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Four of the melakhot deal with separating food from waste: Threshing (Dash), Winnowing (Zoreh), Separating (Borer), and Sifting (Meraked). Why do so many melakhot deal with separating? This teaches us how crucial it is to be able to distinguish and differentiate in life. The physical world is a confused and muddled place. The ability to separate the good parts from the bad parts allows us to improve and develop the world. This is also true on the spiritual plane. The world is a mixed-up place morally as well, and our job is to distinguish between good and evil. If it were clear that good was on one side and evil on the other, it would be easy to choose the good. Things are not so clear though. Even the good contains evil, and the evil contains good. Something that’s corrupt in one context may be moral in a different time or place. The great challenge God has presented to humanity is to separate the good from the bad, to put everything in its proper place, and thus repair the world.
All this applies throughout the week. That is when we must engage in separating the bad from the good, which is complicated and demands direct engagement with the problematic parts of the world. But on Shabbat, we must focus on the inner goodness of existence, enjoying it and connecting with the foundations of faith. By soaking up sanctity and faith on Shabbat, we gain the ability to distinguish between good and evil during the week, and derive strength to tackle the challenge of separating required to repair the world.
The melakhot of separation primarily take place in fields, where the chaff is removed from the wheat. However, some issues come up in homes as well. The general principle is that one is permitted to separate good from bad when it is part of the normal way of eating, but not when it is more typical of how agricultural work is done. For example, when eating meat or fish that have bones, it is permitted to separate the edible part from the bones as we regularly do when eating. Similarly, one who eats peanuts in a shell, may remove the shell to eat the nut. But if this is done to prepare the food for a meal an hour later, it is prohibited. Furthermore, it may not be done with a utensil specifically designed for separating.
One may not squeeze a fruit for its juice because it separates the juice from the fruit. However, one may squeeze fruit directly onto food to flavor it (for example, squeezing a lemon onto fish), because the juice does not have an independent existence and is just being transferred from one food to another.
