We’re pleased to share a new episode of “Lemaan Yishmeu,” the weekly halacha podcast with Rabbi Yosef Yeshaya Braun, Mara D’asra, and member of the Crown Heights Beis Din, brought to you by AskTheRav.com in partnership with the Lemaan Yilmedu Halacha Institute.

Each week, Rabbi Braun explores fascinating halachic questions across a wide range of practical topics — real inquiries that have reached his desk, along with his clear and insightful responses.

You can listen to the podcast on all major platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 24Six, Amazon Music and Pocket Casts

The podcast is also available at https://asktherav.com/podcast/#ep20, where you can see extensive marei mekomos for the answers.

In this week’s episode, the topics discussed by Rabbi Braun include:

Public birthday parties and ayin hora

• Is there a concern of ayin hora in making large public gatherings for a seventieth or eightieth birthday?
• Since the Korban Todah was brought with forty challos specifically so that a crowd would be invited, is publicizing Hashem’s kindness in fact the entire point of a seudas hoda’ah?
• Does such a seuda carry its own protection, since the kiddush shem shamayim offsets the merits that are otherwise deducted when a miracle is done for a person?
• What could we learn from the Rebbe’s conduct in this regard?

Tevilas keilim for electric appliances

• Must electric appliances be toiveled even when the label warns that immersion will ruin them, and what practical steps make it workable?
• If the appliance would be ruined or the water cannot reach inside, is one exempt because a mitzvah one cannot perform does not apply, or must one simply not use the utensil?
• Having a Jewish professional reassemble it renders it Jewish-made. What about an amateur doing so?
• How much weight do the various arguments for leniency carry (mechubar lekarka, plugging it in as “finishing” it, beis hastarim, not being a kli seudah, and merely being the non-Jew’s “store merchandise”), given that tevilas keilim is deoraysa?

Tevilah for a Keurig machine

• Is a Keurig different from other electric appliances, being a pump rather than a kli, and one that will certainly be ruined by immersion?
• If it’s not merely a matter of damage but genuinely impossible for the water to reach the area requiring immersion, could it be that the chiyuv of tevilah never applied at all?
• May one rely on giving it as a gift to a non-Jew and borrowing it back, even though it will stay in the Jew’s hands indefinitely?
• Since the Taz required toiveling a borrowed kli specifically because one is able to, does that imply the requirement falls away where immersion is impossible, as poskim held with very large vessels?

A shiur in shul on Shabbos afternoon

• Shabbos afternoon commemorates the passing of Yosef Hatzaddik, Moshe Rabbeinu, and Dovid Hamelech (the reason for Tzidkascha). If so, may one make a fixed shiur in shul between Mincha and Maariv?
• Does the minhag of beis hamedrash batel begin close to dark, or only close to shkiya (and not afterward, as the Ketzos Hashulchan seems to imply), and not if beginning earlier?
• Does the concern apply to Chassidus, Pirkei Avos, and agaddah, or only to formal nigleh classes?
• May one rely on the Mishnah Berurah (quoted by the Rebbe) that nowadays we do not stop such gatherings, since people would otherwise sit in shul and waste their time?

Havdalah made without a kos

• Someone who mistakenly made Havdalah without wine in the Nine Days, must he make Havdalah again once he has a kos?
• When the Mishnah Berurah rules that one without wine shouldn’t rely on making a wine-less Havdalah, does that only mean l’chatchila, implying that b’dieved he was yotzei?
• Did the Maharam miRotenburg, who allows Havdalah without a kos, mean that one is yotzei, or only that there is a second part of the mitzvah still to be fulfilled when a kos becomes available?
• If someone made Havdalah on what turned out to be vinegar, must he repeat it, or would that be a bracha l’vatalah?

Solving one person’s safek at the rabbim’s expense

• Why does Tosafos prefer that one person be left with a safek kares passively (b’sheiv v’al ta’aseh) rather than have the majority bring their korban improperly?
• How does this principle apply today, when a heter meant for hefsed merubeh, sha’as hadchak or tzorech mitzvah is turned into a standard arrangement for everyone?