Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

00:03 - Intro (Announcement)
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Everyday Judaism Podcast.

00:12 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
Welcome back everybody. Welcome to the Everyday Judaism podcast. We are now about 70 or 80 episodes into our work here in learning practical, everyday Judaism. It is so important for us to know not what to do but how to do it, and we're talking about the how to in a very practical way. What do we need to do Now? The foreword that I would like to begin with in the laws that we're about to begin, we're about to begin Simen Lamed Vav. In the laws that we're about to begin, we're about to begin Simen Lamed Vav, which is the 36th section of Halacha in the Kitzel Shulchan Aruch in the abridged code of Jewish law.

00:54
And it's interesting that today, when we go to buy chicken meat in the kosher supermarket or in the kosher department of our supermarket, everything is ready to go. You basically don't need to do any koshering. But it used to be when my mother was in grade school. She learned as part of the curriculum they learned how to kosher an animal. Because what used to happen was you couldn't go to the store and just buy chicken. You'd have to buy an actual chicken, bring it the to the sheikh, to the slaughter, and he would slaughter it for you, check it, make sure everything, and then you'd bring home the chicken. You would have to do the whole process yourself. So it was important to know. This is a very important body of jewish law because it's essential for us to know. If you're living out in New Mexico right, chaim Rafal, if you're living out in New Mexico and you learn how to slaughter an animal, whether it be a land animal, whether it be a beast, a cow, a deer, you're going to have to know how to salt it properly, because part of the process we're going to talk about is very important the first thing you do and we're going to learn through all of the laws of it. But just as a very brief summary, after an animal is slaughtered, there's a basic check, depending on what type of animal it is is slaughtered.

02:25
There's a basic check, depending on what type of animal it is. If it's a bird, if it's poultry, then it's a simpler process. But if it's an animal like a sheep or a goat or a cow, there's a much more extensive process of confirming that this animal was indeed kosher when it was slaughtered. What does that mean? It means it didn't have any broken limbs. It means that it didn't have a puncture in its lungs. It didn't have any type of blemish major blemish that would render it unkosher.

03:02
After that's done so, now you start taking apart the meat or the chicken and now you have to kosher it. What do you do? The first thing is you soak it. You soak it in warm water. What happens when we have warm water? If you get a cut, if you get an injury, warm water opens up it, softens it, right, and then you salt it. You salt it, and that's going to be the next simen that we're going to learn together. You salt it and that's going to be the next simmon that we're going to learn together. You salt it and the salt extracts all of the blood and then you rinse it. So you're rinsing off all the blood that was extracted and the salt, and then you're ready to go. It's ready to be grilled, it's ready to be baked or cooked, or however you want to prepare your chicken.

03:46
Okay, so it is prohibited to consume blood of both animals and poultry, so this is a very important thing for us to understand. The blood must be extracted Now, just so that you know if you go to HEB or you go to the kosher butcher or you go to Harova Market here in Houston and you buy some kosher chicken or meat, you may see a little bit of blood in the packaging. That's not blood. It looks like blood. It's not blood. What they do is, in the process of preparing it, they put some fluids onto the piece of meat so that it looks a little fresher while it's in the fridge. Okay, it's already been salted. How do we know that? Because there's a kosher symbol on that meat which certifies. There's a rabbi who's there, who's certified. I saw it being salted in the proper way. Okay, so it's very important.

