Please Remind Me -- Halachic Question

[gnomi]

Hypothetical situation: I have something (say a cake, just for example sake) that requires an hour to bake. Can I stick it into the oven at, say, 45 minutes to shabbat and let it finish its cooking during shabbat? Is there a specific percentage that it has to be cooked before shabbat comes in? Assume timed bake or that leaving the oven on over shabbat is not a problem.

We tend to (a) do cooking Thursday night and just be warming stuff up and (b) be using the hotplate and not the oven, so I haven't contemplated this recently. I seem to recall something about cholent having to be 100% cooked or 100% raw before shabbat, but I'm not at all sure about that.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

And while we're asking halachic questions, an interesting question occurred to me. Can the same chanukiah be used twice in one night, first by one person and then by another?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Why would it be a problem, unless Person B put out Person A's lights in order to use the chanukiah?

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I don't know why it would be a problem, but I don't know why it wouldn't either.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

yes. I asked this in a shiur recently.

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Okay, I asked someone else this and she didn't answer, so now I'm asking you. What's the difference between a chanukiah and a menorah? When I look up "chanukiah" online, the pictures all look like menorahs.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I think there's an intermediate state where it's cooked enough to be edible, but not necessarily done, in which case it's ok to have the heat continue into Shabbat ("ra-oo-ee achilat Drusai" comes to mind, but more particulars don't).

Possibly relevant: there are some opinions that one cannot reheat in the oven (due to 100% wrappage, if I'm remembering correctly).

Technical point: on my oven, at least, finishing a set time bake cycle triggers a beep that keeps beeping until turned off (which involves electricity). Worth checking if you're not sure one way or the other.

[queue.livejournal.com]

And another technical point: leaving your oven on over Shabbat caused it to break.

[cellio]

I have also heard that food must be cooked to the point of being edible but is then allowed to cook longer. I don't have a citation, though.

asking <lj user="gnomi"> but not on asknomi

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

this gentile has a really stupid question.

how is using a hotplate OK (when, for example, reading email is not)? hotplates run on electricity, don't they? i thought "not using electricity" because circuitry translates to "work" was the point.

do you turn it on before sundown and then just keep it "on" for 24 hours, like you're talking about doing for the oven? my brain can't help but answer "fire hazard" to that one...

::confooosed::

Re: asking <lj user="gnomi"> but not on asknomi

[cellio]

I can't speak for gnomi, but I put my hot plate on a timer. On Shabbat morning I put my (previously-cooked, cold) food onto the cold appliance and go to shul. Sometime later, the timer turns it on and I come home to hot food.

You can use timers so long as you program them before Shabbat. You can't directly manipulate fire or complete the circuit on Shabbat.

Re: asking <lj user="gnomi"> but not on asknomi

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Timer. Very nice thing, timer -- I have one of those that has 2 sets of pins, so I can set it to go on and off for Friday night and then on and off again for Saturday lunch. It's not on for more than 4 hours or so at any given time.

Once the device is on, as long as I am not using it to do something that violates the sabbath, I can use it. So, for instance, we have our bedroom light on a timer. It turns off at a time reasonable for us to get sleep and then goes on again in the morning so we can read or whatever in the bedroom. The livingroom overhead light (unless we've got someone sleeping on our couch) stays on for the 25-hour period, but the side lamp is also on a timer.

Re: asking <lj user="gnomi"> but not on asknomi

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

And, for the record, there's no such thing as a stupid question when it comes to Jewish law, as a rabbi once told me.

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

As I understand the halacha, the "close enough to cooked" principle applies only to meat, as ben Darusai would eat his meat...well, basically once it was back up at body temperature. (I sympathize, since I too like it very rare.) I believe other materials need to be fully cooked by the start of shabbat, unless there's a chunk of meat in there to exempt the entire pot (i.e. put a pile of raw veggies in your crockpot and toss on a chunk of raw meat -- now you can cook the whole damn thing, even if it's totally raw at the start of shabbat, provided the meat is totally raw. The reasoning there is that you will not come to stir to hurry the cooking, since there's no way it'll be done in time for shabbat dinner, regardless of what you do). I'm assuming that you're not interested in tossing some meat onto/into your cake.

