On a Shabbos afternoon, Shmuel lifted his eyes from a sefer that he was learning, took off his glasses and put his head down to rest for a little bit. When he woke up from his nap and picked up his glasses, he noticed that they were not so clean.
He took out of his pocket a special cloth for cleaning eyeglasses and rubbed the lenses with it.
But to his dismay, the glasses were still dirty. “They need a wash!” thought Shmuel to himself. “But how should I dry them now, on Shabbos?” he wondered. “If I’ll dry them with my special cleaning cloth, it will get wet from the water on the glasses and that could be a melacha of Melaben (whitening) - or more specifically, Mechabes (laundering), the tolda of Melaben.”
Question: May Shmuel dry the wet glasses with his cleaning cloth?
Hints & Answers
HALACHA CHALLENGE: Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchosa (15:34, new edition) writes: “It is permitted for a person to clean the lenses of the eyeglasses which he is using [on Shabbos], as long as he does not wet the cloth that he is using to clean the eyeglasses. It is, however, permitted to wet the lenses and then dry them with a dry cloth.”
RHYMES: “above”.
RIDDLES & TRIVIA: The first time it was said when Avraham Avinu was told to go to Eretz Yisroel (Bereishis 12:1), and the second time it was said when Avraham Avinu was told to go to “the land of Moriah” to bring Yitzchak for the Akeida (ibid., 22:2).
*Note: Menucha’s answer are not to be taken as final decisions in halacha, but rather as a springboard for discussions & further study