04:47
Meat is not just kosher because it's from a kosher animal. Meat has to be slaughtered, it has to be soaked, it has to be salted, it has to be rinsed according to halacha and, of course, even before that process, checked to ensure that that kosher animal was indeed without blemish, and then it's suitable for our kosher tables. Okay, so the prohibition applies to any blood that has either emerged from the meat at one point or has pooled in some of the animal's blood vessels, but does not apply to blood that has been absorbed or remained absorbed in its place in the meat of the animal In this process of cooking. In the process of cooking, blood emerges from the meat and from the blood vessels. This blood is prohibited and, if reabsorbed into the meat, can cause the meat to become prohibited. So if blood is extracted, you got to get rid of that, and we'll see in a second what goes on over here. In addition, some of the blood may become absorbed into the utensils in which the meat was cooked and cause the utensils to be prohibited for further use. Okay, so it's also a problem because if you have non-kosher chicken, what's going to happen? That non-kosher chicken is going to cause your utensils, your pot, your pan, your oven to become un-kosher as well, because you're cooking non-kosher food in there. To prevent this, before cooking meat, one must extract all the blood that is absorbed within the meat. The sages determined that proper salting of meat prior to cooking, when accompanied by thorough rinsing, effectively extracts blood. Alternatively, the meat can be roasted over a fire, which also draws out the blood. These procedures, known as kashering, and the laws that are relevant to this process, are outlined in this simmon.

06:49
Okay, so now we begin. You had a question. Yes, there is this time frame. There is a time frame. Good question, we're going to address it shortly. Okay, in this simmon we're going to talk about the time frame within which it needs to be assaulted. So just a general once it's past 24 hours it's done. It's not going to be. You might as well give it to McDonald's and give it to them, right? It's not going to be kosher, okay. But after 24 hours it's done. So it's called ma'es la'es from moment to moment, from 3 o'clock it's slaughtered, until 3 o'clock the next day. It's already done so because already it gets locked in. Okay, now we'll see exactly all the details in this simmon. It might take two episodes to accomplish that, but I'm looking forward to this journey because it opens up our eyes and our minds to an area of halacha that's sometimes not studied and it's important for us to gain an understanding, to gain a workable conversation in this matter, it's very important to know the basics of it. We're not going to become rabbis from this process, but we will become knowledgeable Jews in the process.

08:03
So before salting the basa, it must be rinsed in. It must be rinsed extremely well in water. To accomplish this, one must soak it in water for approximately a half hour and it is important that the water completely, that the meat be completely submerged in the water In a place where the blood is visible on the surface of the meat, it must be rubbed off with the water in which it is being soaked and remove the blood. So you got to clean it off and then you soak it. Similarly, before salting poultry you must clean off and rub off the area where the slaughter had taken, which is usually in the neck, not usually always in the neck and remove all the blood from there before you soak it. Similarly, one must rub the internal meat surfaces where there is visible blood. Well, if amim nintzeh v'basar v'of, sometimes there is found within meat or poultry, makam shinitzrar bo dam machmas maka sometimes a spot where blood is coagulated so it's joined together, there's a whole area of blood under the flesh like a black and blue mark as a result of a wound. You have to puncture or cut that spot and remove all of that blood before soaking this. So any place that's visible with blood, you got to rinse it off first before you soak it. For that's visible With blood, you've got to rinse it off first before you soak it for that half hour. When water for the soaking is very cold, one should place them first in the water that is in a slightly warmer spot In order to lessen the coldness of the water before soaking it in meat. Today we have warm water readily available. It used to not be that case. You just you know wherever they'd get the water from, from the river, from the lake, and then they'd bring it. So you got to warm it up a little, put it next to the fire so it gets a little bit warmer, before you do the soaking Ki, for if this is not on, as a result of the coldness of the water, the meat will harden and the blood will not be extracted from the salting process.

11:02
Halacha number two if they forgot to remove the meat, v'nishra habasar ba'mayim eis le'eis and the meat soaked in the water for 24 hours, habasar v'gamakli asor, the meat and the vessel that it was in. So if it was in a pot, for example, you take your big, big, big soup pot and you say you know what? I'm going to soak it in this pot. So you take your chicken, you put it into the pot and now it's soaking and you forgot about it 24 hours later. Both the pot and the chicken are not kosher, they're forbidden, and liver that was soaked in water for 24 hours. You should consult with your competent Orthodox rabbi to know what to do with that? Halachana Megimel Be'erav Shabbos she'in l'pnai.