But in a pinch you could turn off the oven at candlelighting, and light with the tenai that the cake would still be cooking til the end of the 18 minutes. Dunno if your 45 minutes included the buffer time, but if it didn't, 45+18=a cooked cake. You would need the tenai, however, to be permitted to eat the cake if it's still cooking after you've lit. You could also be sure that MAB isn't taking on shabbat at the time that you light, and consider him to be the baker. If your 45 minutes included the 18, I think you're screwed. Start the oven at a higher temp, and turn it down -- you might have a slightly crunchy top, but I think it'll come out ok.

I'd rule differently on brownies (were I a rabbi), however, since brownies can be eaten in any state, including as raw batter. In fact, off to make my brownies. :-)

Re magid's comment about reheating, sethg_prime and I were worrying about that last week due to a conversation with Andrea about the new rabbi's class on "the shabbat oven." Rav Scroll and Eider both rule you can't (though if you use an oven liner, maybe you can) reheat even fully cooked dry food in the oven. That was Friday night. On Shabbat I took a poll of knowledgeable people at about our observance level, and some a bit frummer, and every single one of them takes a kugel or a chicken out of the fridge before shul and puts it right into an unlined oven. I'm still not sure what's going on there.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

On Shabbat I took a poll of knowledgeable people at about our observance level, and some a bit frummer, and every single one of them takes a kugel or a chicken out of the fridge before shul and puts it right into an unlined oven. I'm still not sure what's going on there.

Yeah, I don't know what's going on there, either, but everyone I know does it, even those on the frummer end of the scale from us. So, yeah.

reheating in the oven

[magid.livejournal.com]

This is one of the things I learned in my hilchot kashrut class a decade ago in Jerusalem. I believe the teacher was very black hat, so presumably he held this way, but I've not known people in the States (that I've had occasion to notice their oven on Shabbat) to worry about it (or possibly even know about it).

(I don't reheat in the oven, but that's because I can't bring myself to leave the oven on for all of Shabbat in a room that gets far too much bright sunlight as it is.)

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I realized the meat stuff was unclear, but don't want to go back and edit.

Raw meat in a pot at the start of shabbat may be cooked under conditions where it'll be used, e.g. for lunch. A single piece of raw meat exempts an entire pot of raw veggies. The reasoning is that there is no fear that you will stir because the definitely raw meat is never going to be cooked in time for dinner, so why would you be tempted to poke at it?

Things that are "cooked" are not subject to further cooking, i.e. if they continue being heated (or are reheated, provided you do it right) there is no infraction of shabbat. Meat is considered cooked once it's 1/3 cooked, i.e. to the level that ben Derusai would eat it.

(Yeah, gnomi, I know you know that all, but in case other folks read this stuff.)
I wanted to clarify because the meat rules I referred to in my comment above were dealing with two very different situations, but taken juxtaposed make absolutely no sense at all. :->

Good shabbas!

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

And in this case, "meat" means actual meat only, right? Chicken wouldn't count here, if I recall correctly.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

As far as I am aware, as long as you don't interfere with it, ie stir, you can let it continue to cook through. This is what stew is for, and is also why straw boxes were popular. My grandmother put the tzimmes on the stove Friday afternoon and served it when shabbas went out.

