<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px">I helped a friend and a member of my community kasher his new kitchen last night, and was witness to the most interesting set of chumras (described below). I'm wondering if people know there's if there's a textual basis to these, or what . My friend is from Denmark and was clear that he and his family weren't the only ones to kasher exactly like this. He looked for a site online to show me, but the Danish Jewish community is so small that little is online. Because this was all so interesting, and slightly alarming, (are you yeshivish when you hear of a chumra that you think "maybe i should be doing that") I checked online and the way I was taught to kasher things - by my mother, grandmother and seminary, is basically a mix between Star-K and OU's advice, with a few chumras.<br>
</p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">So - hagalah - my friend heats up a piece of metal, and would put that in boiling water, causing a pot to overflow. So far, so good - we do the same thing with rocks, I figure metal comes from the earth, so it must be some kind of specific minhag.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">But then - when kashering things by pouring water over them - like a metal sink (ask your halachic authority, some people say you have to fill up the sink) my friend pours the boiling water over the metal piece, then onto the thing being kashered.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">So he concluded - which is really good internal logic - that kashering means that you make something as hot as it would ever be, and then a little more - so the hottest stuff would ever be in your kitchen is boiling, and then you make it a little more with the metal. Because of this conclusion, at the end of kashering his oven, he throws a match in. Maximum temperature it can go, plus a little more.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Would love comments or sources.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Shayna Korb</p>