An Introduction to Chametz and Matzah By Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

okay uh good morning everybody uh hope you're well uh first let me announce I for some reason I often forget to announce the people who dedicate the share uh this share for the entire year sponsored by rever F and Sharon Alman in memory of their parents Edith and Riner Alman uh and their son Rao Alman again we're very very appreciative of the T and may it be a uh for both the parents and uh and their son go wait for the microphone um I didn't see it oh I'm sorry is this it yeah oh okay this is what I wanted to show you about I'm this is I brought filling this Isel and this is the source so if you want to use it in sh thank you thank you thank you so much thank you this [Applause] okay all right I hope uh people can hear me with this I'm not used to the mic so much okay okay so uh now of course we're after porm and we are approaching PES rapidly I hope for most people that's joyous for some people it might be panicky uh maybe a combination of of both uh remember our basic unit has been discussing the various mitzvos that are connected to and we've been spending a few weeks on P and on um and Onin today we're going to actually start with some of the PES itself and I want to talk about mat and um probably today most of what I'll say will be familiar to you so we're going to maybe start easy and then it'll get a little more complicated as we approach PES uh first everybody knows uh the basic rule of pesak is very simple bad mat good uh and we know that the prohibition of is a very very unique Prohibition in a number of ways some of them are Torah distinctions and some of them are rinic distin as a Torah distinction there's obviously many many foods in the Torah that you're not allowed to eat I'm not allowed to eat I'm not allowed to eat certain forbidden fats but number one is not only forbidden to eat but is also forbidden to derive benefit from so for example you wouldn't be allowed to sell on PES for money or even feed to your animal animals have no prohibition of eating the dog is not over anything but I I am getting benefit by feeding my animal and that's so that's called but then even that's not so unique there are a number of other things that are when meat and milk are cooked together not only can you not eat it but you're not even allowed to feed it to your animal fact that was a sh a number of years ago about forget about PES about dog food a lot of dog food are mixtures of meat and milk they put meat and milk in it so the question is if B how can I have B dog food now the EMS is like this if the meat is horse meat it comes from a non- kosher source so B does not apply uh with the meat of a non- kosher animal pig or whatever it would be but if it's a more high-grade dog fruit that uses beef even though the beef is not Kosher because it wasn't Sheed this is an important distinction B does not apply to the meat of a non- kosher animal but B does apply to the meat of a kosher animal even though it wasn't Sheed so if it's beef mixed with milk you actually do have a Shila but a lot of times it's powdered milk so some say that's only a rabic decree and therefore it's might be so there different Shas for various reasons most of the dog foods out there uh areally permitted to give to your animal all I'm saying is that just like but what is really unique about is that not only are you not allowed to eat it and not only are you not allowed to get benefit from it but you're not even allowed to own it you are not allowed to own on P and this is the meaning of two La in the Torah shall not be seen by you and it should not be found by you now even though literally if you read the PK literally it might actually say I'm matter low to even look at but understand from the word a very important rule that it is prohibited for you to own but if it's that belongs to somebody else that is not your AA per se so is Us in possession ownership and not only uh eating and getting benefit and that is why of course uh you either have to eat your before PES or destroy your before P or sell your to a guy and we'll talk about that more but the purpose of is that you should not own now those are rules those are rules however M there's some extra rules and one of the most famous is that if was owned by a Jew during pesak which involved a Prohibition then even after pesak no one is allowed to eat or derive benefit from this is called that was owned by a Jew any Jew during PES is forbidden forever even after PES to eat or derive benefit from and hence we always have this problem can it's less of a problem the rabut sells virtually all in all stores but in America it's always a problem this mad rush to figure out which supermarkets are owned by goam primarily and which are owned by Jews and uh it's always a problem sometimes people are sitting Rabon or sitting around looking at Boards of directors if they have Jewish sounding names it's it's a little bit of a crazy thing um but uh I'll get into that a little later maybe I don't I'm just want to give this is only introduction today but the isode of why you have to get Kates from a non-jewish store or a Jewish store that sold its Kates to p is otherwise it's p until an amount of time has elapsed where there is been a turnover so whatever bread or cookies or macaroni you're getting already came in after PES now the truth of the matter is the problem is actually much more complicated than people think because it is not only a matter of the retail store it's a matter of Distributors and all the way up so even if for example your local Jewish Supermarket didn't get the macaroni till after pesak but who owned the macaroni you know where was it if the if the distributor was Jewish this is a very big problem with liquor especially uh most liquor uh bourbon Scotch uh is made from fermented grain barley