Hello Rav,
Q. My 6 year old was playing with his Fruit loops Shabbas cereal (on Shabbas)...before eating them, it was fun for him to first separate them by colour...he ended up with a pile of reds, a pile of yellow, etc. I was wondering if this would be prohibited because of borer.....or could we say that he is is sorting permissibly by taking "good" from "bad" (because he wants to pick up the red one right now, so its "good") for the immediate use of making his colour piles. If he would have randomly picked up a piece, then looked at it to check its colour, and then put it in his piles, would that be better?
Thanks
A. Remah (O.H. 119: 2), rules that when the mixture consists of one single kind of items, but some pieces are bigger than others, and he is choosing the big ones or the small ones, it is not defined as borer. Accordingly, in your case all the cereal loops are really one kind and taste the same (Wikipedia), they just differ in color, there should be in principle no borer issue. More so, since besides choosing the ones he wants, he also plans to eat them all soon, and he is only using his hand.
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit'a
Important Numbers
