We always thought we were doing a great mitzvah by hanging our leftover bread on the side of the rubbish bin in plastic bags. Until our upstairs neighbor rushed in one day holding one of the bags. “You’re hanging your mazel in the air!” he said.

“Oy va’voy.” We’re not allowed to hang bread.

There’s so much in Yiddishkeit about bread so many sayings. I’ve come to see that these sayings aren’t just mumbo jumbo. For instance: “Crumbs of bread on the floor bring poverty upon a home.”

This saying which I heard is from the Zohar haKadosh could mean that breadcrumbs on the floor shows wastefulness which could ultimately leads to poverty. Or that lack of cleanliness is in itself a form of poverty in a home causing a person to feel low — impoverished.

At least that’s how it makes me feel.

After two particularly busy days in a row when I was on the run from morning to night and the house looked like it all of a sudden my husband had three guests sitting in our living room discussing a chesed project. I wanted to faint from embarrassment like a poor person probably feels in tattered clothes.

Or dipping our bread in salt which is actually done because our table is our altar and all offerings on the Altar in the Beis haMikdash were accompanied by salt.

One woman’s Rebbe told her always to dip her bread in a large quantity of salt — that this will bring blessings for her. At her daughter’s wedding there wasn’t any salt. Someone had to go find a cupful before the mother of the bride would wash her hands for the wedding feast.

These are not old wives’ tales. …

“Such an intelligent nation listening to bubbeh meisehs” some intellectual once said to me.

They’re not bubbeh meisehs. They’re the way the world G-d’s world works.

It says in Koheles [11:1]: “Cast your bread upon the waters because after many days you will find it.”

I never understood this until someone explained that bread is referred to [Vayikra 26:26] as the “staff of life.” A staff is something that supports. If we support others we will be supported in turn.

Rabi Akiva was once on the sea and saw a ship sinking. He was worried because he knew that a certain Torah scholar was on board. But when Rabi Akiva arrived in Cappadocia he found the scholar sitting before him!

“How were you saved?” Rabi Akiva asked.

“One wave passed me on to another” the man answered “and brought me to shore.”

“What good deed did you do? What merit do you have which saved you from drowning?” Rabi Akiva asked.

And the man answered “As I was boarding the ship a poor man cried ‘Help me!’ So I gave him a loaf of bread. He said ‘As you have restored my life to me with this bread may Hashem restore your life to you.’”

Yisro offered to break bread with an Egyptian stranger — and was brought under the wings of the Shechinah.

I heard a drashah recently that started with this story:

A doctor’s wife used to bake delicious bread which she would sell. One day a cheese maker came to the doctor who invited him to eat. The doctor shared his wife’s bread and the cheese maker shared his homemade cheese. Both were delicious.

The two men struck a deal. Twice a month the doctor would barter two pounds of his wife’s bread for two pounds of the cheese.

But one week the doctor’s wife noticed that the amount of cheese delivered seemed less. She began to weigh it. Indeed it was significantly less cheese than the agreed on amount.

She protested to her husband week after week until the doctor brought the cheese maker to the beis din. (Here the speaker inserted a message about not letting grudges build up until they’re so large that they have to be settled in a beis din.)

The doctor’s wife passionately stated her case bringing the doctor’s precision scale to weigh the cheese for all to see.

The cheese maker defended himself: “My scale is not as exact as the doctor’s. Cheese makers use a container instead which basically measures the amounts. But to make sure our agreement was kept to the best of my ability I put the bread that the doctor’s wife sent on a scale to match the amount of cheese.

All eyes turned on the doctor and his wife who ran from the courtroom in shame.

If we support others we’re supported in turn. If we undermine them we’re undermined. How much when and in what way we can’t know. But “after many days ” our deeds return to us. It’s the way the world G-d’s world works — “Cast your bread.”