or corn or whatever or corn is kidney is but barley is certainly Mish and uh it it often is warehouse for many many months so even if your Jewish liquor store you know is non-jewish maybe during PES it was owned by a Jew so the OU has done a lot of work in trying to identify Distributors and different types of issues so it's important to check that but that is a draan and it is important to understand that the eer of eating and getting benefit and owning Kates is only during P under Torah La is and based on a canas it is based on a fine on a punishment because of the transgression of balal since there was a transgression in that ownership the wanted to kind of punish or penalize the violations of those Halas in the hope that that would prevent their reoccurrence in the future yeah wonder whether like some people who sell from somebody else after PESA will say oh that was sold over PESA yes and then they won't yeah yeah so we we'll again today is not about let me just mention that although technically obviously if your is owned by a there's absolutely no problem but there are people who are critical of the formalist the proformer nature of other there are people who don't like communal institutional mates because they say everybody knows it's a fake everybody knows it's a joke everybody knows you don't expect a go to show up in your basement and take all of your bread and everything else and therefore there are some people I am not one of them but there are some people who basically take the position that they don't Rec recognize the communal as being valid therefore it is still owned by the Jew therefore it will still be in especially you will find people who don't like actually goes back a little bit to the Von so there actually is Source about it so if you m sell your to a if you have a a next or neighbor you give him the he takes it out and you know you're not going to get it back after pesak everybody would say that that's good that's not the question but the notion of I keep it in my basement I keep it in my cabinets and uh this is a just a kind of a fictitious transfer uh and I understand I'm going to get it back afterwards there are those who uh are kagar they criticize that particular practice that's why there are many raban many raban not not all who even if they sell they will not sell what is called mean they'll sell mixtures of things of with other things but they won't sell bread they won't sell cookies they won't sell things that are 100% Kates because they feel that we shouldn't rely on for things that are M but again this is only because of the formalistic nature of if you m would sell your to a guy then certainly there's not going to be a problem yeah what's the system been in the supermarket no no so that that that's exactly the issue the issue is that if you're buying a bakery goods from a jewishly owned actually I'll talk about that in a moment too a jewishly owned store that did not sell itses uh during pesak you are not allowed to buy Thea products until enough time has elapsed that there would be a turnover and the that you're buying was produced after PES now different product s have different turnover times uh for fresh bread the turnover time tends to be very short a few days other products you may have to wait till LBA om or even later so you know it depends on the store it depends on the product it may depend on the country but yeah you got to be careful in as I say in this tends not to be a problem because virtually any store will have a unless you don't hold of the rabut which I don't want to get into that issue but the raban does sell the to virtually all stores now one very fascinating issue I'll just mention again I I didn't really want to talk about M that much but one very very fascinating issue that comes up a lot and some people use this as an attack on is okay um I'm a rabbi of a I get the Jewish store to sell its but the guy is not religious the guy doesn't really care and the guy is not going to sellit if in any way it inconvenience is him or sty the operation of the business so he says listen you can sign I'll sign that little document that this guy owns my com but I will keep my store open during pesak I will sell everything in the store and I will keep the profits of that store I mean don't think in any way I'm going to hand the profits over to the non-jew in other words business as usual he officially signs the paper and then nothing happens so there are those who are argue that's obviously not a valid sale and if it's not a valid sale because he doesn't intend to sell it to the guy then then anyes that was owned by the store during PES will be now this is a very very common problem in a lot of uh neighborhoods I mean including I remember in Silver Spring itself uh there were Jewish owned stores that were willing to sign but it it had absolute Ely no meaning whatsoever in terms of how they conducted their business so here it's important to know a very very uh important Pak of rosha Feinstein which not everybody did agree with but this was Rosas Pak Rosas Pak says Hey the guy sold theit if he continues to sell it to the general public he is over on Gaza he's stealing from a guy but just because he's stealing from a guy doesn't mean the sale of the Kates is invalid yeah he has a sin a store that continues to sell Kates that has already been sold to a guy is stealing from the rightful owner of that Kates which is the guy but we're not going to make the argument that because he's continuing to sell ketes to the public he didn't have intention to sell the so this is a tremendously important leniency for uh at least American on him because we were often confronted uh with that type of situation now now again obviously obviously if the rabbi has uh any leeway or any uh any influence the rabbi should try to structure the that uh this doesn't happen or whatever it