“His spray was transparent and it was hard to ascertain how genuine the process was, so I decided to try something else. We mixed black paint with the clear spray, and after smearing it, the strap was totally black – even before it was painted by the kosher tefillin dye. Now we scraped off the layer of spray, as he claimed he did, and the result was obvious: even after careful scraping, there were clearly black marks remaining on the strap – and therefore the dyeing of the straps was taking place over the plastic material. I needed to carry this to the end, so I decided to research the ingredients of the spray, to find out whether it met the halachic standards of being from ‘min hamutar beficha,’ what one is permitted to eat – but they refused to reveal the list of ingredients. The dealer claimed that he could be trusted and that he researched and found out that the spray was kosher. But we didn’t give in, and in the end, with siyata diShmaya, we were able to obtain the formula. We were horrified to find that indeed, there was what to hide…Among the ingredients was a substance extracted from the pancreas of a pig.”

Soul Food

During the shivah, a person who’s worked as a mashgiach told of how he was fired because he didn’t meet the criteria of his job. “The Rav told me that he couldn’t keep me inn the job because I wasn’t suited for it, but then he turned over the world to find me a new job, where I worked until I retired.”

Another person related that during a round of shechitah, a shochet stopped the work and announced that he had found a minor flaw in his knife. The knife was given over to the knife checker and the result was the disqualification of 500 chickens that had been slaughtered by all the shochtim. When someone marveled to Rav Landau about the shochet, he replied: ‘If I had the slightest doubt on any one of my shochtim that he is able to do this, I would completely shut down the shechitah under my supervision.”

Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Miller, who accompanied Rav Landau for many years as the executive director of the kashrus organization, says he’ll never forget the day many years ago when he heard the doorbell ring at 3:00 a.m. “When I peeked into the peephole, I was stunned to see the Rav himself standing there. I quickly opened the door and ushered him inside. The Rav apologized and then got straight to the point: The father of Rab Leibel Weiss, head of the mashgichim at the time, passed away during the night and someone had to go out to the market to supervise the fruits and vegetable deliveries before the Bnei Brak storeowners would come to purchase early in the morning.

“Rav Landau asked me if I knew all the details related to carrying out the task according to halachah. He tested me for quite some time, and then instructed me to go to the market immediately. That was the Rav’s way of working from the very beginning — he had a sense of personal responsibility for every item bearing his stamp.

When he was once asked about the many stringencies regarding the kashrus of food, he said: “Once, the caution people took before putting something in their mouth  was part of Jewish chinuch. Today, even when we know that the hechsher is questionable, we say ‘well, there’s a hechsher.’ Others say, ‘I’m eating on the achrayus of the rav giving the hechsher’ But there’s a big mistake in this kind of thinking. Although there’s a cheshbon in the Heavenly Court, who is becoming overpowered by the physical? Who is losing his yiras Shamayim? The Jew who is eating! When a Jew eats such food, he becomes apathetic to non-kosher food. This is called “timtum” from the pasuk, ‘Venitmeisem bam.’ This means that when a Jew stumbles and has the ‘timtum’ of the mind and the heart, then the natural fear that every Jew has before Pesach to ensure he won’t eat something that has chometz in it is no longer so sharp. He begins to think, ‘Nu…we don’t have to be so strict…I’m not such a big tzaddik anyway.’ Or he might say, ‘It’s just an issur derabbanan, it’s not so bad…’ and so forth.

“I’ll tell you an amazing story that happened with my father,” the Rav continued, “which will show you how food influences the soul. During the month of Iyar, my father had a practice of traveling to Jerusalem where he would rent an apartment and learn in solitude. People thought he was running away from Bnei Brak so he wouldn’t have to deal with Israel Independence Day in Bnei Brak, but I don’t believe that was the case – he was a fearless warrior and didn’t need to run away from anything. Anyway, at the time there was a milkman who would come around each morning with canisters of milk to sell, but my father would order special milk which was supervised by a Jew from the time of the milking. Thus, the milkman came to Bnei Brak each day with two jugs, a big one with the regular milk, and a small one, with the Rav’s mehudar milk.

“When my father was in Jerusalem, my mother asked the milkman to write down the charge for the milk for those days, and when my father would return, he’d pay for all the days she’d taken milk. When my father returned, the milkman came to him and gave him the bill for both the regular milk and for the mehudar milk. My father looked at him and asked, ‘Why are you tricking me?” The milkman blushed, and after a few moments, admitted that he was not bringing mehudar milk, that he just poured some milk from the big jug to the small one, and then passed it off as mehudar. My father threw the payment at him, and the milkman left the house in abject shame.

