Is Making Iced Tea Borer?

Q. Is one permitted to make iced tea on Shabbos by placing tea bags in a pitcher of cold water? An argument can be made that this activity should be viewed as filtration (which is a form of borer - selecting). After all, initially, the water enters the tea bag and mixes with the tea leaves. When the water is poured from the pitcher, the bag holds back the tea leaves and filters the leaves from the water. Is this permissible?

A. It is permissible to place tea bags in a pitcher of cold water on Shabbos. This is comparable to the halacha in Shulchan Aruch (319:9) that one may pour clean water on top of wine sediment that were placed on a strainer before Shabbos. Why do we not treat this as borer, since the filter holds back the sediment as the wine passes through? The poskim explain that this is not borer, since there was no change to the water. It began as clean water and emerged from the strainer as clean water. Although, temporarily, the water was not clean when it mixed with the sediment, we ignore the intermediate stage, since no overall change occurred. The same is true in our original situation. The water in the pitcher began as clean water and it left the pitcher in the same clean state, and this is not treated as filtration. (In the next halacha we will discuss removal of the tea bags.)

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The Gerald & Karin Feldhamer OU Kosher Halacha Yomis is dedicated to the memory of Rav Yisroel Belsky, zt"l, who served as halachic consultant for OU Kosher for more than 28 years; many of the responses in Halacha Yomis are based on the rulings of Rabbi Belsky. Subscribe to the Halacha Yomis daily email here.