would be uh but if B there's only one store servicing a small community and this is the most that the r is able to negotiate with the store so there is the pakur MOS Feinstein to be so this is an important for at least to be aware of but again as I say our purpose today is just to bring out the central concept of and is a it is not a but it is a a penalty because of Thea transgression of which is commonly referred to in Hebrew is meaning don't own during P that's the Torah prohibition if you own that during P you have a everybody has a yeah yep you you got a real real problem that's actually very very very excellent and once again who are involved in have to be very very particular about this because the is a person cannot sell that which he does not yet own I can't sell you what I will inherit from my father I don't own it yet that's called so when a store Jewish store owner sells it to a guy that can only cover thees in the store at the time of the sale and yeah and even if we follow R moshe's leniency that he continues to do business with it it's still a valid sale and therefore I could buy that after PES okay that's from K but that would not apply to new deliveries of that came in during PES because they were not covered by the sale because of D so one of the things again try to do their best is that they try to stipulate that uh no new deliveries in other words they try to arrange it that whatever you need for the week of pesak will be delivered before pesak and warehouse and therefore covered by the and there'll be no new deliveries of of and what do if they doer well then you have to you have to follow the default position of waiting to L B me meaning you have to you may have to treat it as if the kit wasn't sold now if the kit wasn't sold that doesn't mean you can't buy from the store forever it means you got to wait until the stuff that came in during pesak would be turned over and replaced by other deliveries again I think the OU generally recommends just as a general R I think LBA om again these are kind of arbitrary dates but you pull it out of a hat almost but they recommend LBA om as the appropriate waiting period yeah well that would be possible I understand that but but the issue is if you're talking about a non-religious store they they they'll want to sell the deliveries meaning to say uh I mean you're right theoretically if they'd agree to that fact that's a problem that we might face let's imagine you get in the mail sometimes you might get uhat in the mail during PES again not so much in Israel but in America for some reason u a new a new type of Cheerios comes in or something and they send you a little a little box of Cheerios uh in the mail right so what's right so uh one of the Aus is that you can have intention I have intention not to acquire this and then I can throw it in with the that I sold but again not not that it's n in the sale it is not n in the sale but just to get it out of the way I can throw it into the and then I can use it after PES because I never acquired owner ship and if I never acquired ownership there was no transgression of and if there was no transgression it is M after p uh so what what you're saying is 100% correct but once again the store is not likely to agree to that particular condition yeah does ownership begin upon delivery or so um you talking about in terms of when the store acquires ownership of so that would depend on the deal but generally speaking the way American law would would generally work ownership would occur upon delivery uh it's a credit sale so ownership occurs when the person gets the merchandise by the way there's a little question that I need to address as well that is what do we mean by a Jewish store a Jewish store right the problem of is only if the was owned by a Jew now here this raises an interesting question that has many many ramifications one could give not just one Shear one could give a a lecture series on this and that is what is the halakic status of Corporations because let me emphasize uh legally what a corporation is a corporation is actually an artificial person in the eyes of the law meaning to say uh a corporation is a business entity uh in which people have ownership of stock in the corporation sometimes it's a public corporation where the stock is traded publicly other times it's a private corporation like a family-owned Corporation but it is a corporation and what that means is for example if a corporation borrows money it is only the corporation that has to pay that money not the individual shareholder so whatever assets are in the corpor ation creditors can cease but there is no personal liability of a shareholder unless there was a guarantee unless he signed as a guarantor which indeed is common but you see the concept because conceptually under the legal systems of of the world a corporation is not a partnership in which the assets are owned by a lot of people it is literally a separate being it's um I sometimes law will talk about natural persons implying there's such a thing as an unnatural person uh but that's just a a fancy or convoluted way of describing a corporation a corporation is a person in the eyes of the legal system but it is not a natural person now the question becomes how does view a corporation because if a corporation is a separate entity then corporations don't have religion there's no such thing as a Jewish Corporation or a non-jewish corporation corporations don't have religion because they're not human beings as a result according to that if considers the corporation to be a separate entity there would never be a problem of for p because even though I'm a Jew and I own stock in the corporation I'm not an owner of the the corporation owns the I may own the corporation but the corporation is a separate person so there is a position in Hal that says that given the fact of course I