[Avodah] The Last Nochri Who Owned The Milk

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Tue Jan 29 11:11:18 PST 2019


On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 08:24:55PM -0500, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
:> To elaborate your #1:
:> Once you say the issur is only chal when it becomes a Jew's property,
:> and the gezeira was only made about milk,

: No!  Here may be your error.   RMF does not believe any such thing.
: The cheese or butter is made from milk; the gezera can't go away
: just because it isn't milk any more...

And yet that's what he says. It isn't that the gezeira "goas away", it is
that the gezeira isn't chal. The gezeira was made about on milk acquired
by a Jew, and not on items made of milk that are acquired by a Jew.

RMF tells you at the start that the gezeira was "ne'esar mishum chalav
sheCHALVO aku"m" (emphasis added). Worries about later adulteration is
a regular kashrus question, not the gezeira.

Here is the only accurance of "sheini" in the teshuvah (other than within
"keshenidon"), as found on Bar Ilan's copy:

    אלא מצד הגזירה לא גזרו לאסור כשהוא ביד עכו"ם אף שהוא עכו"ם אחר
    ולכן כיון שליד הישראל בא חמאה אף שהוא מעכו"ם שני נידון רק בדין עכו"ם
    השני שהוא אינו שוטה לערב ולא נידון כלל אף לר"ת בדין עכו"ם הראשון אף
    שעל הראשון יש חשש שיערב.

    But from the gezeira's side of things, they weren't gozerim
    to prohibit when it's in the aku"m's posession, even if it is a
    different aku"m. Therefore, since it was butter that reached the
    posession of the Jew, even though it is from the second aku"m, we
    only judge on the second aku"m -- that he wasn't crazy enough to mix
    [anything in]. And we do not judge at all the first aku"m as all,
    even according to Rabbeinu Tam, even though there is a cheshash that
    he would mix it.

Notice that for the aku"m who made the butter, we aren't chosheish that
maybe he was nuts. Even though in the case that we had bought directly
from the first aku"m milk that he produced in order to have drinking
milk, we would have been. This is because mitzad hagezeira, they didn't
prohibit buying butter, only milk. (Or with cheese, mitzad this particular
gezeira doesn't cover cheese either.) So now we're just judging the kashrus
risk of the 2nd aku"m, not the gezeira.

However, for the gezeira's purposes, we have to rely on gov't inspection.
This was the whole she'eilah -- companies buy a mi'ut of their milk
	meiha-farmers she'aleihem ein hashgachas hamemshalah kol kakh
	ki ein shoterim ba'im betemidus.

For that matter, if the aku"m milked the cows intending to make cheese,
and a Jew buys that pre-cheese milk to make his own cheese, that too
is mutar (quoting the Shakh a"q 18). Because the gezeira isn't chal on
that milk either. There is no need for the milk to change hands before
a Jew buys it for RMF's reasoning to hold.

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


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