A good mashgiach learns to trust his feelings. Hashem sends them, directly from Heaven

As told to Chaya Rosen

Do you remember I told you about the time I woke up in the middle of the night and drove to a bakery, where I discovered the workers baking bread with uncertified, very milchig cheese? Do you remember how I told you that mashgichim learn to trust their instincts and the feelings Hashem sends them? Here’s another example.

Funnily enough, this was also a bakery. But the strange feeling came in the afternoon instead of in the middle of the night. I got a very strong feeling that I need to check on that bakery ASAP. The bakery was closed at that hour; as I mentioned, many bakeries start production at around 2:00 a.m. in order to get freshly baked products to supermarkets, stores, and restaurants by morning, and then, after a thorough cleaning up, wind down for the day by around 1:00 p.m. There was no reason for me to think that anyone would be there during mid-afternoon.

That didn’t deter me, and I drove off, honoring the feeling that Hashem sent me. When I arrived, I saw that the lights were out and the place was deserted — just as it should be at that hour. But I went in anyway. And there, inside, were two men baking a sweet French bread called brioche. Brioche is a bread similar to challah — with one major difference. Brioche is made with butter. Lots and lots of butter. Butter is dairy; the bread we certified at this bakery was not. Unsupervised dairy, as you know well by now, is chalav stam. They were putting butter, chalav stam butter, in our pareve-kosher-certified bread. They claimed they weren’t; they said they were making it for their wives. That was a lot of bread for two women. I wonder how much brioche they go through!

Like I said, a good mashgiach learns to trust his feelings. Hashem sends them, directly from Heaven.