11:56
When on Erev Shabbos on Friday, when one does not have enough time to soak the meat for a half hour before salting due to the impending arrival of Shabbos where, for example, in places like New York you can have Shabbos on an early Friday, when we change the clock They'll come in at four o'clock. You get back from work at 12, one. It's like you don't have that time to soak it and to do that. Or in a situation where you're pressured for time, it is sufficient to rub the meat thoroughly while rinsing it in water. So you put it on the warm water and you rinse it really, really well and you soak it a shorter period of time in the water. And when there's no more redness remaining in the water, meaning you don't see that there's any more, so then you can salt it then because you've already removed all of the accessible blood from this chicken or meat.

13:03
Again, today the kashfas agencies do the work for us. When we buy packaged meat from Aaron's Robashkin or we buy it from Meal Mart or you buy it from Empire Chicken, these are kosher factories that slaughter and do all of the process. They are ready. It comes packaged, ready to go, so we don't have to worry about this. Ready to go, so we don't have to worry about this Again. We're trying to just educate ourselves and become more knowledgeable in the laws of our Torah. If this is now halacha number four, if after the soaking they cut one piece of meat into two, then you have to rinse the place where they cut that little spot very well before salting it Because of the blood that may be present in that area.

14:02
Halacha number five If the meat became frozen due to the cold, so it got, you have to make sure that it gets thawed out before it is salted, because salting frozen meat is not going to do anything. Don't put it next to the oven, because then that's going to already cook it and that's going to also lock it and it's not going to allow for the salting process to do its job. ובשעה סתחק יכול נשרס המים במים פרושם. In pressing situations, one may soak it in warm water and I believe ideally it should be not cold water. It doesn't mean warm water, but it means not cold water. Halacha number six Hakli ha-miyuchad l'shvias basar, the vessel that is designated for the soaking of the meat.

14:59
Einli hishtamish bo davar acher shel ma'achol. You should not use it for other food-related purposes. Okay, that dish or vessel that's used for the kashring should be used only for the kashring. Don't use it to mix your ground beef or things like that for your barbecue. Not a good idea. It's worthwhile to have a different pot or pan for that.

15:37
After the meat is soaked, one must allow the water to drip off of it before putting the salt on the meat. So let it drip off. You put it on like a drying rack. You let it drip off all the water and the residue of the blood that was apparent so that the salt should not become dissolved with the remaining water. So now, if you have a right, salt is going to get dissolved right away and then it will not serve its purpose and extract all the blood and extract all the blood. V'tzvichim la'ashgech sh'lo y'syabesh ha'basol gam. You also have to make sure not to allow the meat to become fully dry v'tzvichim la'ashgech sh'lo y'syabesh ha'basol gam In order for the salt not to fall off of it. It's going to be too salty. You've got to make sure there's a very delicate balance of the right way in which it needs to be kashered.

16:30
Okay, is this understood so far? Okay Again, thank you, hashem, that we today have manufacturing plants or slaughterhouses that do the work for us and we have rabbis who sit there and ensure that every single piece of meat that's getting. By the way, there's a big industry of slaughterhouses in South America and rabbis. I know rabbis who would go down there for months at a time because that's to the season that they would slaughter the animals and they would make sure every single piece of meat, every single chicken and in Uruguay, for example, uruguay sends a tremendous amount of the meat that comes to the United States and to Israel is from Uruguay. So they have to have rabbis there to ensure that the entire process from the slaughtering and shokhtim as well slaughterers, the people who actually do the slaughtering, the people who check the knives this is a big process. We're going to talk about this in the upcoming episodes.

