Hilchos Arba Minim: Esrog Defects—Nekev, Chaser, Niklaf, and the Pitam

Transcript

What was... how to do it? You have to know how to do it. You might pass an answer. You can pass an answer by scratching it. You make a chaser from it. You make chaser, so it's a whole sugya chaser. We have to learn the sugya. Because of that, we'll talk, okay? Now, if you see that it's bloated, means strange, there's something wrong. Or it's a little bit rotten, so you're not going to buy a rotten esrog, okay? This is on the psul of mar'eh. Then the checklist for chaser is the following. Rabosai, take out your Shulchan Aruch. The first one is nekev, taf reish mem ches se'if gimmel. It talks about a hole. An esrog that has a hole is not kosher. We'll discuss how much of a hole. Sure, every time you have a needle, something that hits an esrog, it turns into a hole. A hole, so we have to do shiurim to it. What happens if you can't see it? What, you can't see? You can't see. What do you mean, if you can't see, you can't see it? But you have the microscope. You're not mechuyav to look at the microscope. For nothing. First of all, if you know what you're doing, you never have to use a microscope. You just don't need it. You see right away. Doctor, do you need a microscope to look at it, to the strep throat? You have to look at the guy with the microscope? You know what you're looking at, so you know what you're looking at, okay? The next thing is chaser, and that's what I wanted to tell you. Chaser is the Rema, taf reish mem tes se'if yud, says that it's kosher b'shaar yamim. You have it, taf reish mem tes. I think seif vav, maybe I made a mistake. I wrote yud, but I think it's vav. It's vav, right? It's vav. I knew it's vav. Okay. Taf reish mem tes, you have vav, that a chaser is kasher b'shaar yamim. Okay? Then there's a next thing that's called nimoych. Nimoych means that it started to shrink in, it started to shrink. By the way it happens. It's reagim shrink over Yontif. From usage, from this, they start to shrink. It's called a nimoych. You look at taf reish mem ches, seif daled, the Shulchan Aruch tells you about the sugya of the esrog that's nimoych. You look at the Mishnah Berurah, seif katan yud-zayin says that b'di'eved a nimoych is kosher, but you don't want to buy an esrog that's shrunk. I know, it starts to shrink. The esrog fell down and it busted. That's something else. You want it to shrink, not to turn like watery inside. That's what it means, because that's a shrink. It shrivels. That's what it means, it shrinks. Because it starts to become, you know, you know when every fruit starts to get, it becomes soggy, you know? Shrinks, but it gets soggy, the water comes out. Okay, so that's what nimoych means. Then there's something called nistak, seif hei. Go ahead, everybody look at seif hei, nistak, a crack. Some esrogim are cracked. Cracked esrog. Then there's a sugya of esrog niklaf, big sugya, rabosai, that the skin started to peel. That's in seif vav. You have it? Seif hei, nistak. Seif vav, niklaf. What about ניטל העוקץ? That, rabosai, is in סעיף חס. If the uketz is gone, and then the big one is ניטל הפיטם, and we'll talk about that tomorrow, because there's different parts of the pitam, how much of the pitam is gone. Some esrogim don't have a pitam. Should an esrog have a pitam? What? It's pasul. Uketz is pasul. But it also depends how much of the uketz is pasul. It depends, yeah? Okay, so rabosai, this is the checklist of chaser. The ma'aseh. You want the Russian ma'aseh. You love the ma'ases. The oilam loves ma'ases. Here we go. When I was a young boy, my father bought me a lulav and esrog. See, today everybody has a lulav and esrog. Who doesn't have a lulav and esrog today? Yeah, I told you the ma'aseh. I'm ready to... Today they bought us a lulav and esrog. I was excited, you know, a little kid, a lulav and esrog. I come in shul, and right before the Hallel, my zeide tells me, You see that Roshi over there? Give him the lulav. Give him your lulav and esrog. I'm going, What are you doing? I told over Pesach this ma'aseh, and he told me he couldn't write it in the book. It's not for America. It's so evil. It's so abusive to children, you know. He took my lulav and esrog that he bought me. I waited a whole year. You have no idea how excited we were. Give it to the Rosh Yeshiva. So I told my zeide to use that.

