The late Munkatcher rebbe, Grand Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira, zt”l, zy”a (1871-1937), known as the Minchas Elazar, one of the great pre-war chassidic rebbes, was once traveling on a train. Sitting across from him was an ordinary looking man without a yarmulke, eating a ham sandwich. The rebbe accosted him saying, “Yehudi (Jew), you’re not allowed to eat pig.” The man looked up startled and said, “Excuse me, I’m not a Jew.” A few minutes later, the rebbe once again addressed him, “Yehudi, do not eat pig.” Once, again, the man defended himself saying that he was not a Jew. After some moments, the rebbe said a third time, “Yehudi, don’t eat pig!”
At this point, the man quietly walked over to the window in the train compartment, opened it and chucked out the remainder of the sandwich. He then started crying. Some moments later, he turned to the rebbe and said, “It is true. I was born a Jew. But, because of all the suffering associated with being Jewish, I abandoned my Jewishness a long time ago. But, how were you able to tell that I was Jewish?”
The rebbe explained that the way he ate the sandwich was a dead giveaway. In Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim [170], it says that when one bites into a food, it is not proper etiquette to put down the remainder of that food on the plate with his teeth marks all over it for, when people see the remnants of what he chewed on before them, they will be disgusted. Rather, continued the rebbe regarding the Orach Chaim, the custom of all Jews in Poland was to cut a slice off of the sandwich on the plate, eat that piece, then cut another slice to eat, and so on. This way, people didn’t have to see the somewhat nauseating look of their bite marks. Likewise, this was the way they ate a fruit like an apple as well.
Finally, the rebbe told him, “When I watched you eating your ham sandwich, I saw you cutting slices and eating it in the Jewish way, something that a gentile would never do. I knew for certain that you were raised as a Jewish boy in a proper Jewish home.” The man immediately admitted that he was raised by observant pious Jews, that this was the way they ate in his home, and the habit had lingered with him. The man was so moved by the rebbe’s caring that he eventually became a Munkatcher chassid and returned fully to Yiddishkeit.
(As an aside, there are many customs of Jewish etiquette when it comes to food. For example, the great halachic posek, the Elya Rabba, writes that one who has a beard should be careful that when he eats, crumbs and food scraps should not trickle down to his beard, for this is nauseating to his fellow diners. This is predicated by the Torah command of, “V’ahavta rei’acha k’mocha – Love your friend like yourself.” Thus, anything that would nauseate you, you should make sure not to do to others. This extends to many other areas such as when we go into the bathroom, we must make sure to flush the toilet for the sake of the next user. In the same vein, we must be sure to leave the bathroom clean before we exit as we would appreciate this when others do it for us.)
Rav Yaakov Yeshaya Blau, zt”l, zy”a, of Eretz Yisrael, became aware of this story from the Minchas Elazar and employed it to save the spiritual lives of Jewish children. After the Holocaust, Rav Blau was allowed to enter a monastery full of children. If he could identify which children were Jewish, they would allow him to take them back to their faith. Rav Blau asked to observe the children during lunch. These children were too far assimilated to make a bracha before eating their food, but the children he saw cutting the sandwich with a knife and putting each piece separately into his mouth, he immediately recognized as Jewish. He related later that he did not make a mistake about even one child! Even the smallest Jewish customs are of deep lasting value.
This reminds me of a famous story. A religious Jew from Netanya was driving when he noticed an IDF soldier asking for a hitch. He pulled over and asked the soldier where he needed to go and the soldier replied that he was going to Beer Sheva. As it was Friday afternoon and before Shabbos, there was no way that the man could drive him to Beer Sheva. However, this religious man had an idea. “Are you planning to spend Shabbos alone?” he asked. At the soldier’s affirmative, the driver replied, “Why don’t you come to us for Shabbos? My wife is a killer cook and it will be a real adventure for you.” The soldier boldly agreed and jumped into the car.
True to his word, the Shabbos food was delicious. The soldier even went to shul, and as he was an Israeli, he understood Hebrew in the siddur. He even liked the rabbi’s sermon. After Havdalah, the soldier started getting ready to leave. His host looked at him and said, “You’re going to leave just like that?”
The soldier got nervous and responded in surprise, “Do I owe you something?”
The host chuckled and said, “Of course not! But you just experienced a whole Shabbos of spirituality. And you’re going to leave just like that?”
The soldier defended himself saying, “You know I’m not dati, religious. It was a great day, but now I’m going back to my life.”
At this point, the host took out a Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, a shortened version of the code of Jewish law, and asked the soldier to open it up, leaf through it, and try to find one thing he would try to continue doing after this Shabbos. The soldier opened it up and saw that Jewish men put on their right shoe first and then the left, tie the left shoe first (in honor of the tefillin), and then tie the right shoe. The soldier said with a smile, “This I can do.” This wasn’t exactly what the host had in mind, but he shrugged and figured that the soldier would at least put on his shoes like a Jew. The soldier returned to his base and every morning he dutifully put on his shoes in the way directed by the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch.
One morning, a siren went off at the base and everyone ran to jump onto a jeep. In his haste, the soldier realized that he had put on his shoes wrong. He was about to shrug it off, but he reminded himself that his word is his word. So, he leaped off the jeep, shouting that he’d take the next one. He bent down, put on the shoes the correct way, and took the next jeep. Tragically, the first jeep hit a road mine and all lives were lost. His adherence to a seemingly insignificant minhag Yisrael had saved his life. This soldier would go on to become completely observant and today has a wonderful religious family in Eretz Yisrael.
May we treasure all our Jewish minhagim and realize how important it is to imprint them upon the lives of our descendants, and in that merit may Hashem bless us with long life, good health, and everything wonderful.
Transcribed and edited by Shelley Zeitlin.
