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The Everyday Judaism Podcast (formerly Living Jewishly Podcast) is dedicated to learning and understanding the laws and basic how-to of daily Jewish living. Presented by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe in a simple and concise manner, easy for anyone to understand and connect.
This Podcast Series is Generously Underwritten by Marshall & Doreen Lerner.
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Everyday Judaism Podcast.
All right, welcome back everybody. Good morning. It is so wonderful to be here this beautiful Sunday morning for us to continue our journey in the Everyday Judaism Podcast learning the practical how-tos of Jewish living. We are in middle of the laws of Haggola, which it means koshering utensils. Any item that was used for chametz or
used for dairy or meat that you would like to neutralize and now use it for Pesach or use it from dairy to meat or meat to dairy, you need to go through the koshering process through the Haggola process. What is that? You boil up water till the water is bubbling about 212 degrees and then you dip whatever it is that you would like to kosher into it. So for example, if you used a ladle, you know, a soup ladle and
by mistake you put it into the wrong pot. You put it into the meat pot instead of the dairy pot or the dairy pot instead of the meat pot, whatever it was assigned to, you used it for the other. Or it was for year-round and now you want to use it for Pesach. So what you do is you put it into Haggola. You put it into, so the rule is, we learned this before last week and that is for 24 hours, it cannot be used.
Cannot be used for 24 hours. So for example, my kiddush goblet, my kiddush cup that I used yesterday for lunch for kiddush wasn't used since then and now today is going to be 24 hours since it was used and now I can, it's cleaned and I can kosher it. Okay, what's the process of koshering? Again, you boil it up, boil up water to 212 degrees. It's bubbling water.
You put it in, take it out and you wash it with cold water and now it has to be clean, has to be not used for 24 hours. Okay, prior to koshering it. Okay, now we're going to continue Halachah number 9 and we're going to finish off this simmon, simmon number 116 in the Kitz HaShulchan Aruch, in the abridged code of Jewish law. כל דבר שצריך הגולה, any item that requires הגולה, koshering, לא מהנה לקליפה, peeling off a layer of the utensil
is not effective. So for example, if you have any type of utensil that you're using, you say, you know, I'm just gonna chisel off a piece of the silver or I'll sand it down one layer and then I'll be able to use it. So a new thing? No, because we said, as we mentioned previously, when you cook something with heat, the walls absorb the flavor, the walls of the, of the, of the
utensil. So now whether it's a ladle, whether it's a spoon, whether it is a pot or pan, it absorbs the flavor. The only way to take it out is with heat, that 212 degrees of boiling water. אלא דווקא הגולה, the only way to kosher it is not by shaving off a layer of it, but rather through koshering, through הגולה. Why? For the absorbed flavor penetrates the entire thickness of its wall.
And the only way to take it out, if it goes in with heat, it goes out with heat. Okay, halacha number 10. Kitzer enumerates the laws pertaining to various utensils that cannot be properly cleaned. כל כלי שאי אפשר לנקוס היטב, any utensil that cannot be cleaned properly, כגון הנפל, like a sieve, וכיס של רחיים, and the pouch of a mill in which the flour collects, וכל סלן שמשתמש בהם חמץ, or any baskets that are used for chametz, וריב איזן, and a grater,
וכל כלי שפיף צר, any utensil that has a narrow mouth, ואי אפשר לשחף של מפנים, and you can't get your hand in to clean it inside, so any type of like, any type of dish like that has a spout, or like a let's say like a water pitcher, if you have like a silver water pitcher that gets narrow on the top, and now you can't put your hand in to clean it. You don't have any tool that can clean it really well,
which makes it impossible to scrub it inside, או שיש לוקחנים, or which has tubing that cannot be properly cleaned out, לא מהנים להגלו, kashering it with hagalo does not work. Halacha number 11, התיבות שמצדיעים בהן אוכלן כל השנים, bins in which foods are kept all year long, ולפעמים נשפח שם מרק או מן הקדרוס, and at times soup or gravy from the pot spills into it, so it's little cracks and crevices, צריכים הכשר קל, they need a kashering of lesser intensity,
דהיינו שמעורם עליהם רותכם, that you can pour hot water on it, ודווקא מתוך הקליש שהרתיחו בו את סמיים, but it is to be poured only directly from the utensil in which the water had been boiled, the primary vessel, so for example, if you take like a tea kettle that's boiled up now to the bubbling temperature, you take that actual tea kettle and then with that you pour it onto that area that has the cracks and crevices, so the primary vessel, you shouldn't,
if the water is transferred to a different vessel first, it is not effective, why? Because as we know with the laws of Shabbos, it cools it off, so it's already not going to be that temperature, if you take something, I should probably test this, but if you take the hot water, I have a kettle which is used just for kashering, and they sell them in Costco, in Sam's Club, they sell, it's a chefman kettle, it's a glass, beautiful, you can see the temperature of the water,
