23 Dec KASHRUS QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK WITH RABBI MOSHE ELEFANT

Can I use my leftover challah to make dairy French
toast?
So, there’s really two questions about the challah. Let’s talk about how
it was baked.
If it was baked in a fleishig oven, which means if I baked it at the same
time as I bake chicken, meat, anything
else like that uncovered, the challah now
is certainly fleishig because the steam
from the other items will make the challah
fleishig, and certainly it cannot be served
with dairy.
If it was baked in an oven that had
previously baked meat, but it was not
kashered out, now it would depend if the
oven was clean or not. If it had spills of
meat in it, you turn on the oven you could
still smell the aroma of meat, the challah
also should not be served with dairy. It’s
still considered a fleishig oven until you clean it out, and then it should be preferably even
kashered, then you could bake the challah and would be pareve.
If you bought it from a supermarket or from a bakery, you could assume that it’s pareve. Then
the question is only going to be, how was it served at the meal?
If you brought it out to the meal, but then you removed the challah from the table before the
meat was served, then obviously the challah is still pareve and it could be made into dairy
French toast.
If you left it out on the table while the meat was being served, Rav Moshe Feinstein makes a

distinction between the bread that’s in
the center of the table that stays either
uncut on the cutting board or in the
challah basket, and there he assumes
that nobody is just putting their
greasy hands all over what’s meant
for other people to eat, and therefore
that bread technically remains pareve.
The bread that you remove from the
basket, a child took a piece of challah
and they had it next to their plate, even
if they didn’t eat it, that challah would
be considered fleishig. Rav Moshe
however says that even though bread
in the basket that was at the table with
the meat and remains pareve, it is considered praiseworthy though to consider it fleishig. So
strictly speaking one could, but it would be praiseworthy not to.

Is it permitted to smell non-kosher food?
Halachically, it’s technically permitted to smell non-kosher food.
The Emunas Shmuel brings proof from the Gemara (Berachot 43a), which says you can make
the bracha “borei minei besamim” on the smell of musk – even though it comes from the
gland of a non-kosher animal.
However, the Mishnah Berurah cautions against deliberately smelling non-kosher food, since
it might bring you to eat it.

Can I send my kitchen knives out to be sharpened?
Yes! Rav Belsky zt”l advised making a small siman (mark) on the knife before sending it out,
to ensure you get the same one back.