by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on April 1, 2011
One of the key Tosafots in Shas (Menachot 20b, s.v., ini) discusses the position of Rabbeinu Tam that there are two sunsets – the visible one, and then one occurring almost an hour later, when the sun – according to Rabbinic cosmology – exists the tunnel of the opaque dome of the rakiya, sky or firmament, and begins to travel above the rakiya from West to East so it can rise again the next morning. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on March 25, 2011
Previously we saw that when a meat and milk are cooked together, they may remain forbidden even after they are separated. This depends on whether we understand the prohibition of meat and milk to be based on the fact that they were cooked together, which does not change even after they are separated, or based on the fact that there is a mixture of tastes, which would be negated once they are separated. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on March 11, 2011
The Mishna (Hullin 108) states that if a drop of milk falls on a piece of meat in a stew, and there is enough milk that it can be tasted in the meat, then the meat becomes basar bi’chalav (hereafter, bbh), milk and meat cooked together, and is forbidden. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on February 11, 2011
The Gemara recognizes a number of ways in which taste can transfer from one food to another without the presence of heat. First, there can be surface transfer when one or both of the foods are moist, such as when cheese touches a piece of meat. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on January 28, 2011
Previously we explored the parameters of the Biblical prohibition of meat and milk, and how Chazal had extended the prohibition from mammals (the females of which produce milk) to include also birds, and in the process extended the prohibition conceptually from “kid goat in its mother’s milk” to “meat and milk.” The Rabbinic extensions, however, are not limited to the type of meat (and milk), but also apply to the very prohibited activity itself. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on January 21, 2011
The Torah’s prohibition to cook a kid goat in its mother’s milk is understood by Chazal to prohibit the cooking of meat from cows, sheep, and goats, together with milk, even if it is not from the animal’s mother. Why is there such a gap between the literal and halakhic meaning of the verse, and in what way is the halakha of meat and milk shaped by the simple sense of the verse? …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on January 14, 2011
What the halakhic debate around organ donation is all about? It is unquestionably a mitzvah of pikuach nefesh, saving of life, to give organs after one’s death. There are times where up to 8 lives can be saved with the organs from one body. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on December 30, 2010
Recently someone came over to me and asked me the following question – he had marinated a 4 pound roast in wine, roasted it, and then discovered that the wine was not kosher. This was to be his Shabbat meal. What was the status of the roast? …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on December 17, 2010
Taste transfers in complex ways according to halakha. When a forbidden food gets mixed up directly with a permissible one – they are blended together, or cooked together so they all become one mass, there is no question that the forbidden food is present, and that the mixture will be forbidden unless the forbidden food is less than 1/60th of the whole. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on December 10, 2010
Previously we discussed the principle of ta’am lifgam – when the addition of a forbidden food to a mixture makes the mixture taste worse. In such a case, the mixture may be eaten, because while the forbidden food itself, even if it has an off-taste, is forbidden, when we are only dealing with the taste of such food, and not the food itself, this bad taste is not forbidden. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on December 3, 2010
In Yoreh Deah we learn about ta’am ki’ikar, the prohibition to eat a mixture of food that has in it the taste of a forbidden food, as we addressed the major exception to this principle: ta’am lifgam, when the forbidden food imparts a bad taste to the mixture. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer Posted on November 18, 2010
The Gemara rules that a davar she’yesh lo matirin, something that is forbidden now but will be permissible later – like an egg that was born on Yom Tov, and is nolad (a type of muktzah) and cannot be eaten on Yom Tov, but can be eaten the following day, is not batel.…