so it'll start off at whatever room temperature is, says 67 degrees, 72 degrees, whatever it is, and then that water starts boiling, boiling, boiling, and you see it getting all the way to 212 degrees, as soon as you take it off, right, it is cooler, you pour it into another vessel, it's probably now 180 degrees, it's still hot, it's still going to burn you, it's still enough to burn you, that if you touched it, it would hurt,
yet it's not enough to kasher, it's not hot enough to kasher, וְלֹא יִּזֶר כָּסָּׁמָּיִם וְלֹא יִזֶר כָּסָּׁמָּיִם and he should not throw the water, אֶלֹה יַשְׁ בְּכֵּים אֲלֹב בְּכִּלוֹח rather he should pour it on it with a stream, so you keep it in that kettle, which is the boiling kettle, and you pour it on the areas that need to be kasher. וְהַשְׁלְכָּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכָּנָס And regarding the tables, נֹּא גֵּן גַּם כֵּין לָא בְּנָא בְּנָא בְּנָא It is customary to intensely heat up stones as well,
וְהַשְׁלְכָּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכָּנָס and they put them on the table, used to be they had different types of tables than we have today, וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס And then they pour the boiling water on top of those stones, וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס And the stones are moved from place to place, וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס וְהַשְׁלְכּנָס In the manner that the boiling water reaches the entire surface of the table. So I'll tell you how when we grew up,
this is the way my father would kosher many areas of the kitchen. My father would boil up a wrench. You know those big, big wrenches? He would boil up a wrench till it was like smoldering heat, of like it turns red. You see the metal turns red. And he would take that and put it along the surface and pour water on it. So that way, wherever the water was being poured, there's a boiling water, you have the smoldering hot piece of iron or whatever it is,
and like this, every area that it was being poured on was being sufficiently at the temperature where it koshers whatever it comes in contact with. That's the level of heat that is required to remove everything. So the same thing with your table. How much food is eaten on our tables throughout the year? Think about it. A little crumb goes into one crack, and a little crumb goes into another crack. What are you going to do now?
So what we do in our home, we have a glass table. Glass does not absorb flavor. So now what you do is, we clean it very, very, very well. And then what we do is, if you pour water on it, it might crack the table. If you pour the steaming hot water, it's glass. So what we do is, we wrap it very, very, very well. We'll take like packing tape, not tape, like the saran wrapper, and then we'll wrap the entire table,
and we'll have it covered for the entire Pesach. Now, if there's a piece of hametz that's in one little crack or crevice, again, we clean it, and we spray it down, and we clean it like it's never been cleaned before. And then we cover it. And don't forget that right before Pesach, what do we do? We nullify all hametz that's in our possession. So in nullifying it, if there's a little, little something that got stuck in that table
that we didn't find, that we didn't notice was there, it has been nullified as well. So we have many protective layers here to ensure that whatever hametz is in our possession, whatever leavened bread is in our possession is nullified. Okay. Halacha continues. We need to scrub the table first. But the bins and tables must be scrubbed first. You have to clean it really well first. And then, from ace to ace, we nullify it. And cashering it only after 24 hours have passed.
Like we mentioned with the silver cup that I'm going to soon casher, already for 24 hours has not been used. And it's spotless clean. Nevertheless, there are people, not to use the tables or bins even after cashering, unless a tablecloth or other article is spread upon them. And that's where the custom that many houses, you can go to many homes, that even though they cashered the counters, even though they cashered, they still have a cover on it so as not to use direct surface.
That was once used for chametz. Is it necessary? No. It's a custom that some people do. Now, again, there are people who, you'll see these photos or these AI images of people with the whole house is silver-foiled. Like the fridge is silver-foiled. The floor is silver-foiled. Everything is silver-foiled. That's just an extreme exaggeration. But it's funny. Okay, so laugh. But it's not necessary. Definitely not necessary. I'll just tell you something very, very, very incredible. This is just a hack.
Okay, a hack. I learned this from my son-in-law and daughter last year when they were biased for Pesach to clean silver. So silver gets tarnished, and you want to clean it before the holiday. You want it to be sparkling clean. So what you do is, it's amazing. Take a big bowl, line it with silver foil with the shiny side facing into the water. Take boiling water, put it in. Take baking soda and drop it in. Put some baking soda in there.