mean I mean the Little M may not be incorporated but certainly if you're talking about a a chain store whatever it is all of them are corporations all of them are corporations so there are those who do take the position hey there's no problem of because the was not owned by a Jew the was owned by a corporation but once again rosha Feinstein uh disagreed with that position and here he's M aged or disagre disagreed with that position and rosha Feinstein basically ruled that there is a concept of Jewish Corporation and the definition of Jewish Corporation can be a number of ways either majority own ownership of shares is by juice number one that's that's the obvious case number two even if it's a non-majority but it is what is called a controlling interest which is very significant because in a public corporation ownership is dispersed among maybe hundreds of how many people own you know AT&T stock and even if they own half a share whatever it is there may be I don't know a million people whatever it is so you can really call the shots if you have as little as 10% because nobody approaches you so there are ways of figuring this out but drosha says that even if you do not have majority ownership but if you if you have enough of a percentage that you make the decisions for the corporation uh as a controlling shareholder that would be a Jewish Corporation and the third prong is a bit bit of a Kish actually legal he says even if the shares are owned by goam but if the primary officers and directors are Jewish that's enough to make it a Jewish Corporation because they have managerial control even though they don't have ownership this is an interesting idea that for's purposes ownership may be defined as control even if it's not techn right uh the president of a corporation does not own the corporate assets he's not an owner of the corporate assets but the managerial control right so as a result uh the the standard suck in the United States I imagine other countries as well is that people do follow roses Pak that's what the OU would follow for example in which we have to determine either majority ownership or controlling ownership or we look at officers and directors how many directors that's also a good question I mean a a board of directors there may be 30 people on the board so how many have to be Jewish is it a majority of the board you know once again you get into difficult issues today by the way you know um last names you're not a guy to if some somebody's Jewish or not you know uh because there's so much unfortunately intermarriage and the like and especially since Judaism is matrinal descent and family names we're still sexists in that way tend to be patrial descent so somebody whose name is Goldberg Goldstein whatever it is might be a because his mother uh might not be Jewish so Congress huh was the congressman yeah more more than one yeah the what which one fman Felman okay I mean there was yeah I mean there was uh William Cohen William Cohen who uh who was a secretary of defense I think he died maybe year or two ago uh so William Cohen you know his name was Cohen and he was actually a non-jew because uh his father I don't know if his father was a Coen or not already but his father married a non-jew and William coh is a go that's why by the way the genetic test for Kahuna is absolutely inconclusive now there is a genetic marker to establish male descent from Aon I don't really know how they do this but this is the test a genetic test that shows you are a male after male you know from AR the co DNA test uh so people say can that DNA test establish Kahuna absolutely not because uh William con assuming that his father was a Coen would have that genetic marker and he would be a right so at most maybe and I'm not giving aing this maybe the test could exclude Kahuna meaning to say if you don't have the genetic marker maybe maybe that could prove you're not a Coen right so it's what's called a true Nega and a false positive but if it shows that you have it that doesn't mean anything at all because there are gazillion things your mother could be a uh and other things too if a Coen marries a divorced woman the kid is a he's not a momer but he's a Kal Kal is not a Coen right a Coen marries a gorus there are many many many ways that the child of even a Bonafide Coen might turn out not to be a Co anymore because the line could be broken by any cohain prohibited marriage uh whether it's to a which is an in marriage whether it's to a goret whether it's to a grusa uh you know all sorts of other other situations interestingly enough I mean I don't want to digress too much uh for some reason it's a little hard to understand the guy who commits the sin doesn't get punished so much if if a Cain marries a divorced woman and has a child the child is a kalal not a Coen anymore but the Coen who committed the sin is still a Coen he doesn't lose his Guna although he's penalized he's not given the honors of a Coen until he separates from his prohibited wife but intrinsically he is a CO right so it's interesting the only one who suffers here is The Offspring not the perpetrator uh itself right okay the the self remarks on that that particular anomaly okay so that's one J so is a regular Jew uh kalal is essentially a Israel uh there's no disability but but but here is uh an interesting problem uh the daughter of AAL cannot marry a Coen so if a kalal gets married to a regular Jewish woman which he's allowed to get married to there's no prohibition the daughter has a of kalala as being the B and therefore she cannot marry a Coen so there is um so when people say oh the only thing a has is he's Israel it's not quite true does have a certain disability that gets passed passed down okay yeah are you suggesting that perhaps we should be able to Define Judaism even paternally because we now have definitive ways of establishing paternity