17:41
Now, anybody familiar with granulated salt like little, little little salt. That's not good for this. You ever heard of kosher salt? That's good for this. That's why it's called kosher salt, because it kashers the meat right. It got its name because this was the. I need the ones with the bigger pieces of salt because that's able to extract the blood from the meat. So this salt, that should not be very fine like flour, because if so, if it be very fine like flour, the imken nimas miyad alabasa v'enamot siyisadam. Because if so, if it's very fine, it'll immediately dissolve on the meat and will not be extracted. It will not extract any of the blood. V'gam lo yegas mod.

18:22
It shouldn't be very coarse either, shem yipom alabasa, because then it'll fall off the. If you have these big chunks like the, you know the ice, the ice in when we don't know about this in New York. But those of you may have visited other places where they have ice in the winter and they have the salt that they, that they sprinkle on the ice so that people don't slip and the ice melts. So sometimes that could be. Now you have to be careful. It shouldn't be too coarse, it shouldn't be too powdery, because you want it to do its job of extracting all of the blood, for if it is too coarse it may fall off of the meat. Ella yiye beynoni, it should be average-sized crystals. Kemo ha-melach she-na-se a-idei bishol, like salt that is formed when salt water is cooked. V'yei he'yavesh she'yispazer heitev. And it should also be dry so that it should spread well on the entire piece of the meat. Now again, what's going to happen after this? We're going to rinse it all off, because it's going to extract the blood. So now, in the crystals of the salt there's going to be this blood that was extracted from the meat, and now we're going to wash it off after. So that, and then it's ready to go.

19:41
Okay, halacha number nine Tzrichim lefazer hamelech halabas u'becholat stodim. One must spread the salt upon the meat on all sides. There shouldn't be a single spot of the meat that is not covered with salt. Well, so that he is able to salt them from inside as well. Halacha number 10.

20:19
One must place the salt-covered meat in a position and in a place where the blood can drain out from it. Well, therefore, when salting meat in a basket, from it. Well, v'lechayn. Therefore, when salting meat in a basket, lo yamid esasal im ha-bossar al-gabi karka, one should not place the basket containing the meat upon the ground. Why? Because it's not going to drain out. Ki lo yuchal hadam lo zovhetiv, because the blood will not be able to drain. Well, v'afilu l'achar shekvar sho ha-bossar b'm.

20:50
Even after the meat has remained in its salt for the amount of time required for proper salting, which we'll see in the coming Seif. As long as the salt is still on it before it has been rinsed a second time, one should not put it in a place where the blood cannot drain well from it. And when the salting is done on a board, on like a cutting board, if you salt it on it you have to put it on a slant, on an incline, so that it can drain out the blood. Tzuch l'anech b'shipo K'dei sheyozov heitev, so that the blood can drain well. V'shalo yebo gome shey iska b'tzbo atzir. And the board should not have grooves where the blood can pool there. V'hamolech ofos o dofen shlema sheyesh lo toch.

21:54
V'beis kibol One who is salting poultry or an entire side of an animal that has an interior that can function as a receptacle, tsaruch la'afoch tzad hecholo l'mata. Then they have to turn the side that is hollow downward and this is all common sense so that it can drain out properly. The blood can drain out from the salting process. How long should it be salted for? The meat should remain salted for an hour. It is in a pressing situation. How long should it be salted for? The meat should remain salted for an hour. Uvisha satchak dayi chavdal minuten. It is in a pressing situation. It can be only for 24 minutes. It is not ideal, it should be for the full hour. But again, when you have a short Shabbos and they're not going to be able to for whatever reason, then you can do 24 minutes, but the ideal is, again, 60 full minutes.

