“You shall not eat anything abhorrent.” (Devarim 14:3)

Recently, I was approached after davening by a person who has been asking me Kashrus questions for decades. He explained that his new chavrusa is a mashgiach in the Kashrus field and after learning, he would describe some of the disasters in the field. He asked me, “Should I be more particular about what I eat, not just relying on a hashgacha?  And if so, where should I start?”  I gave him a short answer based on the amount of time I had available, but as I walked away, I remembered a story that happened between me and my uncle.

My uncle ZTZ”L was a very pious Jew and particular in all the minutia of the mitzvos. For example, before anyone schechted a chicken that he was going to eat, he would inspect the knife; then check the lungs and the sinews in the legs; and finally salt the chicken himself. I asked him once, “Do you think that you actually eat more kosher than everyone else?” My uncle looked at me in shock, his face turned white, and he exclaimed, “To eat more kosher? For that you need Divine Assistance!” I asked him, “If that is the case, why do you go through all this trouble if you are not guaranteed to be eating more kosher?” To this he responded, “When I get to Heaven, if G-d forbid they take me to task for eating something non-kosher, at least I will be able to say, ‘I tried my best!’”

An avreich once asked me if a certain hechsher was reliable (FYI: the hechsher was not a “bad” hechsher, but it did have a lot of negativity surrounding it). I was surprised, because the man seemed like a regular avreich, and this was not the type of hechsher I would expect a person who looked like him to be eating. I asked him, “Why in the world would you want to eat food from a hechsher like that? Why not eat from a better hechsher that doesn’t have any questions?” He responded that he was on vacation, wandering around, and his stomach was grumbling. He came across some people making a barbeque and they invited him to partake in their food. He asked them, “What hechsher is the meat?” and they responded this particular hechsher, and added “it is 100% reliable.” “In the weakness of the moment, I ate it, and now I want to know if I must do teshuva.” I was quite disturbed by his behavior and told him the truth, “Because you were hungry, you ate something that you were not sure if it was kosher or not!? What kind of a ‘ben torah’ are you? Whether it is reliable or not, what you did is called a sin!” (see Rashi Parshas Matos 30:6).

There is a story told about two Jewish men during the time of the Inquisition. They were on a boat just off the coast of Spain, which was hit by a storm and sank. Fortunately, they were both able to make it back to Spain where they were each taken in by a local family. Reuven was in a home where all kinds of obviously non-kosher foods were being served, but out of fright for his life, he didn’t state that he was Jewish and just ate the food in order to stay alive. Shimon was in a home in which none of those non-kosher foods were served. When the host observed Shimon muttering under his breath before eating anything, he said, “I know you are Jewish. You should know that I am also Jewish, and in the basement of my house I have equipment where I ritually slaughter, salt and devein. Everything here is glatt kosher!”

When Reuven and Shimon were well enough to return to their home, they both learned of the other’s experience, and decided to ask their local Rav why this happened. “Why is it that Shimon merited to eat kosher food even in these trying circumstances and I ended up with treif?” The Rav asked Reuven, “Was there ever a time that you willingly ate something that was questionable?” Reuven put his head down and admitted that it happened once. The Rav said, “If you are not careful, then Hashem will not go out of his way to guard you.”

In these times of vacation, many of us may feel that perhaps we can be lenient with some of the guidelines that we keep in our homes. While there might be times when a person can legitimately be lenient, there are other times where our being lax could end up causing us to lose Hashem’s special Divine Assistance.