I'm not advoca no no but that's your question your question is that uh the rule of matrilineal descent some say might have been based on the inability to know who the father is uh on a level of certainty and you're suggesting or asking whether perhaps we could re-evaluate that Haka in light of DNA testing well it's a fascinating question uh no posc has ever said that uh but when we have a Sanhedrin you know you you you could you could present your recommendation uh for re-evaluation Lis there's no way there's no way Hally an orthodox uh bason would would change the Hala based on DNA testing uh but you know again what you're saying is not without logic I I understand your logic but we won't we won't go there in terms of logic yeah the problem would not be done because one it's not practical to go DNA it could cause problems yeah major problems in terms of show this is not the right father be a lot of well let me give you a practical example of this you knowa uh halaka has a rule that if a woman a married woman gives birth to a child it is assumed to be the child of the husband it is assumed because we assume that even if the married woman is known to be promiscuous but we assume that the child comes from the husband that's why it's very hard to establish M because uh there's this assumption and that's even if the child looks like you know the next door neighbor or whatever whatever it would be uh the is we go bus we go we we always assume it's from the husband which is a very very useful rule the question becomes now that we have DNA testing on that can DNA testing be used to negate paternity so the truth of the matter is the raban the but of the rabut will not even allow DNA testing meaning to say uh if a man let's say a married man wife has a child and the man wants to wants to contest fraternity and he wants a DNA test the r i me they can't really stop him privately but the rabut will not consider the DNA test to negate paternity uh and therefore no Bas will ever order it uh and the reason is they don't want to create momser problems and the like uh so well in this context it's not so bad because the consequence is simply uh you got to you know you the father have to pay financial support so they say we we would rather not create a momser a momer problem and uh again again the other gum that didn't like DNA testing at all I mean you have all sorts of issues can you use DNA to match and auna let's say in the aftermath of tragedies going back to 911 or or the like in which you might have an unrecognizable corpse so you know there's fingerprints there's dental records but but but sometimes uh DNA might be the only identification can we use DNA to establish the identity of a uh dead body or dead person and therefore allow a woman to get married big MIM there were poim who uh do allow it others Rebel yosu was very strict he did not consider DNA sufficiently reliable now I know when people hear reel Yak they think that's ridiculous because DNA you know is like reliable it's one in a billion chance that it's wrong but I actually read it was interesting I actually read an article my I think my last flight to America a number of years I remember when I read it uh the Atlantic Monthly that talked about the fact that when a DNA test is done correctly the margin of error is very very low like one in a billion or whatever it is but the errors in administering the test properly or doing the test properly is actually fairly high and they estimate that there may be as much as 25% of the tests may be tainted in various ways that's quite amazing the technicians are not trained adequately uh the laboratory conditions are not so great there's contamination of sample so the abstract accuracy of the technique has to be understood in light of the practicalities of uh the tests not being administered in a prop proper way so that's very very fascinating so that kind of shows you that Rebel yosi's instincts were not you know God forbid not as crazy as people thought that in fact he said it's not as reliable as people think it is yeah yeah no that that that's no that's very true first of all the whole yeah I mean the whole history of of aote is that is one of leniency starting from the gamorra I mean for example you don't need two witnesses right if one witness testifies I saw Yakov dead that's enough the witness could be a even if the is conversing uh not not with the intention of a religious reason it could be a women could be a cutan so so of course the laws of aun are very very well known to build a lot of leniency into the system but you know DNA is a new step and a relatively new Step the question is do we want to take it that way rev Herzog of course Herz was before DNA testing but rev Herzog uh talked about blood tests as uh aunan and the like and he said for sure he was very very open to understand to to legitimating the use of scientific tests uh for identity but again other posts can were more were more reluctant about you address could you address yeah in the case that you're talking can you address what happens if years later the husband returns well yeah yeah this has she's remarried yes you address what what is the in that respect the is very very very very very tough uh this is actually a mishna the mishna itself deals with this problem in the 10th peric of yamos she has to leave both husbands she cannot stay married to this the guy she married but she's not allowed to go back to the first husband either because she's deemed to have committed adultery so it's very very tough again I have a MOA story about this uh which I don't think had a happy ending but it's but it's an interesting story nonetheless in which a woman came toosha and she was sobbing and crying and she said my husband my first husband was in a concentration camp and um I went to arav I didn't know where he was after the war and I went to arav