22:52
Halacha, number 12. After the meat has remained in the salt for the required amount of time, one should brush off the salt very well and rinse the meat with water three times extremely well, and rinse the meat with water three times extremely well. And a woman who is God-fearing, she herself should supervise the rinsing of the meat. For sometimes, if you have a maid servant, you have a housekeeper, someone who's preparing the food for you, and they carry the water on their shoulder because they don't want to schlep so much water. So they'll skimp and not use the amount of water necessary to properly rinse off the meat and this can result in heaven forbid them violating the prohibition of eating blood. It's a biblical prohibition from eating blood and therefore you have to be very, very careful about this. And again, this is why we have today a mashgir. Mashgir means a supervisor, a supervisor who ensures that the entire process has been done properly. He doesn't have to be the one who's actually doing the salting, but he has to oversee it to ensure that there's no shortcuts being taken. And one must be very careful not to place the meat into a vessel without water before it has been rinsed from its salt, because it's going to trafe up that vessel. Okay, one must take care, when salting poultry, To remove the head before the soaking. And if the salt, if the bird, was salted with the head attached, you should consult with a competent halachic authority how to proceed. And similarly, one needs to be careful with regard to an animal as well. There are two large blood vessels in the neck that run alongside the windpipes through which the blood of the body courses. Okay, so you got to be very careful. This is very interesting, just as the.

25:17
So we say that a kosher animal. We mentioned this previously. We say that a kosher animal needs to be slaughtered. How is it slaughtered? It's slaughtered with a very, very sharp knife that has no nick on that knife. It is absolutely smooth, as can be. If you look at the nails of a shokhet of a slaughterer, you'll see that he has a long thumbnail. Why does he have a long thumbnail Because he needs to use that thumbnail to examine the knife. If there's any nick, he'll feel it. You know, what's really amazing is that the kosher animals are slaughtered in the front of the neck. Okay, why? Because there are two blood vessels that go through that supply blood to the brain by non-kosher animals. They're not configured that way. Hashem created them a different way. They only have one blood vessel going through the front and one going through the back of the neck. So what's the result of that? The result of that is going to be that the animal, the non-kosher animal, if it is slaughtered, will incur a tremendous amount of pain because it's still getting blood supply to the brain and therefore it's going to cause tremendous pain to the animal.

26:41
One of the things that we are so cautious of in the Torah is to not cause pain to animals. Tzar Ba'alei Chaim is a very, very serious thing that we have to take very, very, very incredibly seriously. Not to cause pain to animals. Tzar Baalei Chaim is a very, very serious thing that we have to take very, very, very incredibly seriously. Not to cause pain to animals, and that's all animals. If you have a dog, you have to feed your dog before you feed yourself. We see that you have to avoid all pain from any animal. Avoid causing pain to an animal. Teasing an animal is not either a good thing If you do that little laser thing for the cat and you're teasing it. Not a good thing for us to cause pain or anguish to an animal. Okay, halacha number 14, and we'll conclude, here is basa shalom nim lachadayin lo yoniach oso.

27:28
One should not place meat that has not yet been salted in a spot that sometimes contains salt, right. So you don't place it in a place Because it's going to start the extraction process and then you're going to rinse it. It's not going to. As we mentioned previously, should designate a specific vessel which is for the meat before being salted. Don't use those vessels for any other purposes. Don't put fruits and vegetables in there. Don't put other food in there, particularly things that are eaten without being rinsed, because the blood from the meat will adhere to the sides of the vessels and then from the vessel it's going to go onto the foods that you placed in there. So this is an important thing to remember. There's a proper vessel for the meat before the salting, during the salting and we'll see soon after the salting as well. Once it's after it's salted, it is already completely koshered. Again, it needs to be rinsed three times properly and then we are ready to move on with cooking the food and making the most delicious kosher food.

28:55
So any questions on what we mentioned right here? Okay, it's clear, everybody knows what we're doing. Okay, yes, go for it, mark. Yes, so, like we mentioned before, if there's patches of blood or pooling of blood before it's salted, you got to rinse that off first, okay. And then you have to like just make sure that it's not wet, because you're going to put the, you have to make sure that it's not too dry. Where it becomes rough, the meat becomes tough and then salting it is not going to really extract and you have to make sure it's not too wet where the salt is going to slip off as well. So there's a balance here that's required in order to do this properly. Hashem shall bless us all. There's a balance here that's required in order to do this properly. Hashem shall bless us all. We should all merit to have always kosher food in front of us, and we should never be in a situation of challenge.

