Don't Compromise Kashrus of Children's Food | Letter #9 of 30 Letters in 30 Days

good evening I am here in the iconic Friendship Circle headquarters International headquarters in uh West Bloomfield Michigan which has a uh a very direct connection to the 30 letters in 30 days initiative and although he's squirming in his seat no more than five feet from him from me anticipating being called out in a positive way in public my dear friend Rabbi shamtov who with his wife bossy were really the ones who spearheaded this initiative and turned it from a fantasy into a reality last year when we spoke about the idea of learning 30 letters in 30 days and I had all types of excuses why it wasn't really feasible they took away all those excuses so here I am in uh the place where it all started and we're learning a letter I also want to mention that tonight's class is dedicated in honor of Rabbi mayor schmuckler I would have a Tommy schlier whose birthday is today tonight tomorrow uh other and he should have a Year blessed with much success and blessing for him and his family and his personal life as well as all that he does for the public including his leadership of the Jets school in Los Angeles which is a great uh asset to not only uh Los Angeles but really to the entire world someone's asking in the chat am I dominating at the show tomorrow no I'm going to be flying at 6 a.m tomorrow so that I can get back to the five towns to give my Tanya Shear at Libya Library so that's the way the cookie crumbles okay letter number nine we are out of Cashman and we are someone's texting here in the chat I was adjust for three years it was truly life-changing well then call Rabbi schmuckler and well I wish him a happy birthday please all right okay uh we are out of tissue remember our first letter we started was out of Rosh Hashanah then we went through tishre we did some letters from Hershman now we're in kisliff we're moving right along Brooklyn you know what means it tips us off that I was writing to a woman and uh if you didn't know it from the you would know it as that ever continues it's pretty clear that is speaking to a mother and as was not uncommon during that era when the rebel would write to women the letters in Yiddish um the mama lotion it's called Mama lotion for for a reason and that was writing to ayudi in the mama lotion so we have a nice Yiddish ladder to a Yiddish here and it is about the kinds of things that a Jewish mother would uh would be concerned with let's let's Jump Right In foreign an answer to your letter from the 18th day of kissliff so this is three days later and if anyone knows anything about the Chabad calendar you would understand that the lab would be a little bit busy during those couple of days between the 18th of Kiss Live and the 21st of Kiss Live um of course the 19th of Kiss Live and the 20th of kislavar auspicious days on the Chabad calendar the Roshana you could go look up that year tests you can so he was obviously busy with preparing for that I'm saying just on a practical level I'm not even getting into any spiritual preparations that the devil would have done that it's not something that I can even begin to Fathom so uh yeah three-day turnaround for that time of year is pretty good okay so the devil says in response to your letter from Kai kisliff and valken is in which you write about your children's health situation stop stop before we go on fathom what I'm about to tell you try to wrap your head around this last night we had a letter was it last night yeah to a Israeli judge from the Israeli judicial system a few nights ago we had a letter to the leader of the Jewish conservative movement in America um we've had letters to all types of influential people and just wrap your head around the fact that the same who is writing to these influential people these leaders these public figures the same rabbit is writing to a mother about her Children's Health and as we're going to read the children are fine nobody's sick they're healthy but she's a little bit concerned that maybe they're finicky eaters just stop a second and and wrap your head around that idea that a mother would even think that she could write to the debit about her children being finicky eaters and that not only she would think she could write to the rabbit but there never would actually answer her the same rabbit who is in correspondence and and if you remember the letter to uh Finkelstein the other night the Debbie even told him why am I corresponding with you because you're influential and it's important for me to capitalize on those uh very powerful relationships with influential people because the situation right now in the Jewish world is very urgent in that that's why I need to make the most of every one of these networking opportunities with people who are of influence so the same rabbit who is thinking globally about how can I find another influential leader and and influence that leader to influence others the same is taking letters and responding to them from women who are asking for advice about their children's eating habits that is absolutely mind-boggling okay so let's read further so you're right about your children's health situation and you end your letter with a question so basically she just she she described the situation and then she ended with a question Vito Honda deal with a less than perfectly kosher food that's how I'll translate that Michael that muhuder means not just within the letter of the law but beyond the letter of the law means to to beautify the Mitzvah to do it extra meticulously so the woman is writing saying I want to know if I can give my children this food that is not outright today if it's not absolutely white forbidden but it's just a little bit less than the the most scrupulous punctilious standards of kashras so that's what we're talking about which just further amplifies how muggling this is because first of all that I was speaking not to a global leader but from the world from the devil's worldview by the way a mother is a global leader so but not to someone we would think of as a global leader and and but that I was taking the time to