To take it and use it for Hallel and finished. That's it. It was an onion? Onion. Second day. I knew he'd ask. So what happened? What happened? What happened? Good. Third day. Don't ruin my maiseh b'dayinah b'mai. I got the stories, I did the same thing. So I told my zeide, I remember my father, I was a good boy. I used to listen a lot to my father. My father gave a whole shiur from the Brisker Rav that an onen is a chelek in a mitzvah. So I told my zeide, Abba, an onen is a chelek in a mitzvah. He was so proud that I knew it. I was a little boy, seven, eight, nine maybe, you know, a little kid. So he told me, I'm going to give. He said to me this thing about Radin, that the Chofetz Chaim didn't make the nanuim to give to everybody. And then he told me, I'm going to give. He said, the nanuim is a takanas neviim. This is der cheretz. Der cheretz is kodmah laTorah. And he said, I'm going to give a thing from the Chofetz Chaim. He says, what age do you have to teach a child derech eretz? We know that Torah, there's av melamdoi when he starts to talk. He says that's what the Chofetz Chaim said, derech eretz is kodmah laTorah. Before you even start teaching Torah, three years old, you have to already teach him derech eretz. And he said a lashon from the Chofetz Chaim: even when the child is in the mother's stomach, because already if it's one day out, you need to teach him derech eretz. It's shayach to respect. Derech eretz is kodmah laTorah. And he told me, he says to me, I know you're angry at me. He told me, I know you're very upset. But come a day, you'll appreciate this chinuch that I gave you. You'll appreciate it. I can't tell you how angry I was as a little kid at him. Not only from this, many times. But I want you to know, what you see today, this love of Klal Yisroel came from him. He instilled it in me through these days. The cake, right? The what? The cake. Yeah, okay, but that's different. That was mussar. That was something else. It was zachin that as a child I grew up furious, furious. I can't explain, and I was a good boy. You used to get it left and right. Reb Baruch once—Reb Baruch, zecher tzaddik livrachah, Reb Baruch Sorotzkin—he was once... he used to visit my zayde, their cousins. Reb Zalman's my great-uncle. So Reb Baruch used to visit my zayde. The kids, he once came for levayah, so I leined. I was 13 years old. I leined. I leined good. I was a good baal koreh. So my zayde—so Reb Baruch was, ooh, zeh shein, da. So my zayde said, If you'd lein tzu Kup in London, they'd lein tzu Kup, hakriyas haTorah, valt gekumen a greise talmid chacham, something, you know, or you would have the good thing in London. And I was, like, shocked. What did I do wrong? I used to learn, and I used to—good baal koreh. Instead of... and in front of Reb Baruch, I was so embarrassed. I wanted him to say good. So Reb Baruch pulled me aside and he tells me, I know you're a good boy, he tells me. He says, Das farshteyn dein zayde. Your zayde grew up in Slabodka. He grew up in Radin. He grew up with the Mir in Shanghai. Everything was mussar. Their language was mussar. Der gantze shprach, der gantze—this is what it is. And then he gave me mussar for wearing a gartel, a Baruch. I used to wear a gartel because I was in yeshivas Eretz Yisrael by Rabbi Geltzeler, so they used to teach us to wear gartel. So I wore a gartel, so Reb Baruch couldn't swallow it. Ah, Reb Baruch, he was really a telzer. Ah, how could you wear—how could you wear—Reb Baruch, liteh, liteh, how could you wear a gartel? Okay, today, you know, you don't even have this mussar, how can you wear a gartel? You want to wear a gartel, good deal. So I got him good. You know what I told him? Why else? ... I got him. He goes. So I put on a gartel when he came to rap to Pinsk, because it's a big story. What happened was, he came to Pinsk and he saw Stalin, the yeshiva, the kehillah. Karlin-Stolin is a suburb of Pinsk. Pinsk is the shtot, and the suburb is Karlin. So when he saw the chassidishe yidden of Karlin, he said, to show them, because they had something right. Their kids didn't go off the derech. Literally, every family had one kid that went off. The haskalah was so bad in Europe, it fell. Do you know that the yeshivas, people don't know this, there was so little yeshiva bachurim in Europe. What was yeshiva bachurim? Nothing. Reb Shmuel Birnbaum told me this. I once asked Reb Shmuel Birnbaum. I drove him from the Mir to Queens. He said a shiur in my father's shul. I had such beautiful shmoozing with him, and I asked him, I said, Yeshiva, what's the pshat they didn't get married till they were 38, 40? My zeide used to say that, based on talmidim of yeshivas, they never got married. They waited, and the ones that got married got married very late. So my zeide used to say...

