Choice Malacha

I know, I know... no cute titles!  That's the rule.  Hey... wait... that means that I can, nay must, have one cute title in order to fulfill the dictum of "every rule has an exception".  Whew.

The malacha of borer involves separating what you want (ochel) from what you don't want (p'soles).  There are lots of very important details because separating ochel from p'soles goes by another name: eating.  Relatively minor changes can take you from a building olam haba by eating your Shabbos s'uda to turning up the thermostat in gehinom.

Acts performed to get food into your mouth are called eating, acts performed to prepare for later are called borer.  There are three basic categories of actions that are by nature borer.
  1. Preparing for later; bad news.  How much is later and from when do you measure?  Most poskim let you prepare for the next meal as long as you finish close to meal.  If either the meal or the preparation are protracted, however, you are just asking for trouble.
  2. Taking p'soles min ha'ochel.  By definition the p'soles is what you don't want, so that's borer and not eating.  Even though the delay may only be seconds, that's enough to make it borer mi'di'oraisa.  I am not a big radish fan, so picking radishes out of my salad is not eating.  Even though it would improve my eating experience, that joy would certainly be dampened by the realization of having just profaned the holiness of Shabbos.
  3. Using a special gadget to separate makes it borer.  A sifter, obviously; but so is a slotted spoon.  What about a fork?  If you are using because you don't want to get your fingers dirty and so your mom won't yell at you, that's eating.  If you are using it to separate noodles from soup, though, that's borer.  Even though you want the noodles and even though you are eating them now, since your choice of fork (as opposed to spoon) was because you wanted them separated, that's borer.
So if it's b'yad (with your hand or it's agent), miyad (for immediate consumption), and ochel min ha'p'soles (separating what you want from what you don't want), then it's eating.

What about if the food is entirely encased in an inedible covering; bananas, oranges, walnuts, and the like?  Since you can't eat the food without removing that covering, removing the covering is called part of the eating process.  In fact, any time the p'soles is not mixed with the ochel, but it preventing you from getting to that succulent treat, there is lots of room to permit.

בתיאבון/bon appétit!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: Pizza, Uncrustables, and Stuff -- What Bracha?

Many years ago (in fact, more than two decades ago), I called R' Fuerst from my desk at work as I sat down to lunch.  I had a piece of (quite delicious) homemade pizza for lunch.  I nearly always eat at my desk as I am working (or writing TftD...), so my lunch at work cannot in any way be considered as sitting down to a formal meal; aka קביעת סעודה.  That being the case, I wasn't sure whether to wash, say ha'motzi, and bentch; or was the pizza downgraded to a m'zonos.  He told if it was a snack, then it's m'zonos; if a meal the ha'motzi.  Which what I have always done since then.  I recently found out how/why that works. The Shulchan Aruch, 168:17 discusses פשטיד''א, which is describes as a baked dough with meat or fish or cheese.  In other words: pizza.  Note: while the dough doesn't not need to be baked together with the meat/fish/cheese, it is  required that they dough was baked with the intention of making this concoction. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: What Category of Muktzeh are Our Candles?

As discussed in a recent TftD , a p'sak halacha quite surprising to many, that one may -- even לכתחילה -- decorate a birthday cake with (unlit, obviously) birthday candles on Shabbos. That p'sak is predicated on another p'sak halacha; namely, that our candles are muktzeh because they are a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור and not  מוקצה מחמת גופו/intrinsically set aside from any use on Shabbos. They point there was that using the candle as a decoration qualifies as a need that allows one to utilize a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור. Today we will discuss the issue of concluding that our candles are , in fact, a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור and not מוקצה מחמת גופו. Along the way we'll also (again) how important it is to have personal relationship with your rav/posek, the importance of precision in vocabulary, and how to interpret the Mishna Brura.  Buckle up. After reviewing siman 308 and the Mishna Brura there, I concluded that it should be permissible to use birthday candles to decorate a cake on Sha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aru...
Post a Comment
Read more