[Avodah] Halachic Policy Guidelines of the Kashrus Authority of Australia

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 01:02:57PM -0000, Chana Luntz wrote:
: > But I think the issue is in how we define rov and whether the
: > probabilities add if we rely on them in one maaseh, if we rely in them
: > altogether, or not add at all. Can mi'ut be undone through
: > recombination, and if so, how?

: > To my mind, the parallel case in taaroves would be subjecting the
: > mixture to a cenrafuge. Now, eg, the top of the mix has too much issur
: > for bitul. Does one thereby undo the bitul?

: See this is where I disagree.  I think you need to distinguish the case of
: the three pieces of meat and the genuine mixture case, by which I mean eg
: the classic case of a drop of milk falling into a meat stew.  In the latter
: case, it seems to me it is nothing to do with probabilities, it has to do
: with the drop of milk being completely overwhelmed by the meat stew and
: thereby disappearing from existence, with its identity and particularly its
: taste disappearing.  There is no more issur, period, it has been overwhelmed
: by heter, and what is left is solely a permissible meat stew. Centrifuge is
: therefore irrelevant.  The forbidden milk no more exists in Torah terms than
: these microscopic bugs that we keep swallowing from the air and water and
: food, they don't count.

So, if you bring the milk back up to the top, visible be'ein, it can still
be eaten with the rest of the chulent?

The possibility of unmixing the taaroves doesn't impact bitul, so why should
the possibility of combining the odds of each mi'ut into a rov canceling its
bitul?

: But in the case of the three pieces of meat, there really genuinely is a
: piece of treif meat in there that has not disappeared from existence, and
: which everybody knows about...

BTW, when it comes to safeiq, there is cheilev out there somewhere. And
if you eat only one piece, you don't even know if you ate cheilev.
WRT taaroves, if it's well mixed, you know you definitely ate cheilev
with your first bite. So if you want to say the two forms of bitul
differ in kind, I could in theory argue that it's the bitul berov of a
safeiq that is more "real".

But I don't think they are. The rov of a safeiq is actually called
a taaroves and bitul. For that matter, "isa -- lashon safeiq" (Rashi
Kesuvos 14a) -- in general, a safeiq thought of as a kind of mixture.

You're modeling safeiq using concepts of probability that they didn't have,
nor would necessarily have used if they did. To chazal, safeiq about which
piece of fat is cheilev is a case of mixed identity.

And both rely on rov as darshened from the same pasuq. (R' Chaim notes
this, and that the original source "acharei rabim lehatos" is beis din,
which is a taaroves of opinions.)

But now I'm just explicating what I took for granted when I wrote previous
posts -- bitul berov is the same mechanics in both cases.

:> We were talking about consuming the approved-but-not-certified product. I
:> believe it's really a case of both probability AND taaroves. After all,
:> we aren't relying on bitul for a substance we know to be there, we are
:> relying on bitul in order to not have to know -- the issur is itself only
:> "present" as a mi'ut (or perhaps even ruba) deleisa leqaman.

: No, I believe we are relying on bitul for a substance we know to be there,
: but which is insignificant (ie overwhelmed by the heter)...

The product isn't inspected, the ingredient isn't listed. So how do we know
it's there? I thought the whole point of this line of reasoning is that we
don't have to inspect, we don't have to know, since we also have bitul.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man can aspire to spiritual-moral greatness
micha at aishdas.org        which is seldom fully achieved and easily lost
http://www.aishdas.org   again. Fulfillment lies not in a final goal,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      but in an eternal striving for perfection. -RSRH