By the time they get ready to get married, they don't need wives, they need nurses. ... So I asked Reb Shmuel, what's the pshat? You know what he told me? He told me, I'm married to ... He says, What's the pshat? You know, nobody wants to marry. Nobody wants to marry, let me tell you. What's ...? He says, marrying yeshiva guys is like marrying a guy who hinks, a guy who limps. It was so rachok. He tells me, Who's gonna marry a yeshiva guy? I'd be crazy to marry a yeshiva guy. And today it's ... Guys not in yeshiva, no one's going near ... Pilli ployim, huh? Reb Shmuel told me this. ... with a yeshiva man, they'd be crazy to want to get married to a yeshiva. Reb Shmuel told me. So what happened next? So how'd he get married? ... Who? They found, and look what they found. You think they found regular shidduchim? Found difficult shidduchim. Odds and ends they found. I'm saying it wasn't the regular. This chabayis, so when he came to Pinsk and he saw Kalin, he saw Stalin, I rather had the gartel for many years. I had my ... gartel. Someone took it. I don't know what happened. Many yarshim, many yarshim in the cookie jar. People took it. One of my chassidim stole it. ... What? ... The what? He has with Chofetz Chaim? The Chofetz Chaim gartel. He wore a gartel, Chofetz Chaim, right? Under his jacket, right? The yarmulke. The yarmulke. What is it? It's a big yarmulke or it's a small? It is a large yarmulke, huh? Because they say they have the Chofetz Chaim's becher, and they don't use it because it doesn't have the shiur. No, that's, no, that's clear. Everybody knows that. They have the mothers. No, you do the good thing. They have the Chofetz Chaim's becher; it doesn't have the shiur. They sell from the Mikhtam Eliyahu. You know the maaseh of the Mikhtam Eliyahu? With the becher, his wife. It's a famous maaseh. The Mikhtam Eliyahu used to come in there. No, his wife bought him a becher. His wife bought him the becher. No, that's not the maaseh. His wife bought him the becher, and he used it. And Shabbos he was niftar, he stopped using it. They asked why, because b'emes it didn't have the shiur. But since his wife, the wife bought the becher, so he used it, a little chaviv. Shabbos he stopped using it; he was niftar. When she was niftar, he stopped using the becher. So they said, why? Because there's a bnei Brak, chasanishes the rav. He used it till now because of... Chofetz Chaim's very small becher. It was different. I don't know, they didn't have money. They had Reb Chaim No... there used to be sefer Reb Chaim No... I have a becher that Rav Moshe gave me at my bris. Rav Moshe was my sandek. Rav Moshe gave me a becher. I don't know who was supposed to use that, you know what I mean? It's like a... I don't know what it's supposed to be for. The schnapps glasses, I don't even know what it is. You have to really look. I saw, I saw, Reb Chaim... I saw a yomov, the last few months, he said he wrote, I'm doing a... that I'm sold these sefarim in America. He believed me, he said even ten dollars, send it to me, don't wait till the... because only... He said the... was the Chofetz Chaim. What was the choves? Because the yeshiva ימין. Because nobody bought his sefarim, because it was big... It was before the war. It was the depression, World War. Major depression. Nobody bought sefarim. The choves... so later he said, now... pennyless. I begged him, thank you so much, give me... seventy-five dollars. I spoke to you Pesach, Rav David's shiur. What's Rav David's shiur for... It's 2.2 ounces. I showed it to you. And what they do is they don't want to quote Reb Dovid, so what do they do? They quote Reb Dovid, it's three point something. I showed it to you. It's not. It's 2.2. Reb Dovid writes clearly it's 2.2. In his kol dodi, they quote the Kol Dodi HaGadah, Reb Dovid, and they quote it that it's three point something. Remember Rabbi Green, I told you to ask you as your shver, remember? How can they quote Reb Dovid himself writes that I measured it and it's 2.2? You know what 2.2 is? How much is 2.2 ounces? No. So schnapps glass is one ounce. So 2.2, it's two schnapps, two and a half schnapps glasses. From Moshe's becher, that's the becher Moshe gave me. It's a... I'll bring you the becher, I'll show it to you. It's two bechers. I'm telling you, Reb Dovid says that that is for drabbanan, it's good. For arba kosos, it could be for Pesach. Reb Moshe gave me a Pesach becher. That little thing is a Pesach becher. It's 2.2 ounces, mate. I have it. And Reb Dovid writes bediuk, and I was by there and it came out to 2.2. What is father's becher? Himself. He says, I went and I checked the revi'is. I showed it to them.

With the, with the beitzim, there's the thing. I have, sure I have it. I have it, sure I have it. Could I have it here? Not my mother's. I think I have it. I think.