Shavuos 5785 – Intriguing Questions & Answers
May One Drink the Coke with Lemon from a Hotel Lobby
Q: While on dates in Manhattan hotel lobbies, I usually order two cokes, and sometimes, the drinks come with lemon slices wedged atop the rims of the glasses. Can we feel free to drink the cokes? Or should we worry that the lemon, having been cut with what was certainly a treif knife, is no longer kosher and has made the drinks treif as well?
A:
We must first point out that the Poskim (see Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah, 96:4) do indeed regard lemons as a sharp food (davar charif). This means that when cut with a nonkosher knife, the lemon absorbs the treif taste of the knife and becomes forbidden to eat, and it’s also possible that one may not drink the beverage into which the lemon slice has been squeezed.
Now, the rule is that even if the knife was clean (and it most probably was), and even if it hadn’t been used for the last 24 hours (aino ben yomo), the lemon draws out its treif taste and becomes treif as well.
And what is it that makes this knife treif in the first place? It would had to have absorbed the taste of nonkosher food while the food was in a pan or pot sitting directly upon a fire (kli rishon). However, some Poskim maintain that even while cutting a hot piece of nonkosher food outside of the pan or pot, the knife absorbs the food’s taste and becomes treif. Lechatchilah, the halachah follows this opinion, yet bedieved, there is room for leniency.
In practice, therefore, we can only regard the lemon as being treif if we know the knife that sliced it had been used to cut nonkosher food while the food was still in the pan or pot on the fire. As such, it would seem that, bedieved, you could be lenient and drink the coke with the lemon, since a knife at a bar that serves cold beverages most probably was never used for hot treif food.
Another factor contributing to leniency would be the possibility that the knife had been used to cut many consecutive slices of lemon, in which case only the first slice would have absorbed the knife’s treif taste, while the remaining slices would be permitted. In that scenario, one of your slices would certainly be permitted, and the other most likely so.
What Should a Son Do When His Father Talks to Him in the Middle of the Torah Reading
Q: I was asked by a young man who started studying in a yeshiva and became stronger in Torah and yiras shamayim. His father, who although comes to shul every week, is not very meticulous about the laws of Tefillah and Torah Reading. Therefore, every Shabbos that he goes with his father, the father talks to him in the middle of the Torah Reading. The son asks what he should do. If he doesn’t answer him, maybe he is insulting his father because he doesn’t pay attention to him. On the other hand, it is forbidden to talk in the middle of the Torah reading, and he needs to be reprimanded. Is it permissible to reprimand him and how do you reprimand your father in such a case that is in according to the halachos of Kibbud Av?
A:
We find in the Shulchan Aruch YD: 240:15, if a father tells his son to transgress the words of the Torah or even a prohibition medirabanan, it is forbidden to listen to him. Therefore, in this case to talk and cause the son to talk in the middle of the Torah reading is transgressing a halacha.Take a part in spreading the light!