Mayim achronim, hot sauce, and a food pantry
Well, this week is chesed week for us at yeshiva. I went to the Ecumenical food pantry in Washington Heights along with 2 other bachurs. One walked from 101st!!! I arrived 30 minutes late due to a catastrophe.
I decided to have a hardy meal before going to the food pantry because I was expecting a day of manual labor...but also Romanian (Chicago) hot dogs are good....I ate them at 10:15AM!! I thought that I was running pretty on time and that I would have no problem making it.......Wrong!!!
After I finished my last hot dog and just before I was about to bentch I scratched my left eye which was itching me. Then, a couple seconds later it's burning like nothing I've ever felt before....my vision went blurry in my left eye and even started tearing in both eyes because of the pain and my eyes automatic reaction to squint....Next, i see out of my right eye what appears to be something red on my index finger....Ahhhhh..that's what's going on. I had hot sauce on that finger and rubbed my eye with that finger....And this was not any hot sauce...It was habenero sauce (one of the hottest pepppers out there)!!!
So I run to the sink and splash some water into my eye and it does nothing...Ahhhh, it's burning. I'm thinking that I am going to have to go to the emergency room...my thoughts: "it's really going to damage my eye and burn me etc". Therefore I jump into the shower and use warm water and try to keep my eyes open as much as possible...finally 10 minutes later i'm ok. Now one thing I have to say to Rabbeinu Tam is "There ain't no bitul ta'am bitul gezeira bezman hazeh....there is hot sauce" (washing the hands after doing bircat hamazon is considered by some poskim to be not required because there is no longer melech sodom which was the reason why "after waters" was originally instituted....at least on a simple level. Bitul ta'am bitul gezeira is a philosophy of law held by the Tosefists which contends that decrees of the rabbis only apply as long as the explicit reasons stated for the decree still exists. Of course this issue is much more complicated) .
Lesson learned: Think twice about eating hot dogs at 10;15 especially if u are going to use habenora sauce. Second thing, I must really look into this mayim achronim thing....it almost cost me my eye...It wasn't "melech sdom" (salt of sodom), but it sure felt like it. I guess my roommate Yehuda have a lot in common. He burns bread and smokes up our whole apartment and I burn my eyes out.
I arrived at the Ecumenical food pantry at 11:30 feeling pretty stupid and explain myself to my fellow students. I had a great time and worked hard. The workers/volunteers at the Church were so nice, friendly , and appreciative. They tried as much as possible to make us feel welcome. Jim did a great job of trying to speak Spanish. Shame on us for insulting them by not joining them in their special festive holiday meal for the workers. They were insulted. Can't blame them...They don't quite understand kashrut laws...They said, "the food was blessed etc." We bought ourselves a soda in order to not be quite as insulting. Then, somehow a guys finds the biggest bottle of Manischevits that u've ver seen and we join them for a lechaim!!! I've never actually drunk that cough syrup besides with kiddush.
All in all, it was a great experience with great people. It also gave me a good perspective on things. I learned things that we all "know", but seeing it once in a while really changes things. U should have seen how this 5 year old girl reacted when one of the workers gave this little girl a palstic bag with 3 little homemade cookies as a bonus along with the normal food package. Her eyes lit up, and she hugged them, and swung with them against her chest. My realtionship with cookies are: "how much more hydrogenated fat am I going to eat? Or I feel nauseated after eating that whole box of Entemans". Obviously I enjoyed my dinner after work and will enjoy and truly apperciate the little things until this experience wears off.
Bottom line: Go out there and do something good for the needy and thou shalt do mayim achronim or your eyes shall get burned out!!!!!
I decided to have a hardy meal before going to the food pantry because I was expecting a day of manual labor...but also Romanian (Chicago) hot dogs are good....I ate them at 10:15AM!! I thought that I was running pretty on time and that I would have no problem making it.......Wrong!!!
After I finished my last hot dog and just before I was about to bentch I scratched my left eye which was itching me. Then, a couple seconds later it's burning like nothing I've ever felt before....my vision went blurry in my left eye and even started tearing in both eyes because of the pain and my eyes automatic reaction to squint....Next, i see out of my right eye what appears to be something red on my index finger....Ahhhhh..that's what's going on. I had hot sauce on that finger and rubbed my eye with that finger....And this was not any hot sauce...It was habenero sauce (one of the hottest pepppers out there)!!!
So I run to the sink and splash some water into my eye and it does nothing...Ahhhh, it's burning. I'm thinking that I am going to have to go to the emergency room...my thoughts: "it's really going to damage my eye and burn me etc". Therefore I jump into the shower and use warm water and try to keep my eyes open as much as possible...finally 10 minutes later i'm ok. Now one thing I have to say to Rabbeinu Tam is "There ain't no bitul ta'am bitul gezeira bezman hazeh....there is hot sauce" (washing the hands after doing bircat hamazon is considered by some poskim to be not required because there is no longer melech sodom which was the reason why "after waters" was originally instituted....at least on a simple level. Bitul ta'am bitul gezeira is a philosophy of law held by the Tosefists which contends that decrees of the rabbis only apply as long as the explicit reasons stated for the decree still exists. Of course this issue is much more complicated) .
Lesson learned: Think twice about eating hot dogs at 10;15 especially if u are going to use habenora sauce. Second thing, I must really look into this mayim achronim thing....it almost cost me my eye...It wasn't "melech sdom" (salt of sodom), but it sure felt like it. I guess my roommate Yehuda have a lot in common. He burns bread and smokes up our whole apartment and I burn my eyes out.
I arrived at the Ecumenical food pantry at 11:30 feeling pretty stupid and explain myself to my fellow students. I had a great time and worked hard. The workers/volunteers at the Church were so nice, friendly , and appreciative. They tried as much as possible to make us feel welcome. Jim did a great job of trying to speak Spanish. Shame on us for insulting them by not joining them in their special festive holiday meal for the workers. They were insulted. Can't blame them...They don't quite understand kashrut laws...They said, "the food was blessed etc." We bought ourselves a soda in order to not be quite as insulting. Then, somehow a guys finds the biggest bottle of Manischevits that u've ver seen and we join them for a lechaim!!! I've never actually drunk that cough syrup besides with kiddush.
All in all, it was a great experience with great people. It also gave me a good perspective on things. I learned things that we all "know", but seeing it once in a while really changes things. U should have seen how this 5 year old girl reacted when one of the workers gave this little girl a palstic bag with 3 little homemade cookies as a bonus along with the normal food package. Her eyes lit up, and she hugged them, and swung with them against her chest. My realtionship with cookies are: "how much more hydrogenated fat am I going to eat? Or I feel nauseated after eating that whole box of Entemans". Obviously I enjoyed my dinner after work and will enjoy and truly apperciate the little things until this experience wears off.
Bottom line: Go out there and do something good for the needy and thou shalt do mayim achronim or your eyes shall get burned out!!!!!
posted by Gatos Hombre at 6:18 PM
2 Comments:
Commentmonkey, like I said, the Manny's was sitting on a shelf from which we were making packages of food and it was unopened (also mevushal).
remind me to tell you the story of the shabbos meal i was at in israel where they convinced us all to do mayim ahharonim... by passing around a big chunk of dead sea rock salt, harvested directly out of a cliff by the dead sea after a landslide!
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