write to this mother about her children and and furthermore not only is it a mother of children but the issue at hand is not even a black and white conscious question it's about a level of being meticulous in the midst of cautious in other words there's many exacerbating factors here where somebody could just say you know what this is way too trivial for children to have to focus and get involved on in in this and and yet that is involved and writes an entire letter okay so you're writing you're asking what to do about this less than perfectly kosher food and and the reason you're even talking about is because you think that this particular food I don't know what it is but it's a little bit less than perfectly kosher do you think that it could increase the appetite of the children so like I said it sounds like the children were finicky eaters they were not uh they were not eating as much as the mother would want and as you know with Jewish Mothers there's always concern about whether the children are eating enough right you know about the the new uh Jewish ship the SS minekind right it's an old one um so she's worried about the children not having enough of an appetite and apparently there was this food that would be yamir or maybe you would provoke more of their appetite and get them to eat more and it was not overtly prohibited but it was a little bit uh less than her normal high standards and so she asked if it would be okay to start using this food to uh to get the children to eat a little bit more okay is hidden in my Holland foreign in general being extra scrupulous about food as explained in many places is not just Germaine to the per to the performance of the Mitzvah itself okay there's the performance of the Mitzvah itself did you do the Mitzvah didn't you do the Mitzvah and even with it within doing the myth so how well did you do the Mitzvah okay that's one thing the Mitzvah itself but then there's another factor that ever brings up nor but rather not just the mythical but the bald as fun yeah from every food that you eat it becomes blood and flesh of your body and the body is connected to the soul is the Cassius so therefore the kosher status and the spiritual refined refinement of the food see whatever says not just cashes which is legal or not legal edelkite is levels of refinement so the the the level of spiritual refinement of the food is it affects the character and it affects the the traits of the person who eats the food so it's not just a question of did you do the Mitzvah or even how well did you do the Mitzvah there's another factor involved which is the after effect how the food will affect you after the Mitzvah when it becomes flesh and blood and becomes your body which your body in turn is connected to your soul and there it's going to affect your character traits and your disposition so kashras of food has a very special quality that we don't find by other Mitzvahs by other Mitzvahs it's always a question of did you do the Mitzvah didn't you do the Mitzvah but with with conscious there's the ongoing effect of how the how well the Mitzvah was done okay on the river therefore because of this quality is so therefore every addition you can make in making the food more scrupulously meticulously uh kosher more refined more pure every bit that you can make it just a little bit better via the uh in their let me do this long word here is so every little bit you can add on to making the food more kosher even beyond the letter of the law that should also be considered as adding to the or improving upon the makeup and the the the decency and the refinement of the character and and and and the traits of the person who eats it so there's a lot more at stake than just how the Mitzvah was done it's what effect that Mitzvah is going to have and it's not binary it's not all or nothing it's not did you do it or didn't you do it because of the effect that cautious has on the person so as good as good as best and it's better if good is good isn't better better if you can get the food more refined more muhudder so then it's going to create character traits which are more refined and more uh spiritual and more sensitive um there's a there's a a famous story that uh involves the Great Torah scholar from the early 1800s the great genius of Akiva Egger and he once came to a town he visited and among the people who sought him and wanted to meet him and receive His blessings and his guidance was a a mother a mother of nine children and this mother of nine comes to rabikiva egger and says she has a problem with one of her boys they're all smart boys they're all succeeding and learning except for one of them he's a smart boy but for some funny reason he just can't learn gamata he tries to learn he just doesn't hop and she doesn't know what's wrong he's 14 years old and he's not able to learn about it and he is a bright boy so what's going on says to the mother and he was ettle by the way he says to the mother you should look into whether maybe this child ate non-kosher food because non-kosher food is plugs up spiritually it congests it makes dull the heart and the mind well her husband is with her and said you know our children never ate out of the house they only ate what we fed them and our house is completely kosher so whatever said nevertheless you should look into it because that's probably the problem they said well what can we do about it now and he said well if he'll continue to learn with devotion and push through it till he'll overcome it so they had the solution already but it was bothering them that the Kiva Egger would even imply that their child had not eaten kosher food so they actually went to this kid I said it was like 14 years old and they asked him did you ever eat outside of our house and he's like no they're like think really hard did you ever eat outside of our house he's like oh you know what 10 years ago when I was a little little kid I was coming home from crather yeah and a group of us were walking past the hotel and somebody said little boys come over here and have some soup and we had some chicken soup and I remember it very well because it was the