You can add some salt as well. You put the silver in, and it will come out. You leave it in for two minutes. You take it out like it's brand new. You've never seen something like this. You don't have to scrub and put all those things. You learn hacks here too. Not only halacha. Okay, halacha number 12. The handles of the utensils also required kashering. So you can kasher it for Pesach use by pouring boiling water on it.
Or you can take half, put half in, and then put the other half in. You can do that as well. With Mishnub Rua, see also the Yigros Moshe who cites a number of customs with regard to various glass utensils. Pyrex and Duralex utensils cannot be kashered. They cannot be kashered. That's why they're made out of a special material. That's not glass. Pyrex and Duralex, these are, they cannot be kashered. Whatever they are, they are. Okay, if they're meat, they're meat.
They're dairy, they're dairy. They're chametz, they're chametz. They're Pesach, they're Pesach. I mean, they can become non-kasher for Pesach, but you cannot change its status, which is also a problem with the sinks. You have some of these sinks that are made out of ceramic. Ceramic sinks, you can't kasher those things. All right, it is what it is because it fully absorbs and does not release what is absorbed. Okay. So we said all drinking utensils, the klei midos and measuring utensils,
and glass utensils. The custom in these countries, the Loma Hani, the Agola, that Agola is not effective for them. So too, metal utensils that are coated inside, coated with molten glass enamel, cannot be fit for Pesach use with Agola. So if it was used for non-kasher Passover, cannot become now usable for Passover. But libun kal, which is direct fire, direct flame, suffices for them. As with a mortar, as mentioned previously. So certain things, I don't know what you'd use
that has metal and glass inside it, and then it's like in between the metals it has glass. But there are many, many things that you can ask a rabbi and find out whether or not any specific item can or cannot be kashered. Today we have a tremendous luxury of disposable plastic goods. It's really a miracle that we can have as a derivative of our, you know, gasoline, right? Of oil, that's the petroleum that we're able to make plastic.
It's an unbelievable thing. And you can have beautiful, beautiful plastic wear that people can use for your Pesach seder. And people have plastic cups that, I'll tell you that instead of, I remember now, I did not use my kiddush cup yesterday for lunch. I used instead a silver plastic, it looks silver, it looks real, right? A plastic silver kiddush cup instead because I can't use the silver ones, they're all going to be kashered and I need it 24 hours,
so they can't be used. So we use, you can also use glass, okay. Halachah number 14. Ein mag'ilen, we have just one more page left, halachah number 14. Ein mag'ilen el b'mayim. Ha'gola is to be performed only with water. Ve'lo yehe b'mshum tarov and nothing else should be mixed into it. Af'ilu eifer kadome, even ashes should not be added to it. Nothing should be added to the water. Em'higil har b'kelem b'yoreh if ye perform the ha'gola,
kashering on many utensils in succession in a single pot of boiling water, At she'nech eru ha'mayim ke'en sir, where the water has now become murky like brine, Ein mag'ilen od b'mayim, you should not, no longer use that water for ha'gola. It should be clean water that's used for ha'gola, for kashering. Halachah number 15. Ein mag'ilen al yidei tsevas, if he's using tongs for ha'gola, I said use tongs for the silver to clean it. I didn't say use it for kashering.
She'mach zik b'mayim esakli, but if you do use tongs for kashering, so now you have to tsoch l'rapos esakli, he must loosen its hold on the utensil while it's in the water. V'lachsa v'latofso, and then to grab it again tightly after to pull it out. So here's the thing. If you were to take, if this was a silver item that I wanted to kasher, okay, this was a spoon. So now I grab it with the tongs
and I put it into the water. The place that I'm holding it is not going to be kashered. So you have to loosen it just a little bit. So now it's all in the water, right? You see that? And now I grab it again and now I can take it out. You understand? So the tongs can't be on it 100% of the time. You got to loosen it so that some people what they do is they'll put it into like a laundry basket,
which is porous, or something like that, even if it's still a metal one. They'll put all the utensils in there and then they'll put that in the water and they'll just shake it up in the hot water and that way everything is completely independently in the hot water. Halacha number 15. Okay, so we're in the middle of that. So, Why? If he does not loosen it, then the water of the Haggola do not reach the place
where the tongs are holding tightly onto the utensil and the Haggola will not be effective there. Vitovios, it is better to avoid this issue entirely. To place the utensil in a net. There you go. Or in a basket and putting the basket into the cauldron. Not to put too many items, utensils at once into this basket. Into the utensil that he's performing kasharing, the Haggola with it. So that they do not also attach because this water
is going to keep them close together and then the water is not going to get into that, into those two plates. Imagine if you take two plates that you're kasharing and now they're stuck together from the water. You're not going to get, right? You got to be careful that they're not touching. The imkein, if so, if they are touching one another, because they are not going to have Haggola in the area that they're touching. Halacha number 16.
