I bought a new suit/shirt/sweater of a well-known brand. Must it be checked for shaatnez? As a matter of fact what does the word Shaatnez even mean? Why does the Torah forbid us to wear shaatnez?
About all of these questions and others the Barkai Rabbis learned during a fascinating set of lectures that were given by Rabbi Yaakov Gurevitz who is a world expert in Shaatnez and the owner of a laboratory that checks clothing for shaatnez.
The rabbis entered into the closed world of modern clothing manufacturing and discovered all of the complexities that there are today in making fabrics and clothing made of a multiplicity of materials, many of which are not written on the label and about which the consumer is not aware. The Rabbis learned how common the prohibition of shaatnez is today, even in clothes that no one would have ever thought would contain shaatnez.
The rabbis left the lectures with "adrenalin" to go to their communities and discuss with them the things that they learned.
