Melachas Flashcards
Zoreah - Sowing
Zoreah includes planting, sowing, or watering seeds to induce or encourage growth. This melacha is only transgressed in a place where a seed could grow. Therefore, if one drops a seed in the desert or on a well-traveled road where it would be crushed, one has not violated the prohibition of zoreah.
Choresh - Plowing
It is prohibited to plow the ground—to level it off or make holes in it, like the holes used for planting seeds. Dragging a heavy lawn chair in one’s backyard, (a really heavy lawn chair), is considered plowing, if it makes holes in the ground, and is thus prohibited on Shabbat. However, a distinction may be made between making holes in the ground and making mere compressions in the ground. The latter, which is what wheels of a wheelchair or a baby carriage might do to the ground, is permissible on Shabbat. Pushing the ground down and consolidating it, is halachically different than puncturing the surface of the ground. So, baby carriages on a dirt roads, are OK
Kotzair - Reaping
severing of any living plant or vegetation from its source of growth. Thus, one may not uproot plants, branches, or even just one leaf. Plucking a flower, picking fruit from a tree, vegetables from a garden, or mushrooms from the forest floor are actions all prohibited under the category of kotzair because these actions involve severing a living plant or part of a living plant from its source of growth
M’amair - Gathering
Gathering consists of collecting natural produce into a bundle. The prohibition, in fact, only applies to natural produce - gathering manufactured products is completely permitted. So there’s no need to stop your little brother from collecting the candy bags after they have been throw at the Bar-Mitzvah boy. Actions that would fall under this category would be piling scattered fruit, putting together a bouquet of flowers, or stringing figs (something that was much more common in the time of the Mishna than it is today).
Dush - Threshing
Its purpose is to separate kernels of grain from their husks, and it has been expanded to include the removal of any wanted item ( known as ‘ochel’) from its unwanted natural container ( known as ‘pesolet’). This has ramifications in terms of a subcategory of disha, namely s’chita, or squeezing.
One is not permitted to squeeze the juice out of a fruit on Shabbat.
However, there are a few legitimate ways to remove the juice from the fruit:
1)Suck out the juice, as it is a shinuy, or change, from the usual manner of squeezing out juice.
2)Squeeze juice out purely for the intention of improving the taste of the fruit, even if you keep the juice.
Zoreh - Winnowing
Winnowing is a fundamental step in harvesting wheat because it separates the grain from the waste. Many commentators explain that the melacha of zoreh is similar to borer, sorting or separating, and miraked, sifting, in that the main point of each melacha is separating the bad from the good. One way of explaining the difference between the three is by the means used for each; zoreh is through wind, borer is by hand, and meraked is through a sifting device. One may not blow away nutshells from a mixture of nuts and shells.
Borer - Sorting
It is any form of selecting or sorting inedible matter from food by hand. This includes removing undesired objects or matter from a mixture or combination such as removing spoiled cherries from a bowl of cherries or removing bones from a fish. Borer also includes the sorting of nonfood items mixed together, such as sorting dirty silverware from a mixture of clean and dirty silverware.
Sorting is only permitted when ALL of the following three conditions are met:
1) The selection is done by hand.
2) The desired objects are selected from the undesired, and not the reverse.
3) The selection is done immediately before the time of use.
Tochain - Grinding
Tochain is defined as the act of breaking down an entity into small parts whereby it becomes suitable for a new use, such as grinding wheat into flour. Any kind of normal crushing, chopping, or grinding, by hand, or with a tool, falls under this category. There are four exceptions to Tochain: it only applies to earth-grown products; previously ground substances may be crushed again; food may be ground for immediate use; and substances may be ground in an abnormal manner.
Miraked - Sifting
One suggestion is that meraked is the sifting specifically done with a keli, or instrument, especially designed for the purpose of straining, such as a sieve. Sifting flour to make it finer, or sifting the pebbles out of a pile of sand would be good example of miraked, while merely picking the pebbles out by hand would be termed borer
Lush - Kneading
is the act of forming a solid or semi-solid substance of particles using a liquid. There are two steps in this process: contact of the liquid with the flour, and the mixing of the two with a kneading action. Some examples of lush are mixing water with sand to produce thick mud, mixing water and powder to make thick paste, and making plaster.it is permitted to soak matzah in soup or to dunk cookies in milk because these foods disintegrate when in contact with liquids.
Ofeh/Bishul - Baking/Cooking
generally understood to be the causing of a change in the properties of a food or substance by use of heat. This includes cooking raw food until it becomes edible and causing change in nonfoods as well, such as the baking of bricks. If one were to place raw food on a flame, one should, and is required, to remove the pot before the raw food cooks. Generally, bishul does not occur in solid foods until the raw solid, or even part of it, becomes minimally edible. Liquids, however, since they are dramatically approved when heated, need only to be warmed and not physically changed by heat to be considered a violation of bishul. The minimum amount of heat needed to make substantial change is known as “Yad Soledet,” (hand draws back) and is the degree of heat from which a person, upon contact, reflexively removes his hand (“hot to the touch”).
Gozez - Shearing
The cloth coverings of the Mishkan were made from wool, and the first step in the process was shearing it from the animal. The melacha consists of severing or uprooting any growing part of any creature, even if the creature is dead. The melacha truly only entails removing with an instrument such as clippers or scissors, but the Rabbis later included any type of hair removal. This melacha has a number of important implications, even for those of us who don’t own sheep. One may not comb their hair on Shabbat because a comb will definitely pull out hairs. Instead, one may gently use a soft-bristle brush. Cutting or biting one’s nails on Shabbat is also prohibited, and one may not pull off loose or dead skin.
Melabain - Whitening
The Melacha of Melabein, literally “whitening,” is expressed through three categories of activity: Shriyah, or soaking, Shifshuf, or scrubbing, and Sechita, or squeezing. More commonly, melabein is the act of cleaning on Shabbat, which is prohibited. Here are some halachot that explains what is forbidden in each one of those categories:
1) Soaking - One may not pour anything (that includes, water, seltzer, etc.) or spray anything on a stain to loosen it or erase it from one’s clothes completely. Remember that when you spill something on yourself at lunch. Everyone’s knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to reach for the seltzer.
2) Scrubbing - This prohibition includes folding over part of one’s clothing to rub it against the stained spot in order to remove the stain. It also includes scratching out a dried stain from one’s clothes with one’s fingernail.
3) Squeezing - This category includes wringing out one’s clothes on Shabbat. The good news, though, is that the prohibition of squeezing things out does not apply to sprinkling one’s hair with water to hold down ‘the frizz.’ But, just watch yourselves. A sprinkle is OK, not a shower!
Menafetz - Disentangling, Combing raw materials
The prohibition of menafetz applies to the act of beating compact material into separate strands. This includes one who combs wool or beats flax stalks or any similar process. Some add that menafetz also applies to loose hair, in which case combing a wig is also prohibited on Shabbat.
Tzovayah - Dyeing
The next step is the Melacha of dyeing. Dyed wool was used for the curtains and the covers of the Mishkan. The Melacha includes coloring or darkening any material that is ordinarily colored, dyed, or painted for some useful purpose. If the coloring is only temporary, it is still rabbinically prohibited. This Melacha is the source for the prohibition of wearing makeup on Shabbat, since one is coloring the skin. Some authorities even prohibit sunbathing for this reason. Dyeing food is not considered Tzovayah because food’s primary function is to be eaten, not to serve as art.
