Q: Feivel Fruchter is a big fan of fruits and melons. He has them for breakfast, for lunch, and for dessert after supper. (His mother requires him to have other food for supper itself.)
Shabbos can pose some tricky challenges for Feivel. Things like peeling, removing seeds, and cutting off brown spots all pose questions of Borer.
For example, this past Shabbos, Feivel had two Borer questions. The first one came when he was eating an apple and discovered that part of the fruit had turned brown and yucky. Feivel is not a fan of brown, yucky fruits, and he wanted to cut the brown part off. Then he remembered that removing it from the apple could be Borer. A moment later, Feivel spotted a cantaloupe melon on the counter and decided to leave the apple question for now and go for the melon instead. But when he cut the melon open, he realized he had another Borer issue, since there were many slimy, gooey seeds in the middle—and Feivel is not a fan of slimy, gooey seeds.
Out of options, Feivel went to ask his father, Rabbi Fruchter, what he could do to eat his apple and cantaloupe.
“There are several solutions,” said Rabbi Fruchter, “but the simplest one will allow you to remove most of what you don’t want, permissibly.”
What does Rabbi Fruchter mean?
A: Rabbi Fruchter told Feivel that he can cut off the brown part and remove the seeds as long as he leaves a part of it attached to the fruit. By leaving a layer of the pesoles, the unwanted part, attached to the food, it is still considered “mixed.” Thus, the part he removes—the brown layer of apple and the seeds that are not directly attached to the melon—is not considered to have been sorted from the fruit.
