[Avodah] What is ne’itza?

[Professor L. Levine]

>From today's OU Kosher Halacha Yomis


Q. What is ne’itza?



A. Ne’itza is a procedure for cleaning a knife. The word ne’itza means thrusting. If a knife was used even once to cut a hard non-kosher food, such as non-kosher hard cheese, or if a knife was used repeatedly to cut any non-kosher food, there is a concern that non-kosher residue will remain on the surface of the knife. To remove this residue, it is not sufficient to rinse the knife with water. Rather, Chazal instituted a method of cleaning called ne’itza, whereby one thrusts the knife into the ground ten times. The ground must be hard earth that had not been plowed (Chochmas Adam 3:4). In practice, ne’itza is seldomly performed nowadays. Instead, one can clean the knife by immersing it in boiling water (hagalah) or by pouring hot soapy water over the knife, thereby melting away the residue. Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, zt”l (Emes L’Yaakov YD 89, footnote 38) maintains that one may also rub the blade up and down (ten times) with steel wool. He posits that this might be even better than ne’itza. Because steel wool scrapes the blade, it is similar to rubbing the blade against a sharpening stone, which is an extremely effective method to remove the non-kosher fat from the blade.


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