One should not perform Haggola on a utensil. Unless the utensil has not been used within 24 hours. Again, it has to be a 24-hour period of not using this item. All right? That's understood? We got it? That at least a 24-hour period has passed from when it was used to when you're kasharing it. Similarly, a cauldron in which Haggola is performed in itself, the basin that is boiled up with boiling water
shouldn't have been used for 24 hours. One should be vigilant to ensure that every time he inserts the utensil into the boiling water, that the water is still boiling. Because it eventually can cool off. So what they do here in the community Haggola, originally started by torch, so they have these fires, these very, very strong fires under these big cauldrons, these big bowls or big basins, let's even call them, filled with water
and it's constantly bubbling, constantly bubbling. Right? And you put in whatever it is, the utensils that you want to kashar and then they pull them out with the nets, whatever it is that they're putting it in with and then it's still bubbling. But if it were to cool down and it's not bubbling, you can't kashar more things in there until it gets to the bubbling temperature. And if one needs Haggola on the cauldron itself, right?
If you need the actual basin that you're doing the kasharing with, right? And due to its size is unable to put the entire utensil into a different utensil, then when the water is boiling, the cauldron should be full. So you can throw intensely heated stones into the pot, into the cauldron. Right? So that the boiling water should run over the lips of the utensil and the lips of the utensil
will thus be kashared as well. So you want to make sure that the entire cauldron becomes kashared. So what happens is you fill it up as much as you can. Now put a steaming hot rock in there. What's going to happen? It's going to overflow over the edges and now the entire pot has been kashared. One should perform Haggola until midday of Erev Pesach. So if a person is doing the kasharing, it should not be done
after half the day. Does anybody remember why? Anybody remember why? So I'm going to read to you here. Remember we said that there's a certain time by which you should not have something which is chametz in your possession. Okay, so after half the day already, you shouldn't have it. So it shouldn't be kashared from its status of being non-kosher anyway then. Which is the time when chametz becomes prohibited on a biblical level.
If possible, it is preferable that Haggola be performed before the beginning of the fifth seasonal hour of the day, at which time chametz becomes prohibited rabbinically. These precautions are taken based on the concern mentioned above in note 52, which we can see soon, that the prohibited chametz flavor that emerges from the utensil during Haggola will re-enter the utensil and cause it to become prohibited. One who did not perform Haggola before midday
may perform Haggola until evening. One should consult with a halachic authority for advice as to what precautions should be taken when performing Haggola at that time. Haggola may not be performed on Pesach, since then even a minute portion of chametz is prohibited. Thus, if a small amount of chametz that was purged from the utensil into the waters re-enters the utensil, the utensil will remain prohibited. Libun, however, may be performed
on Pesach. So Libun is the direct fire, the direct flame, right, like my blowtorch that I have, so that you can do on the intermediary days of Pesach. Halacha Yudzain, we have two more very short halachas for this simmon. Noh agin, it is customary she'ach Haggola, immediately after performing Haggola, shot v'nasakelem, we rinse the utensils b'mayim karem with cold water. We mentioned this previously, that is our minug,
and that's how we observe these laws of Haggola. Halacha number 18, the final halacha of this simmon, due to the complexities and many variables entailed in performing the Haggola, the kashering process, one must be vigilant to ensure that it is properly performed. In this se'if, Kitzer addresses this issue further. Im efsha, if possible, yesh l'hagil b'fnei bal Torah. It is best to perform the kashering in the presence
of a Torah scholar, someone who is knowledgeable in the laws of kashering. Ha'baki b'dinei Haggola, someone who is well versed in the laws of Haggola. Because when you are changing the status of something completely, from something which is chametz, used ordinarily throughout the year, and you'll have questions that come up, what do I do if there's like different parts, different pieces, there's complicated questions that come up,
it's best to do it. Which is why I always prefer and I always recommend that people use our community Haggolas Kalim, which is today in Houston, Texas, so that way, and we'll talk about the exact location after we go offline, that use, why could you have rabbis there who can help you, you have any question on any specific item, they will be able to answer it right there and then. So my dear friends,
this concludes Simmon 116. Join us in the next segment of our Everyday Judaism podcast, Ask Away number 38. My dear friends, have a remarkable week.
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