Nathan comes home from his out-of-town dormitory and loudly declares, “I’m starving!” His mother gently reminds him that he managed for a few months on his own and could fend for himself. Nathan, who is famous for his hot dogs, decides to make himself one. He looks around the kitchen and, to his delight, sees a utensil with boiling hot water. He drops two hot dogs in and waits for them to be ready.
His mother enters the kitchen and sees Nathan waiting for his food. She grills him: “Where exactly did you cook your hot dogs?”
“Oh. Right over there in that stainless steel utensil.”
His mother screams, “Nathan, you are in hot water! You just made my urn fleishigs!”
Nathan says, “Let’s be frank with each other. I’ll just empty out the hot water and put new water in, and it will be fine!”
His mother replies, “I’m sorry, that doesn’t cut the mustard. Even if I change the water, my urn is still fleishigs.”
Nathan says, “Don’t knock it. ‘Wurst’ comes to ‘wurst,’ you can use the urn for coffee after a fleishig meal.”
His mother replies, “I have a beef with you. I use the urn for my morning coffee, which I add milk to. Oy! What have you done?”
Nathan says, “Okay, I’ll call our rabbi, Rabbi Osher Meyer.” He tells Rabbi Meyer what he did.
Rabbi Meyer says, “Your mother is right. The urn is fleishigs.”
Nathan replies, “Oy. I don’t relish the thought of telling my mother I ruined her urn.”
Rabbi Meyer responds, “Not so fast. I want to show you how laws and sausages are made. First, though, we have to discuss the buns or rather, bread baked in a clean meat utensil.”
What is the status of bread baked in a clean meat utensil? This is an example of the halachic jargon known as nat-bar-nat. “Nat” is an acronym referring to nosein taam, meaning “flavor transfer.” “Nat bar Nat” means two flavor transfers. In this case, meat imparted flavor to a utensil. The utensil was subsequently cleaned, but the imparted flavor remains in the walls of the utensil. Now parve bread is baked in that meat utensil. The kosher meat flavor went from the meat to the walls of the pan and then to the bread. The bread should be halachically parve.
This is similar to the case discussed in the Gemara (Chullin 111b), where hot fish was placed on a cold meat plate. The Gemara says that the fish may be eaten with milk. Tosfos concludes, according to one explanation, that indeed the bread is parve. In other words, the case may sound cooked, but it is not quite as simple as that.
However, while the Shulchan Aruch (and generally Sefardim) accepts Tosfos’s hypothesis, the Rema prefers that one not rely on it, at least initially. The Rema would rule that parve bread baked in a clean meat pan is in fact parve but shouldn’t be eaten together with cheese. If someone already smeared cream cheese on the bread, the Rema would say it can be eaten. Therefore, hot water boiled in a clean meat pot should not be used with dairy.
The Vilna Gaon posits that one can even eat the bread with cheese initially if the meat pan hasn’t been used for 24 hours. Therefore, one can boil hot water for use with milk in a clean meat pot if the pot has not been used for 24 hours. The Chochmas Adam doesn’t accept this leniency unless no other pan is available. However, if one has a unique pan used for making a certain type of bread, one would initially be allowed to use such a meat pan to bake parve bread to be smeared with cheese, if the pan has not been used for 24 hours.
Moreover, the Divrei Chachamin quotes Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky, zt”l, and Rav Dovid Feinstein, zt”l, that one may rely on the Vilna Gaon’s lenient opinion. The Ohelei Yeshurun quotes Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, that one may rely on the Vilna Gaon where a parve utensil inadvertently became fleishigs or milchigs. Perhaps this would apply to this situation.
At this point, Rabbi Osher Meyer asks Nathan, “Did you follow that?”
Nathan replies, “Yes, but how does this get me out of the doghouse?”
Rabbi Meyer says, “Clean out the urn. Don’t use it for 24 hours.”
“The urn is a special utensil that serves a function of always having hot water available. Presumably, you only own one urn. You are not putting milk into the urn, which you certainly may not do. The urn, in that regard, is fleishigs even after 24 hours. Rather, you are putting clean parve water into a clean urn that was used for meat over 24 hours ago. The Chochmas Adam says you can consume the product of a double taste transfer with food of the opposite type after twenty-four hours if there is a special utensil involved.
“So here, the hot dog flavor was absorbed by the specialized urn. It was cleaned, and 24 hours elapsed. The subsequent flavor transfer from the urn to the parve water may be disregarded in this case. Therefore, milk may be added to that water. In addition, more recent poskim have said that one may rely on the Vilna Gaon’s lenient opinion.”
Nathan replied, “Well, hot dog! Thanks, Rabbi.”
Nathan had come home hungry, cooked two hot dogs, and nearly turned his mother’s coffee urn into a very expensive frankfurter-flavored coffee maker. Fortunately, he wasn’t totally cooked. He had learned that sometimes the difference between a real halachic problem and a temporary pickle can come down to a little time.
Someone facing a similar meat grinder should seek guidance from a non-fictional rabbi.
Maggid shiur and Rebbe at Yeshiva Ateres Shimon in Far Rockaway. He leads the Daf Yomi chaburah at Eitz Chayim of Dogwood Park in West Hempstead, and writes “Delving into the Daf” each week for The Jewish Home.
