[Avodah] kosher shaver

[Micha Berger]

A while back I had a chavrusah named Schwab, and my shaver broke, so I
asked him what his grandather (R Shimon) held.

RSS held that the heter relying on electric shavers being a scissor
action is valid. However, he spelled out two approaches to this:
1- Scissor action is mutar
2- Scissors are okay because the blade closer to the skin keeps the
cutting line away from the skin, and thus preventing full hashchasah.

The first line of reasoning recommends rotaries over other electric
shavers, since only rotaries' screens actually serve as a second cutting
blades. The second line of reasoning would apply to any razor that has
a protective screen, but not to a Norelco lift-n-cut, which claims that
it pulls the hair so that the cutting line is at a point stretched up
from *below* skin level.

IIRC (and this had to date back to before RSS's petirah in 1995), R'
Schwab didn't so much pasqen, but suggested that it was easy enough to
comply to both shitos, so why not?

Since then, I have been using either non-Norelco razors, or once I
clipped off the lifters from Norelco shaver heads.

BTW, in a very early iteration on this topic, RYGB suggested that shavers
were mutar because of their similarity to *chiselling*. I have been
repeating that since at least vol 6, but I can't find the original post.


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The true measure of a man
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