and arav gave me aak I'm allowed to remarry and she showed ra mosha a Pak from this RAV and she said she got remarried and then her first husband showed up what does she do really a tragic situation T but R mosha Who anyone who knew R mosha knew he was the the kindest kindest of possible human being there could ever be seemed to be very tough on her he kept on asking her cross-examining her when did this Rabbi give you this letter uh tell me the circumstances what did you tell him and he's grilling her and she's getting very distraught because he keeps on asking her all these question questions and finally he says I don't believe the rabbi gave you the heter I believe you forged it he says I knew this RV and Hashem would not allow this RV to make a mistake that would put you in this situation and the woman broke down crying and she said I was so sure my first husband was dead I was sure but no RAV would give me a heter so I went to somebody who was a Forger again what the end of the story was is not a very happy story so what happens in the circumstance where she went to a bden and the bezon properly declared that the first husband was dead um yeah even even then even then even then the mission says so luly he was dead well uh she she was allowed to assume he was dead no no no no I'm saying in the case where azdin declared him Hally dead yes but but again cannot automatically change the M the determination of death allows her to proceed on that assumption but if that assumption is then proven wrong there are going to be consequences it's a it's very difficult but again it's the mission in the U 10th chapter of yeah again no but you see it's I understand but but it's not going to help because the is this the problem is if a woman committed adultery while she was married then she is not allowed to go back to her first husband even if the second husband uh would give her a gift because he wouldn't even have to which one the first husband should give her a Gi Oh okay because you got the same problem uh if she committed adultery there are two people she cannot marry she cannot go back back to her husband and she cannot marry the guy that she committed adultery with so first husband is the husband under whom she committed adultery second guy is the guy she committed adultery with so she can't be with him either I mean if a woman commits adultery and then the first husband gives her a get she's still not allowed to marry the guy with whom she committed adultery so it's a tough disappeared well well what you're saying is she didn't have intention to commit adultery or I I mean adultery as a fact is is a fact but but but you're saying she did not intend to commit adultery because she believed her husband was not alive yeah I I I understand I mean once again I I understand the logic of what you're saying but the mishna focuses on the fact Lisa it was an adultery because the husband wasn't fact alive under those circumstances yeah excuse me these terrible situations what is the status of any children who were born second husband or even to the first husband well well kids who were born from the second husband our M our mom the kids born from the first husand would not be but but uh a child born from adultery is is a mom's that's exactly right what can't he do what can't what what is what is the prohibition against the mom there is a negative Commandments in the Torah wait wait wait yeah I'm sorry no I asking oh okay uh a momer is not allowed to marry uh into CLA another M or gorth uh yeah yeah [Music] yeah or is it true oh no no you're 100% correct uh once they get divorced even though the woman is not allowed to marry the guy she committed adultery with the kids will not be MIM then but they will be MIM uh the children that were conceived before the woman was divorced from her first husband yeah yeah you're correct but what I mean is that any conception while she was married would be mam uh any conception after she gets divorced even though it's prohibited for her to be with the guy she had committed adultery with they would not be mam there okay yeah yeah we'll go back to [Applause] M he disappears gets yeah and disappears and she assumes she dead is that get valid and then will the wife be able to marry again but but if he appears what happens then again take well it it depends I mean if he gave her a get then uh even if he shows up she was divorced at the time so she would be allowed to go back to him because of the get that that's not adultery because she was a divorced at the time she had the relation okay let's go back to matah a little bit I have no idea how we got on to this but okay say what if he was a then they're in trouble yeah obviously if a Cohen gives a guess there's no there's no Tak for that the Tak of this is called this goes back to that soldiers would give gets to their wives in case they were missing an action that she shouldn't be an auna but obviously if you're a Coen uh that's not going to help you very much because when you come back you won't be able to to marry her okay uh probably although it's not clear probably Kohan and were probably exempt from military service but it's not wasn't it conditional that P down to so so this this is an AR this is an argument rabam understands that this was an absolute get that the woman had the unfettered freedom immediately uh to marry Rashi does understand it as conditional this get should take effect if I do not return in 12 months so if I'm missing an action you are divorced uh but if I do show up within 12 months uh there's no get and therefore we don't need to remarry yes that's if the was a get on or it was get okay but going back to P again I don't know how I got on to this um uh so number one is number two is very very interesting and that is relevant to the laws of beetle nullification uh right everyone knows hopefully the the general