That psolet (bad item) is ochel (good). All right, Rabotai (my masters), we also learned five minutes of halacha (Jewish law). If you're here tonight, you're going to hear a very important halacha in the laws of Borer (selecting foods) on Shabbat. If you remember, we learned in last night's session that when it comes to selecting foods on Shabbat, we're only allowed to select good from bad, and we're only allowed to select it by hand, and we're only allowed to select it when we're eating, at the time of eating.
So now we discuss the following case. Let's say a person sits down for lunch on Shabbat, and they bring him a salad—a common case, Israeli salad. In the Israeli salad, there are chopped cucumbers, chopped tomatoes, and all sorts of things. There's also chopped onion. This fellow doesn't like onions, so to him the onion is considered the bad item, even though people eat onions. So to him, that's the bad; that's the psolet. He sits down at the table on Shabbat. He doesn't turn on any electricity. He makes the Beracha (blessing), and then with his hand, he pulls out the onion. He has just violated Shabbat. He has just committed a sin from the Torah, because he removed the bad from the good, even though he used his hands and even though he's eating. But you can only remove good from bad, not bad from good. So imagine that, just by pulling out one onion that you don't want, that's considered Chilul Shabbat (desecration of Shabbat) from the Torah.
Now, let me give you a case. This happens a lot. Let's say you have a mother who's feeding her child salad. That's an oddity in itself, but let's hypothetically say that the mother is feeding the child salad. By the way, the mother happens to like onions. However, the kid doesn't. The rule of Borer doesn't go according to the person eating it; it goes according to the person you're selecting for. Therefore, since the kid doesn't like onions—which is very common—the mother is holding the bowl, and she just pulls out an onion and then gives the other tomato to the kid. The mother transgressed Borer, even though she was doing it for her kid and she likes onions, because she's not eating it. But let's say the mother did the following: she took the onion out and put it on a plate, intending to eat it. Then it's not considered psolet because she wants to eat it. For her, it's good. The case where it's a problem, again, is where she's doing it for the child: she pulls out the onion and puts it on the side, nobody's going to eat it, and then she gives the child what's left. That would be considered a problem of Borer.
Now, the last thing we discussed is an interesting case. The case is like this: let's say the lady over here has the salad, and she pulls out the onion. Now she's looking for somebody: “Who wants the onion?” No, no, you can't shop at that point. Once she took out the onion, if nobody was intending to eat it at the time she took it out—not her and not the baby—it's Borer. Now, even though she said, “Oh, anybody want it?” too late, you did Borer. Unless, at the time she took the onion out, she was going to eat it herself. That's the way Rav Shlomo Zalman brings it down as well.
Furthermore, we have another case, and I'm going to conclude with this. It's not so common because we don't have animals that we feed. Maybe you have a dog or a cat. Let's say you have your animal, and you want to feed your animal on Shabbat, which is okay, and you have food and psolet—stuff that you would never eat, stuff that you would never look at. But to the dog, that's good stuff. So you pull the psolet out to feed to the dog. Halacha says that's permissible: even though you would not eat it, since for the person—or, in this case, for the animal—you're doing it for, it's considered edible, that's considered ochel. It's good from bad, and therefore it's going to be permissible. So again, he writes—meaning, let's take an example. You have nuts with their shells. Who eats shells? I'll tell you who eats shells: chickens. So now you want to take the shells out and give them to the chicken. You might say, “Well, you took psolet.” The reply is, “No, I'm taking it for the chicken.” To the chicken, that's not psolet; therefore, it's going to be permissible. The lesson you're learning over here is that the psolet is judged by the person who's eating, or the person he's doing it for. Therefore, in the case of the kid, like we said earlier, since the kid doesn't eat onions, when the mother pulls out the onion, she was over Borer. Or if the mother herself doesn't eat onions and she pulls one out, she committed a sin. She has to eat from the good and just let the bad go to the side.
Baruch Hashem le'olam, amen ve'amen (Blessed is Hashem forever, amen and amen). L'iluy nishmat (for the elevation of the soul) Chaya Sada bat Simcha. Rabbi Chananya ben Akashya omer (Rabbi Chananya son of Akashya says).