0262 - Rebbe Instructed the Hanhala to Eat in Yeshiva

00:00 In Tofshin Chof Daled, which is 1964, for some reason, the kitchen for the bochrim of 770 closed, and the bochrim would have to go to Bedford Avenue, to the building in Bedford Avenue, which was the building for the younger kids, to eat there in the kitchen, in the dining room there. So there used to be a bus that would take the bochrim for every meal. After Shacharis for breakfast, the bus would take the bochrim to Bedford and then drive them back. For lunch, after Seder at 2:15, the bus would take them to Bedford Avenue, and they would eat there and then come back. And then the same thing for supper, that the bus would take them to Bedford and come back. One night when we were sitting in the dining room in Bedford and eating, all of a sudden we see that the whole Hanholos HaYeshiva came there to eat. This was Reb Shmuel Witten, Rabbi Simpson, and Rabbi Jacobson, and Rabbi Mendlik, some more maybe, came there to the dining room where we were eating and sat down by a table and were eating. And we wondered what happened. It's not, wasn't a Yonah, a Fabrengen, or something that was special that they came to make a special Suda. They ate there. And they told us later this is what happened. There were some elder bochrim in 770 who did not go to the meals to Bedford. They claimed they don't know the kashas, they don't know if it's good, they didn't trust it,

01:21 whatever it is, so they would not go to the meals. They would buy their own food and keep it in the room, and they wouldn't go. We know that those years, the Hanhola would go into the Rebbe for Yechidus once a month to discuss the yonim of the yeshiva, to give over a report, et cetera, et cetera. So that time when they went into the Rebbe, this subject came up. I don't know if someone else wrote to the Rebbe about it or they themselves told this to the Rebbe, but the discussion was about this fact that some bochrim don't trust the kashas of the yeshiva in Bedford, and they don't go to eat there. So the Rebbe told them that if they feel that it's good, there's no problem, let them go once themselves to eat there, and that'll show the bochrim that they know that it's reliable and you can trust it. So they all came down and ate there, and the bochrim saw that even the Hanhola, the elder Hasidim, are also eating in that kitchen, a siman that this is okay. The strange thing was that, as I said, one of the people was Reb Shmuel Witten, and he did not eat any meat in America since he came to America. So they served everybody meat, and him they gave a special meal of chicken. The whole thing, he came down to show that everything is okay, but he ate chicken. But that doesn't matter. I mean, it looked a little bit

02:30 strange, but lepeal, he ate in the kitchen of Bedford to show that the kitchen is reliable and we could trust it. And take it from then on, some bochrim who did not go there before started going, but I'm not so sure that everybody else also started going there to eat, all the elder bochrim. But the point was that the Rebbe told him that they should come down themselves to eat a meal there to show the bochrim that this kitchen is reliable.