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We are continuing in siman 13, discussing the idea of preparing a cloth for use as a compress. A relevant example of the need for a compress was a case where a child recieved a bee sting and was very uncomfortable. The child was not in any danger, but was considered a choli kol haguf, because his whole body is affected by the discomfort. The suggestion that was given was to use a hot compress to bring down the swelling.
To give warmth, it would definitely be muttar to use a hot water bottle, which is made of rubber and will contort to the shape of the body, and place it on the swelling. One may fill the hot water bottle with hot water from the urn. (One should not put a hot water bottle directly on one’s skin because a concern for burns. It should be wrapped in a towel.)
However, in this situation the advice received was specifically to use a moist compress. This would require wetting the towel. Even if the towel is clean, such that there is no issue of melabein according to most rishonim, there is an opinion that there is an issue of melabein even on clean items, so lechtachilla one should not do so. However, one could wet the towel with a non-water liquid, such that there will not be an issue of melabein.
Another suggestion may be to use dirty water. For example, if the counter is dirty, one can spill some water onto the counter and then soak it up with the towel. The concern that one is cleaning through soaking alone may not apply. However, we saw from the previous shiur that Chazal disallowed soaking because a concern that one may forget and squeeze out the towel and as one does so, it will take some of the dirt, and will be an issue of melabein. Even if the water is dirty, it will still pull out dirt as it is leaving the the cloth. So one should use non-cleansing liquids.
There are many practical scenarios to discuss ove here, such as cleaning a tablecloth, cleaning a person’s clothing and wet clothing. To dicuss these properly, we first need to learn the melacha of melabein, so we will save the practical discussions until then.
In siman 14, the Chayei Adam discusses a case which is only relevant to agriculture, where one squeezes olives and grapes before Shabbos, and whether mashkin shezavu applies or not. We will begin siman 15 in the upcoming shiur be’ezras Hashem
Summary
- It would be muttar to create a compress if one uses a non-water liquid , such that there is no issue of melabein if the cloth is squeezed.
- We are concerned about dosh, because usually one does not squeeze out the cloth in order to retrieve the liquid
