Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz

It is a very dynamic topic.

You have to talk about mimareach, you have to talk about tzchita, hachana, refuah, melabein, uvduduchol, chavala.

So I remember at the time that I was researching the topic, I remember Rav Shechter had told me that he holds, and Rav Solveitchik held, that you're allowed to brush teeth on Shabbos, normally, with regular tooth.

toothpaste and with water and everything and cleaning off the toothbrush afterwards so I remember I put together a list of all of the of all the issues and I went over to Rav Shachten and I went through one by one why does Rav Yehold this is not an issue why does Rav Yehold that's not an issue

At the end of the day, there are four basic shitos about brushing teeth on Shabbos.

Opinion number one is one I just referred to, Rav Salveitchik and Rav Schechter, that hold that it's absolutely moot to brush teeth on Shabbos, even with a wet toothbrush, even with regular toothpaste, and you could wash the toothbrush off after brushing.

I asked, why isn't it hachanah?

Ramesh holds it's hachanah to wash the toothbrush off.

After brushing, Rav Shechter said, I have nine children.

If we all had left dirty toothbrushes in the bathroom, my wife would get angry at us on Shabbos.

It wouldn't wait until after Shabbos.

So it's not a hachana for after Shabbos.

It's so that she doesn't get upset on Shabbos that we have left a mess all over the bathroom.

So that's the way Rav Shechter said it.

Now, you have to really go through the sugyas to understand the other issues, why it's not memarech and why it's not...

why it's not sochit.

In Nefsh HaRav, I think it says that they told Rav Soloveitchik that Rav Moshe holds that you're not allowed to brush teeth on Shabbos because it's memachek.

And Rav Soloveitchik said if it were memachek, then when you brush your teeth a hundred times, you wouldn't have any teeth left.

Because memachek means that you're scraping down a surface in order to smooth it out.

So we may be cleaning the plaque off of our teeth, but we're not scraping down the surface itself in order to smooth it out.