Weekly Chasidic Story #616 (s5770-01 / Eruv Rosh Hashana 5770)

Blessed Eating

The Tzemach Tzedek once invited a non religious doctor to spend Shabbat with him.

Connection: Holiday and birth date        (Word Count: 343 + 95)

Blessed Eating

The Tzemach Tzedek, third Lubavitcher Rebbe, made an association with a non-religious Jewish doctor. The doctor attended several public discourses of the Rebbe and these piqued his interest. Subsequently, the Rebbe invited the doctor to spend Shabbat with him. At the afternoon meal, steaming plates of cholent were put on the table (Cholent is a traditional Shabbat stew, served piping hot.). The doctor's expression was one of bewilderment.

The Rebbe understood that the doctor was wondering how could there be hot food on Shabbat, since cooking was not allowed. The Rebbe explained that the cholent was made prior to the Shabbat and was left to simmer the whole night.

Upon hearing these words, the doctor pushed the plate of food away, demurring that it was not healthy.

The Tzemach Tzedek responded, "Please reconsider. A person that eats cholent brings blessing into the world."

(The custom of eating cholent was begun more than two millennia ago. A splinter cult of Jews, known as the Tzadukim, or Sadducees, believed that rabbinical law was corrupt and that the Bible should be interpreted literally. They interpreted the verse, "You shall have no fire burning in your dwellings," to mean that one should sit in the dark and eat cold food. In reality, the verse means that a fire may not be lit on Shabbat. To demonstrate the falseness of their belief, the Rabbis established lighting Shabbat candles to provide light during Shabbat and eating hot food on Shabbat day from a heat source prepared before Shabbat. Thus, one who eats cholent on Shabbat is considered to have upheld both the Written and Oral Torah.)

The doctor responded, "Rabbi didn't you tell us that the blessings draw down into the world by our blowing shofar on Rosh Hoshana?"

The Rebbe nodded to the affirmative.

"So why then," continued the doctor, "do we need to eat cholent on Shabbat?"

The Rabbi smiled and said, "It is true. And when Rosh Hoshana falls out on Shabbat (as this year 5770, ed.) we don't blow the shofar; we eat cholent."

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[Adapted by Yerachmiel Tilles from the parsha mailing list of Rabbi Herschel Finman (shliachp@aol.com), who heard it from Rabbi Dovid-Shalom Pape of Tzivos Hashem Newsletter fame some 30 years ago.]

Connection: Holiday and birth date. Word count: 343 + 95

Biographic note:
Rabbi Menachem-Mendel Schneersohn [29 Elul 1789-13 Nissan 1866], the third Rebbe of Chabad, was known as the Tsemach Tzedek, after his books of Halachic responsa and Talmudic commentary called by that name. He was renowned not only as a Rebbe, but also as a leading scholar in his generation in both the revealed and hidden aspects of Torah.

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