[Avodah] Dishwasher for meat and milk

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Simon Montagu wrote:
> ... in "Issur veHeter" by ROY's son R. Yaakov Yosef, he says
> that "yesh al ma lismoch" to use a dishwasher for meat and
> dairy utensils simultaneously, "veyesh mahhmirim" to do them
> separately "velishhot beinatayim me`et le`et". There is a
> long footnote with sources, which I can scan if anyone is
> interested.

First, I thank RSM for forwarding me a copy of the scan. Here are my comments.

In the main text of halacha 12, he specifies the workings of the type of machine he is talking about: "After the machine is closed, it sprays (zorem) onto the utensils a wash (shetef) of a lot of boiling (rotchim) water mixed with cleaning materials. And afterwards they are rinsed (nishtafim) in clean boiling water (mayim nekiim rotchim)."

He explains his reasoning in footnote 12. IF I am understanding it correctly, his position seems to be that although the meat and dairy are getting washed together, there is also a third element involved: The cleaning materials -- which are nosen taam lifgam, and which get mixed (cooked) together with the meat and dairy at he SAME TIME -- prevent anything from becoming assur in the first place. (He also mentions poskim who agree and disagree with this logic, and why he feels this view to be the ikar.)

If that is indeed his logic, that the cleaning materials prevent anything from becoming assur to begin with, then I don't know why he specified that the dishwashing machine rinses keilim with clean water afterward. His logic ought to hold (l'shitaso) even if the clean-water boil-rinse would be skipped. Perhaps he was merely describing the machine, and not specifying a required step.

The point of this post is mainly to point out that IF he DOES require the clean-water boil-rinse, and that without it the keilim would be assur, then his psak CANNOT be relied upon, because he is operating under a mistaken assumption. I have looked inside many dishwashers, both household and commercial, and as far as I can remember, they all recirculate the water in such a manner that a LOT of actual food gets caught inside the pipes and tubes. Yes, they do allow the dirty soapy water to drain out, and then they rinse the dishes with new water, but one should realize that by the time the water gets out of the pipe to spray onto the dish, it will have passed over quite a bit of actual food.

To clean out even most of this old food requires quite a bit of dismantling of the machine, and to be confident of cleaning it *all* out is probably impossible in most cases. If anyone has experiences which differ from mine, I welcome the opportunity to be corrected.

Akiva Miller
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