Q&A: A Question About Kashrut
A Question About Kashrut
Question
Hello,
I live with roommates and don’t use the shared utensils, only my own. One roommate used a shared frying pan that I know is dairy for meat. I pointed it out to him, and he said he would kosher the pan. In practice, he left the apartment for whatever reason and didn’t kosher it. Do I need to tell the other roommates that the pan needs to be koshered? After all, the absorbed taste is already spoiled, and they don’t know that meat was once cooked in it, so seemingly why say anything?
Thank you
Answer
Why not say something? They’ll kosher the pan and everything will be fine. True, there are opinions among the halakhic decisors (for example, Netivot, sec. 234) that with a rabbinic prohibition committed unintentionally there is no transgression, but if it is possible to prevent a prohibition without any problem, it is certainly proper to do so. Especially since there are halakhic decisors who disagree with him on this.
If they’re secular and there’s a reasonable chance they won’t kosher it, maybe with a rabbinic prohibition we say: it is preferable that they remain inadvertent sinners rather than deliberate ones.