Laws of Shabbat - Class #10 - JewishPathways.com

We’ve spent a lot of time dealing with the labor category of Dosh. Now
we’ll turn to a new melacha, called ‘Zoreh’. 1
Zoreh Then and Now
‘Zoreh’ literally means “winnowing” – that is, a further separation of
the wheat kernel from inedible parts of the plant. (This process was
begun by threshing, which we read about in Dosh, part #1.) To
winnow, a person would toss the threshed wheat into the air, and the
lighter, unusable parts (the “chaff”) would get blown off by the wind.
Zoreh is the first of three melachot that deal with separating parts of a
mixture. (The other two – which we’ll examine soon, G-d willing – are
Borer and Meraked.) Even back in the Talmud, the Sages wondered
why we have three labor categories that deal with essentially the same
activity.
One answer is that, although all of these melachot lead to a similar
result, the separating is accomplished by different means. So, as we’ll
see
• Zoreh involves separating through wind or air power 2
• Borer involves separating by hand
• Meraked involves separating via a strainer or similar tool. 3
As it turns out, there aren’t that many practical applications of this
melacha. Let’s examine some of them.
1 Pronounced ‘zoh-REH.’
2 Some include “the scattering of anything into the air” under the heading of Zoreh (see Jerusalem
Talmud - Shabbat ch. 7; 39 Melochos, p. 375).
3 See 39 Melochos, p. 375, for a discussion of this issue, based on Talmud - Shabbat 73b.
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