Chapter 1: What are the current opinions on kashering dishwashers for Pesach?
The Rebbein was complaining to me this morning that in one of the Kasher Pesach guides, last year's version said, or two years ago's version said, you cannot kasher a dishwasher. Last year's version said you can kasher a dishwasher. This year's version said consult your local Orthodox Rabbi whether you can kasher a dishwasher or not.
So there's a lot of confusion out there, what can and cannot be kashered in terms of dishwashers, microwaves, these kinds of things. for Pesach. So I wanted to discuss some of the issues. We'll see if we get to both dishwashers and microwaves. There are some very good articles on the topic by Rabbi Jachter in his Gray Matter Volume 2.
But a little bit of a basic background is that the Torah in Parshas Matos tells us that if Kelim have non-kosher flavor in them, they need to be kashered. But there are two basic ways of kashering something. There's what we call Libun. If something was used on fire, let's say something was used directly on a barbecue without any liquid medium.
So then the only way to kashrut is with a very, very intense level of heat. That's what we call libun. That would be, libun gomer would be like 950 degrees. It would be some extraordinarily intense level of heat to the point where sparks fly from the item that you're heating where it turns red hot. Something very, very, very hot.
Then the other type of kashrut, the other general type of kashrut is if you have something that was bolea, that got non-kosher flavor through... a liquid medium. Sayyidina got a non-kosher flavor through a liquid medium, so the issue, the method of kashering is what we call hagala. You would boil water and put that clay in boiling water and that would kasher it out.
Now there's a difference between the way Liban works and the way hagala works. Liban goes in and completely destroys and burns up any negative, any tam that's in there that's not kosher. Haga'allah draws out the tam but doesn't go in and pulverize it and destroy it. Therefore, in order for Haga'allah to work, the halacha is that we wait 24 hours since its last use before doing Haga'allah.
The reason we do that is that if you draw out the tam by cooking it in boiling water, that same tam that just came out will go right back in because you're cooking that pot, you're putting, let's say, the silverware in this boiling water so the tam is going to go out of the silverware and then right back into the silverware.
So we want it to be at least 24-hour old tam, so that it will be a tam pogum. It will be an old tam which doesn't have a positive taste, and that way it would solve the problem. Without getting into all the details, that solves the problem by making sure that it's been 24 hours since it was bolea that tam. That's why they tell you, before you kasher, you sing for basically 24 hours.
A lot of people are confused by this. They think that means they can't turn on the faucet for 24 hours before kashering. It doesn't mean that. It means that it has to have been 24 hours since the tam of chametz went into the sink. You turn on the faucet and you have some cold water running in your sink. That's certainly not a problem in terms of starting the clock on your kashring.
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Chapter 2: What are the basic methods of kashering kitchen items?
In the postgame that first discussed dishwashers after dishwashers were invented, I think the last time a dishwasher was made with actual porcelain was probably before I was born. I mean, they don't make dishwashers, and I'm at least like 22 years old already. So it's been a while since they made dishwashers with any porcelain.
So you don't have the issue of cautioning a porcelain dishwasher anymore. The issues that you have are plastic dishwashers and metal dishwashers, and even the metal dishwashers are plastic because the racks are plastic, and there are pieces that are plastic in there. So the issues that you really have are, first of all, can it be kashered? And second of all, how do you kasher it?
So in terms of can it be kashered, that's a major question about kashering plastic in general. They say that Rabbi Henkin held, Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, not the Rabbi Henkin, not his grandson, his son-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin held that plastic doesn't even require kashering because it's smooth and it doesn't absorb any tam. That's false. That's just not true.
Plastic does absorb tam, so l'chora would need to be kashered. But there's a major discussion in the post-kim, can it be kashered or can it not be kashered? Rav Waldenberg and Tzitz Ali Yezer, Chalik Dalitzim and Rav Adi Yosef and Chazon Avadia, Chalik Bez, allow kashering plastic for Pesach, Rav Moshe held that you can kasher plastic but not for Pesach.
He did not allow kashering plastic for Pesach. And the issue essentially is that they didn't have plastic in the times of the Gemara. So they told us what the halach is about glass. They told us what the halach is about metals. Whether you can kasher glass or not. Either it can be kashered in the normal way or it can't be kashered at all or it doesn't even need kashering. We've discussed that.
in the past. But when it comes to plastic, they didn't have it in the times of the Gemara. So the question is, does that mean that as a synthetic material that's not mentioned in the Gemara, you can't kasher it at all? That's what Moshe seems to say in the Tshuva, in our Chayim Chalvei, Simmon Sadi Beis. So many are makhmi like Moshe, at least for Pesach. Rabbi Eider in Lachs of Pesach,
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Chapter 3: How does the process of kashering differ between libun and hagala?
says that Rav Moshe would hold that you can kasher it year-round, just not for Pesach, I believe. I think he writes that way in the Halachas of Pesach when he talks about kashering plastic. So that's the first thing. First step you have to get through is to accept that you can kasher plastic.
Once you get to that point that you accept that you can kasher plastic, then the question is, how do you kasher a dishwasher? So the way that a dishwasher is bolea tam, the way that it absorbs the taste of chametz, is by having hot water spritzed all over the dishwasher with chametz in there. And that's how the tam gets into the dishwasher.
That is not through direct fire, so it certainly would not need libon. At the most, it would need hagala. So how do you do hagala? What is hagala? So hagala would mean you have to have boiling water that hits every surface while it's still boiling. That would be the way to do hagala properly. The problem is that you can't really do that in your dishwasher.
The water is not going to be quite at a rolling boil if you run it even at its highest temperature. The water is not going to quite be at a rolling boil. So you're not going to have Haggallah in the classical sense. So how do we justify Everkoshering? Poskims say, just put an even melubenes in.
If you put a boiling hot brick in the bottom of the dishwasher, so that will make the water get to the point of a rolling boil, and that will work. The problem with that is that it doesn't really seem to work. The brick may raise the temperature of the water that's touching the brick at that moment, but it's certainly not going to raise the temperature of all the water throughout the dishwasher.
It doesn't seem that's going to work. Those who hold that you concoct your dishwashers probably assume, like Rav Soloveitchik held, and this is the way the Aruch HaShulchan writes, that if you have a klee, that cannot be used ever at a temperature above a certain point. Meaning, let's say when you make something in a pot. So you could make something that's this hot or that hot or that hot.
Meaning, depending on how high you turn the flame, it could deal with multiple levels of heat. But you have a clean, like a dishwasher. The highest you could turn it on is high. And that's the most heat it's ever going to have. So there is a principle in halacha called kibolo kachpolto. However it absorbs taste, that's how you can draw the taste out.
So if you know that the dishwasher never ever gets hotter than a certain temperature, then you can use that same temperature to kasher the dishwasher. And you won't need a rolling boil, you won't need a regular... hagala, you can use just that same temperature to kasher the dishwasher.
So those who kasher dishwashers without an aven milbenes would assume that that's what we could rely on, that we can get the dishwasher to be as hot as it ever got by pushing the most intense cycle and just running it through on that cycle, and that way it will kasher it out. Now, the...
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