second night of Hanukkah and there was a wedding at the hotel and that's what we ate from so the parents were shocked first of all they didn't know that this had ever happened but then they were relieved because they said hold on a second we know that hotel the hotel the hotel is kosher we know that the hotel only uses one one ritual ritual slaughterer and we know his work to be impeccable so uh it shouldn't really be a problem but the the father was sort of worried so he went to the hotel owner and he said could you look up 10 years ago if there was a wedding on the second night of Hanukkah um and could you see if there's anything about that that would be interesting so the hotel owner actually had a calendar uh book of all the past bookings that they had done and you look back and say oh yeah I see yeah second Anaconda was like 10 years ago and he said he's the name of this guy so and so he named the name the guy a local guy that they knew it was his second marriage so the father hears this he's like oh man that's not good I know that guy he's a very crass guy that guy I remember yeah he got divorced and then he got remarried he was he's not such but hold on a second he didn't prepare the food the hotel prepared the food the hotel owner is a God-fearing Jew and uh and the chocolate remember there was only one sheikhar to a checked with a hotel he's a God-fearing Jew so it really shouldn't matter that this guy who was kind of crass was the one who uh who was the one who uh was the cousin who was the groom in this this wedding but uh the father still he he knew there was something more to it so you couldn't leave it alone he any he came over to him and he said do you remember 10 years ago second night of Hanukkah and you prepared meat for the wedding celebration of so and so he named the guy for his second marriage and the ritual slaughterer says why are you reminded me of such painful things I don't want to talk about this please why are you talking about this father says why what tell me what I need to know I need to know if there's something there so uh says yes yes yes but it was it wasn't really my fault I didn't really understand you should know also the shrita itself the actual slaughtering was 100 kosher everything was done correctly that wasn't the problem okay what was the problem what was the problem so Sheikh it says okay I'll tell you what happened I did the srita for that wedding party I prepared the chickens everything was normal everything was kosher it was all good a few days later I'm walking down the street and a local Chabad hasid walks up to me and says how could you sell out for a few bucks for a few dollars how do you sell out and I said what do you mean I sold that what did I do wrong said you prepared the chickens for that wedding he says yeah I did they hired me to do it and there was there was 100 kosher said you're not aware of the problem with that he said no I'm not aware of any problem with that pulled out a letter and he showed it to the show had read it to his horror it said this guy the Husson the groom from this wedding gave his first wife a get a bill of divorce and it was possible it was invalid and the rabbis all knew it was invalid and they told this guy that you are obligated to reissue a kosher bill of divorce and the guy was uh recalcitrant he said I don't care I'm not going to do it and he ignored the rabbis and they told him that until you fix it you cannot get remarried and he said I'm going to get remarried anyway and he went to another town and he and he got remarried and um and so the altareba writes in this letter that everybody should know that this guy is not allowed to get remarried until he gives a proper bill of divorce to his first wife and therefore says I am forbidding any to prepare food for the wedding meal of this marriage until the first divorce is is properly dealt with so the father realized that the conscious of the food wasn't even the actual cautious of the food the food itself was okay but because the altareb had said that no one should provide food no sugar to provide meat for this meal that itself that rabbinic ban already had an effect on the food so that even that unwitting child whether you think this is Justice or it's not maybe this is even off-putting to some of you to hear this like how could this innocent child unwittingly he didn't even know what he was doing okay but you know I know some negligent person put out poison God forbid and a child drank the poison even though it's totally not the child's fault the child's innocent it's the negligent person who's at fault for leaving poison out where a child can get it but don't tell me just because the child's innocent that the poison won't affect the poison won't affect the child of course it will God forbid and that's the same thing that happened here that food was under a certain rabbinic ban and even though the food itself was kosher the slaughter itself is kosher but because of that negative spiritual energy attached to the food it had that effect on that boy even 10 years later so we see how the conscious of food can have a far-ranging ramifications and it's not even just when we're talking about black and white letter of the law kosher not or not Kosher we're even talking about quote unquote technicalities of cautious okay so the dev is telling this mother I want you to be careful and I want you to always try to make things as kosher as possible even to go beyond and Beyond and Beyond because everything you do to be more and more kosher with the food you give your children is just giving them better and better character traits okay um and if this is true by adults if this situation of this uh this phenomenon occurs with adults which it does is by Kinder it's in a much greater way um by children their character is still developing so an adult even would be affected by the cautious of their food their character traits would be affected by the concerts of their food how much more so a child whose personality is still developing is therefore it is very important in them what direction you take them meaning as far as the cautious of their food okay