Dry Bread

 

פת במלח תאכל:’ “Abba Would Eat The Dry Bread The Children Didn’t Want”

HaGaon HaRav Tzvi Yehudah Edelstein, the son of the Rosh Yeshivah, z’tl, and one of the Roshei Yeshivah of Yeshivas Orchos Ish, said during his hesped that his father regularly ate the leftover dry bread that no one else wanted.

“Abba would mention minimizing taivah in many of his sichos,” HaRav Tzvi Yehudah said. “We saw him fulfill this regularly. He would drink tea – hot tea. He would say: ‘Sugar isn’t necessary. Tea without sugar is fine. It’s fine without the tea essence as well.’ That’s what he would call drinking tea – no tea and no sugar.” “I I remember that at home there would always be leftover bread – the dry bread that the children didn’t want. He would regularly eat this – he would take only the leftovers. He would dip it into the hot water and that’s what he would eat – that was his ‘taanug’. That’s how he was zocheh to learn Torah lishmah.”

Rav Tzvi Yehudah also spoke about his father’s yiras Shamayim that most people didn’t even notice since his father hid it from everyone.

“For years, he refrained from eating a certain food on Pesach that everyone else ate at home. Even Ima didn’t realize that he didn’t eat it – he hid it.”

“I remember one winter years ago and he missed saying Kiddush Levanah when everyone else said it. The weather at that time was very stormy. It was still rainy and cloudy the last night that it was possible to say Kiddush Levanah. He stood on the porch that night and waited and waited and waited – and in the early hours of the morning, he was zocheh to be able to say Kiddush Levanah.” 

https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/2194237/פת-במלח-תאכל-abba-would-eat-the-dry-bread-the-children-didnt-want.html