[Avodah] kashering chumras

[Shayna Livia Korb]

I helped a friend and a member of my community kasher his new kitchen last
night, and was witness to the most interesting set of chumras (described
below). I'm wondering if people know there's if there's a textual basis to
these, or what . My friend is from Denmark and was clear that he and his
family weren't the only ones to kasher exactly like this. He looked for a
site online to show me, but the Danish Jewish community is so small that
little is online. Because this was all so interesting, and slightly
alarming, (are you yeshivish when you hear of  a chumra that you think
"maybe i should be doing that") I checked online and the way I was taught to
kasher things - by my mother, grandmother and seminary, is basically a mix
between Star-K and OU's advice, with a few chumras.


So - hagalah - my friend heats up a piece of metal, and would put that in
boiling water, causing a pot to overflow. So far, so good - we do the same
thing with rocks, I figure metal comes from the earth, so it must be some
kind of specific minhag.


But then - when kashering things by pouring water over them - like a metal
sink (ask your halachic authority, some people say you have to fill up the
sink) my friend pours the boiling water over the metal piece, then onto the
thing being kashered.


So he concluded - which is really good internal logic - that kashering means
that you make something as hot as it would ever be, and then a little more -
so the hottest stuff would ever be in your kitchen is boiling, and then you
make it a little more with the metal. Because of this conclusion, at the end
of kashering his oven, he throws a match in. Maximum temperature it can go,
plus a little more.


Would love comments or sources.

Shayna Korb
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