03 Aug KASHRUS QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK

During the summer in my bungalow colony we like to eat our seudah on the grass. Is that a problem?

It is a huge problem to eat on the grass because the halacha is that you’re not allowed to water grass on shabbos. Now it’s certainly not your intention to water the grass, rather it’s just your intention to eat the meal outdoors. However, the halacha is that when you do something on Shabbos unintentionally, we don’t consider that a violation of Shabbos. However, if what you did was inevitable, even unintentionally, that’s called a psik resha. The gemara often talks about the concept of psik resha. Here’s an example: If you cut off the head of a chicken, it’s certainly going to die even if that wasn’t your intention. The same goes for when you water the grass. Even if it wasn’t your intention to water the grass, when water goes on the grass, it’s inevitably going to cause the grass to grow. Therefore, it is inappropriate to drink over grass on Shabbos because that will cause the grass to grow.

The question also comes up in another area, on Succos. Many people have their Sukkah on the grass and they wash outside on the grass. That is prohibited; you can only wash or drink over a paved area.

If someone cuts an onion with a fleishig knife & puts it into a parve blender. Is the blender fleishig?

This is a very popular question. Certainly, you shouldn’t put it into the blender and you should consider the onion fleishig and only use it for fleishig purposes. The question implies that someone accidentally put a fleishig onion into the parve blender. It is a machlokes haposkim. The accepted ruling is that you can be lenient that your blender did not become fleishig, but try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.