Pesach Faqs

Q. I have an electric urn which I use all year for heating hot water. Do I have to kasher it before I use it for Pesach?

A. If an electric hot water urn remains on the counter during the year, it must be kashered in order to use it on Pesach. This is because during the year someone might have warmed up a challah on it or poured water directly from the urn into an oatmeal or instant noodle soup. Even if no one remembers doing this, one must be concerned that it may have happened at some point.

In this context, Rav Schwartz zt"l ruled that if it is the type of urn which is not brought to the table, is not washed with chametz items, and the family is 100% sure that they (and their children and guests) never used it for anything but heating hot water, and there was no inadvertent hot chametz contact (e.g., being accidentally splashed with chametz), it may be used for Pesach without kashering. Most homes are not disciplined enough to reach this level of confidence and should therefore kasher the urn.

Kashering will be done in three stages, all of which should occur after the urn is emptied, cleaned and not used for 24 hours.

1 [Lid] Bring a pot of water to a boil and submerge the lid of the urn in the water.

2 [Spout] Fill the urn with water and bring that water to a boil. Open the spout and allow water to flow out of it.

3 [Urn] While the water in the urn is full and still boiling, put some water in a saucepan and bring that water to a boil. Uncover the urn and lower the saucepan into the urn. This will cause water to overflow from the urn. [Take precautions before doing this to avoid being burnt by the boiling water or slipping on it]. Pour some of the boiling water from the saucepan onto the outside of the spout to kasher that area.

For non-electric urns, Steps 2 and 3 can be avoided by placing the urn into large pot filled with boiling water