29:44
I want to share with you one quick story before we move on to our ask away, number 21, and we'll open the floor to questions. There was an unscrupulous meat provider okay, one of these. I don't want to call it it's not a slaughterhouse because he didn't actually do it but he, you know one of these vendors, you know one of these kosher supermarkets in New York, in Muncie, where I lived and where I grew up, and there was this unscrupulous store owner who would, at first he gained trust of the community and then what he would do was he would go and pick up his meat order. He'd go pick it up. What would he do? He would have non-kosher meat delivered to a warehouse. He would unpackage and repackage that chicken and meat with a kosher wrapping and bring it to the store and sell it as if it was kosher. And this was a tragedy for our community, tragedy. I can tell you that my mother, every week, tragedy for our community Tragedy.

30:58
I can tell you that my mother, every week my mother would send me to the rabbi in the community. Rabbi Horowitz was a very, very special, pious old Jew, just such a sweet man. And my mother, every time I'd come home for Shabbos, my mother would say I have a piece of chicken for you to bring to Rabbi Horowitz to check if it's kosher, and every week he would give me the same answer. Every week he would tell me Oy, oy, you can tell your mother, it's okay, she doesn't need to send me the chickens. It's the way they cut up the chickens in the machine. Because they put the chicken in the machine and it cuts off all the different parts. Sometimes it would break a bone. Now my mother, when she was cleaning the chicken, she would look and she'd see a broken bone. A broken bone it must be. It was a non-kosher chicken, so that's why she would send me, and every time he would say it's okay and send it back. I don't know if that was the same chicken that this guy was, because my mother used to buy her chickens from this guy.

31:49
I found out about it when my wife and I were living in Israel. We were a young couple and we woke up in the morning and we see the news of this scandal that happened with this kosher butcher shop in Muncie and we were like I don't believe it. That's where my mother buys her chicken from. And I called my mother. It was really, really late at night. It was like probably two or three in the morning in New York and my mother was up and she picked up the phone. I said what are you doing up? I said I just read the story. This is crazy, this is terrible. She said, yeah, I just finished koshering the entire kitchen. My mother didn't wait, even though the rabbi said it wasn't necessary, but my mother was like not taking any chances. My mother koshered the entire kitchen Every single pot, every single pan, every single knife, every single fork, every single surface that that chicken or meat may have touched was koshered. You have to be so careful to ensure that we're buying our chicken and our meat from a.

32:54
This person was excommunicated from the community, from the entire community. There was a bezdin, a Jewish court that was assembled and they ruled that he was someone who needed to be completely ostracized from the community, and indeed he was. But this was a terrible scandal and it's really. It puts a very bad flavor in our mouth from like. It also happens to be that the rabbi who was overseeing the kashr for this facility completely disbanded his whole kashr agency. He said this was a flaw that he brought upon the community, that he doesn't want to take that responsibility ever again. Clearly he said about himself that he was unqualified for this and never did it again and closed his whole kashas supervision. This is a big thing. It's not the only time it's happened. It's happened some other time, but in a different way.

33:51
There was a restaurant that was serving non-kosher food, non-kosher chicken and meat. They were getting it in through the back door and, for whatever reason, they would do it in a time that the mashkiach was on a lunch break or something like that, and they knew his schedule. Which is why a mashkiach someone who's a supervisor in a restaurant should not have a steady schedule. He should come and go and come and go at a time that they're not ready, ready with like, oh surprise visit. You know, generally a meat restaurant will have a steady mashgir there at all times. Anything that walks in the door is being inspected to ensure that it has the proper certification, the proper symbol and the proper seal, that it hasn't been tampered with. All right, my dear friends, this concludes part one of the laws of salting. We will resume now with our ask away ...

34:59 - Intro (Announcement)
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