next paragraph light does according to the above mentioned my opinion is understood as we bow this handles [Music] is uphangic in them since we're not talking about a situation with a child's Whole Health situation is hanging in the balance I want to clarify here's something very important we know that fish that saving a life pushes off everything except the three Cardinal sense and there's a concept that you're allowed to heal use to to use for healing purposes anything except for those three cardinal sins and if it were really a life-saving issue if this child were God forbid critically ill then like it says very clearly that if it's a serious critical situation then you're even allowed to consume kosher food by eating it eating it in the normal way I mean even someone who's less sick could consume it not but eating it in the normal way uh like maybe like in a capsule or something where they don't actually taste it but somebody who's who's critically ill they could even eat non-kosher food if that's what it takes to heal them so certainly Torah preserves life the Mitzvahs Are Meant To Keep Us Alive not to God forbid and their lives so certainly If This Were a real Health situation where the child's General Health were at risk it would be a different it would be a different judgment call here but the devil reminds them of it and I and I I would say reassures her and calms her and says we're not talking about such such a situation we're not talking about where the the child's General Health is at risk God forbid we're not talking about such a situation is really all we're talking about is adding in a little Tom that means taste or in this case maybe appetite and and strength okay we're not talking about a child as critically ill and and that they need non-kosher food to save their life that that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about there's a child is being a little bit finicky in their eating and by compromising inconscious maybe they would enjoy that food a little bit more and end up eating more okay I hear you I understand the question it's not really a compelling reason to compromise in cautious knowing what we know about the effects that conscious have on the child and on their personality so in the context of this of this whole discussion it's not such a it's not so advisable that Eva says but that explains explains why and again is busy and he's writing to a mother about how to deal with her finicky eater children and they never could even just write one line like no don't give them that food that you want to give them but they never writes a whole ladder and explains the reasoning why not to compromise okay um yeah so in such a case Darth you should not decrease the hither again the devil uses that word hither the meticulousness of the Cassius of the food don't give up don't forego that extra meticulous level of cautious observance is for sure you could find other Solutions unvegan and other means how to strengthen the children's appetite the Rabbit doesn't give her any suggestions but the devil says I'm sure mother you're gonna find it just go look you'll you'll figure it out okay and you'll figure out ways how to make the children more healthy knit foreign in ways that will not compromise the again the devil uses the word cautious the hidor not just regular caches but you won't even have to compromise the meticulous level of observance of cautious and you'll still you'll be able to have the best of both worlds you'll have the caches which will therefore facilitate really rich good character traits to develop in your child and I'm sure you'll figure out a way to deal with the finicky eating and and get them to eat enough that they'll they'll plump up to your liking with blessing for Good Tidings good news Michelle and uh this was not signed by the rabbit was signed by the Secretariat um of the rabbit and that is our letter for tonight an incredible Glimpse um into the lab is Personal Touch you know I'll just add a little uh Glimpse behind the scenes before we started 30 letters in 30 days last year talking about the first time last year so there was this this argument what 30 letters should we choose lady chapter standing right here he can hear me so there was this argument and one side of the argument said let's get 30 bombshell letters like famous letters to famous people we'll get like the letter to Ellie wuzzell or we'll get the letter to Ben's fee you will get the letter to Ariel Sharon we'll get like you know famous letters that are you know top billing on the Marquee and uh that was one approach and then another approach was you know what let's just go through one volume of egress and take a representative cross-section of the various different types of letters that you would find in one volume of egress and including that will be letters that would not that they would not make a top 30 list because they're not bombshell letters they're not written to famous people they don't have any earth-shattering news in them but they're important to include so that one gains a glimpse into all the different types of situations and the and the and the different lives and the different people that the devil was was connecting with during that time so that was that second approach that was the approach of Levy shamtov who's sitting right here off camera yeah he's getting really yeah he's getting annoyed by this and he said that there are letters that are very understated maybe even would seem you know pedestrian just regular you know too too normal um and you wouldn't necessarily think to include it in a top 30. but in that itself there's a certain Reich kite there's a certain depth that you get where you set if you stop if you stop and you and you think about it and you say wow the same rabbit who is dealing with such huge issues is also writing to a mother advising her how to deal with her children's finicky eating habits and it is mind-blowing and Lady Shepton was right about this and about a lot of things that he's making me stop okay fine okay we're okay we're ending the stream we're ending this dream okay and happy birthday again mayor schmuckler