principle called B bashim but bashim basically means if a non- kosher substance gets mixed into a larger quantity of kosher if the kosher is 60 times or more the volume of the non kosher the non kosher gets neutralized nullified Etc and you can eat the whole thing an example would be if you're cooking a very big pot of uh soup even if it's fles either chicken soup or even meat soup and somebody's carrying a cup of coffee and some of the coffee spills into the gigantic pot coffee with milk uh spills into the gigantic pot uh since we assume that there's many times more than 60 times or hundreds of times the amount of that little bit of milk that is called B Bim and you were allowed to have the soup uh now this is not only true for meat and milk this is even true for TR mamish if a if a GU spilled some bacon grease into the meat soup even that is going to be B Bish now one thing make it very very clear two thing well two things you need to know about but Bish generally number one you cannot engineer it deliberately right let's assume I think my chicken soup would just have a better texture if I add a little cream to it and because I'm a lden I'll be careful to add the cream that is but Bish not going to work because B Bish is a rule for accidents it is not a rule that permits you to deliberately nullify prohibitions this is called you do not nullify prohibitions deliberately this is only accidents that's principle number one principle number two is it certainly does not allow you to eat recognizable tra so an example would be the following let's assume a piece of bacon fell into my chicken soup and it's but Bish but I can recognize that piece of bacon but bashim is certainly not going to allow me to eat the piece of bacon it will allow me to eat the soup that may have absorbed from the the piece of bacon but the piece of bacon has to be taken out and discarded right so the two things you need to know about but Bish generally is you can't deliberately engineer it and number two whatever is recognizably non kosher must be physically removed and then even though it imparted some taste into the mixture it's been nullified in 60 so the taste is either non-detectable or insignificant and that's called now applies to it applies to all these things but it does not apply to is so that even if you have 60 times non even even if you have a 100 times non even if you have a thousand times non so an example would be let's take the same example I'm cooking my PES dick chicken soup and uh a little piece of bread or a little kernel of of wheat or some flour know non PES flow fell into it even though the soup has a volume of hundreds of times the whole soup has to be thrown out because there is no rule of beetle Bish on the of now not everybody agrees this is the for sure the who was one of the early actually took the position that is like every other is and he actually says and occasionally in we bring in the as a mitigating Factor but we this is called prohibits in the most minute quantity and the reason is because is so because not only aren't you allowed to eat it you're not even allowed to own it and because of that the wanted to now what's interesting is this though here's an interesting point this is a Rabin law so if I have a mixture ofat and nonat which is but M I'm not allowed to eat it it does not have the of because I did not transgress a again let me give you a practical example if a little bit of flour fell into my PES chicken soup even though there's many many more times 60 K I'm not allowed to have that chicken soup because that's but after PES I'm allowed to eat it ah you'll ask me what do you mean I own during P shouldn't I have to throw it away the answer is no the answer is that since Thea it is nullified there is no prohibition of owning it there's only a Prohibition of eating it and therefore if you owned it during pesak you did not transgress and therefore the of after P doesn't kick in so I'm giving you practical advice this should never happen but if some got into your PES Foods assuming it's uh you're not allowed to eat it absolutely but you are allowed to keep it you can put it away and you will be allowed to eat it after PES and it wouldn't fall under the category of because it is nullified your soup before yeah so that's another thing yeah I'm GNA have to stop now but but you are you are correct that's another rule that that get gets mixed in before p is even to allow you to eat it that's correct yeah I have a question if it happens on shabas before place right something Falls in that you know was but and you could remove it but then you're doing B yeah yeah yeah right right that's that's the life of a Jew you're always between a rock and a hard place yeah yeah no the the yeah the short answer is you remove some of the edible soup with it meaning to say uh you don't just take out the you remove some of the edible portion and that would be the way out yeah the last question question about the combination ofish and the issue of DNA because Bish you gave an example someone some milk not only is it but they can even estimate that they don't even to any [Applause] scient because what 1% 1,000% are not many may not function so why could be aded and say the DNA since it has this 99 or 120 or th% positive is positive yeah yes so the truth of the matter is though that the is is is based on a different principle and that is Bish is based on the fact that an average person will not be able to detect taste in such a small quantity so that this is a unique Factor dealing with the limitations of sensory taste it's not a general principle of Science of nullification in a certain probability it it refers really to the capacity of tasting so it's kind of unique I think to that that particular context uh yeah apply wine as well as food uh it it it it does yes yes okay we'll stop here have a good week everybody and