“When the milkman left, I asked how he knew he was being tricked. To me it looked like prophecy. But my father explained that while he was in Jerusalem, he felt like he was able to have more kavanah in his davening. After thinking about all his actions, he realized that there was nothing different about anything besides the milk in Jerusalem. ‘I realized that something is not right in the milk in Bnei Brak,’ he told me, upset that it had had an effect on his soul.

He Kashered Our Table

Rav Moshe Yehudah Leib Landau was born on 9 Tammuz 5695 (1935) in the town of Ramatayim, where his father, Rav Yaakov Landau, was serving as the town’s local rav. The following year, Rav Yaakov was appointed rav of the nascent colony of Bnei Brak and the family moved there. As a bochur, he learned in Yeshivas Ohr Yisrael in Petach Tivka, and later in Ponevezh in Bnei Brak and Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim in Lod. There, he learned under Rav Baruch Shimon Schneerson and the Lubavitch mashpia Rav Shlomo Chaim Kesselman ztz”l, and became a maggid shiur in the yeshivah when he was just 20. Three years later he married his rebbetzin, Miriam. A few years after that, he was appointed as maggid shiur in Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim in Kfar Chabad, a role he filled for 23 years, during which time he taught hundreds of talmidim who have become rabbanim all over the world.

In fact, Rav Moshe Yehudah Leib was considered a gifted talmid chacham from the time he was a child. In an interview with Mishpacha in 2010, he shared memories of his childhood. He remembered how, when he was 13, Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler arrived in Eretz Yisrael and came to visit his father, Rav Yaakov Landau. “He considered my father almost like a brother,” Rav Moshe said, “because when he was three years old, his mother perished in a fire, and his father married my mother’s sister, who raised him. He used to call my father “Uncle.” When he arrived, my father was very excited. On Friday night, Rav Eliyahu gave a drashah in Yeshivas Ponevezh, where I was learning at the time. At the Shabbos seudah, I repeated for my father Rav Dessler’s speech, but my father refused to believe that I had accurately repeated it, because I was quite a young bochur then. He didn’t think I really understood the depth of what Rav Dessler had said. But the next day, after the seudah, when the regular group of bochurim from Ponevezh came for the shiur in Tanya that took place each week in our house, my father asked them what Rav Dessler had said and they repeated the drashah. Then my father said to me, ‘I must say that you were right. They repeated the same thing…’ ”

In time, Rav Moshe served as his father’s right hand, taking responsibility for many of the rabbinical matters in Bnei Brak. Beginning in 1990, Rav Landau managed the kashrus supervision in Bnei Brak, and after his father’s passing, Rav Moshe Yehudah Leib succeeded him, garnering a reputation for hidur and stringency in both kashrus and all dealings relating to the city’s rabbinate.

Two months ago, on his father’s yahrtzeit, he Rav Moshe Yehuda Leib leined the parashah, but suffered a stroke that Motzaei Shabbos. Two weeks ago, he was admitted to Laniado Hospital, and this past Motzaei Shabbos, he returned his soul to its Maker, surrounded by family and a minyan of avreichim from the Sanzer community, who recited the pesukei hayichud.

Bnei Brak declared a bittul melachah (closing of all businesses) during Sunday’s levayah, so that the entire city could participate. In accordance with the Rav’s will, women did not participate in the funeral, out of modesty considerations.

Bnei Brak mayor Rabbi Avraham Rubinstein announced that “As per the directive of gedolei Torah, rebbes, rabbanim and roshei yeshivah, it was decided that all the matters of kashrus and religion in the city will be managed by his son and successor (as per Rav Landau’s request) Rav Yitzchak Eizik Landau and Rav Shevach Tzvi Rosenblatt.

In compliance with the Rav’s will, no hespedim were delivered, although before the levayah departed, the mashpia Rav Elimelech Biederman delivered divrei hisorerus, noting that the parshah read on Shabbos details forbidden foods, which demands of Am Yisrael “vehiskadashtem veheyisem kedoshim.” Hence, the basis of the holiness of Am Yisrael is the pure table. This Shabbos, said Rav Biderman, Klal Yisrael lost a man who symbolized more than anyone else in this generation, the adherence to preserving the holiness of food. Chazal say that the tears one sheds over a person who is kosher are counted by HaKadosh Baruch Hu and put in His treasure house. “We are all shedding tears of this adam kasher,” he said, “a great man who kashered the table of the entire generation.”

Yehi zichro baruch.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 755)