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

ooo! they make crock pots with timers. :)

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Only on a blech. Not on an unadorned stove.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Of course, there is always the Shabbos Goy. My Bobby Goldman had a young woman come in to switch the lights on and off in winter.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

That is not permitted. A "shabbos goy" is only allowed as a medical dispensation. If someone is sick enough that they're confined to bed, and not able to look after themselves, they may have a goy come in and do whatever needs doing for them on Shabbos. When Jews moved into the cold climate of Northern Europe, where if you didn't have someone come to feed the fire, it would go out and you'd get sick, the rabbis decided prevention deserved the same dispensation as cure - i.e. you didn't need to wait until you actually got sick before you were allowed to have a goy light fires for you on Shabbos, you could get the goy to come every Shabbos and light the fire so that you wouldn't get sick. There is no justification for having a goy just come in and do things for you when there is no medical need. (There are other dispensations available, but they're all in specific circumstances, similar to the one for medical necessity.)

[pressburger.livejournal.com]

I don't know if any of the 48 comments answered your question, but my recollection back from my orthodox days was that food has to be 50%+ cooked before shabbos. Which is why we start cholent Friday, but it finishes on shabbos. I am not sure if this applies to baking.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

The point behind all of these laws is that leaving the food on the fire to cook into shabbos is itself perfectly fine, but we're worried that you'll grow impatient, and turn up the fire, or stir the food, in order to make it cook faster. So you have to do something to make sure that that doesn't happen.

One thing you can do is make sure that it's edible, at least in principle, before shabbos starts. That way, if you get really impatient, instead of turning up the flame to make it cook quicker, you'll just take it out and eat it as is. If you're not that hungry, then you're more likely to let it alone so that it gets the optimal cooking time.

Another thing you can do is make sure that it will never be ready for dinner no matter how high you turn up the flame, so there will be no temptation to mess with it. Having a piece of competely raw meat in it is considered to satisfy this requirement.

A third thing you can do is gerifah, which means sweeping the coals out of the oven, so that there's nothing left to stir, i.e. you can't possibly turn up the flame. The modern equivalent would be covering or removing the knobs.

A fourth thing you can do is ketimah, which is covering the fire with ash, thus lowering its intensity. This clearly demonstrates that you are not interested in having the food be ready quickly, and therefore you are unlikely to so radically change your mind as to go and stir the coals to make the flame higher. The modern equivalent to this is the blech, a tin plate that is put over the burners, which once again makes cooking slower.

If I recall correctly (and I really ought to look this up before posting, but I'm too lazy), you need to combine one of methods A and B, with one of methods C and D.

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

What a lot of comments!

My understanding on the cooking is that it needs to be mostly cooked. In other words, cooked enough that you would eat it. That way you are not tempted to turn up the temperature for it to finish cooking.

Likewise with chulent, if you put raw meat in right before shabbos, you would not be tempted to turn up the temperature in order to have it for dinner. It must take a few hours to cook, so you won't have it until lunch the next day.

It is actually permissible to have food cooking but not permissible to have a situation that tempts you to change the temperature or do something else that would be cooking or seem like cooking. These two extremes show the principle pretty well.

As for the chanukiah, there were many good comments. Regarding the time of the burning, it is supposed to be lit from when the day begins (many different opinions on when this actually start) until the time that footsteps end in the market place. This ending time is 30 minutes after nightfall. Since the normative opinion is that the candles should be lit at nightfall and most candles just last 30 minutes, many people light right at nightfall (42 minutes after sunset) and let them burn for that time. Presumably the time is so that everyone walking home from the market would see the candles in the window and remember the miracle of chanukah.

So, the question of reusing the chanukiah in many situations is hypothetical since everyone should be lighting their own chanukiah at the same time. There's also a sense of ownership of the mitvah in having your own chanukiah.

That said, we used tea lights Friday night (they needed to be lit before shabbat and last 1/2 hour after night fall) and Saturday night since we didn't take any chanukiot with us.

As some of us work until different times, it may not be possible to light until well after nightfall, especially w/ night fall around 5pm. We just do what we can and keep them lit for 1/2 hour. Any variation is fine. Just place the candles from oldest to newest and light from newest to oldest, as is the custom.

Chappy Chanukah!!!