[Avodah] Bal Tashchit

[Joshua Meisner]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 01:34:00PM -0800, Liron Kopinsky wrote:
> : 1) If someone accidentally spills a drop of milk into a big pot of
> : chicken soup, it is still for sure kosher because of bittul baRov. Are
> : you obligated to serve the soup because of Bal Tashchit?
>
> R' Yaakov Moshe haKohein Lessin, the Slabodka alumnus who was mashgiach at
> YU (short bio <http://www.yu.edu/riets/index.aspx?id=28202>), famously
> never finished a desert. As an excercise in self-discipline, there was
> always a bit of cake (or whatever) left on his plate.
>
> I repeated this story to someone, who asked my about bal tashchis in
> wasting that last forkful of cake. I suggested that perhaps RYML
> considered the excercise in perishus to be a proper use of the cake.
>
>
> Kiddushin 32a relates a ma'aseh in which Rav Huna tested his son's mida of
ka'as by tearing a silk garment (that he would eventually inherit) in his
presence.  It notes that doing so would ordinarily be a violation of bal
tashchis, were it not that the tear was actually done along a seam.  This
being the case, it seems that the use of an otherwise useful item as a
mussar tool would still be considered bal tashchis.

- Josh
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20100114/b90613ce/attachment-0001.htm>