Tochein (Grinding) 🍅🔪 - Breaking Down the 39 Melachot

You want to make an Israeli salad on Shabbat by  dicing cucumbers and tomatoes. Are you allowed   to do that on Shabbat? One of the melachot  of Shabbat, the melacha of tochein, which   means grinding things that come from the ground  into smaller pieces, and therefore one is not,   as a general rule, allowed to dice,  cut vegetables into small pieces. The   poskim recommend not cutting vegetables into  pieces smaller than a fingernail. However,   many poskim do allow doing tochein, cutting  into small pieces right before the meal. And   therefore, if it's inconvenient to  cut the vegetables before Shabbat,   you are allowed to do it as long as  you're cutting them right before the meal.