The company was preparing to issue an emergency recall of this lot of mislabeled cans. However, officials at the kashrus agency were horrified that cans of pork and beans — no matter how few — bearing their unauthorized symbol were now on supermarket shelves in Memphis. They wanted to remove this potential stumbling block on a faster track than the company’s recall.

The kashrus agency supplied me with a list of grocery stores that might have received the mislabeled cans and asked me to go to them and purchase all of the cans that I could find.

I quickly responded that I would mobilize our local resources to address this situation — as soon as I fulfilled my responsibilities at the yeshivah.

Before entering the school building, I pondered my day’s new schedule. I had to give a Gemara quiz; put out a community alert about this mislabeled product; run around town to buy as many of these cans of pork and beans as I could find; and prepare a Shabbos derashah. My head started spinning.

That’s when I turned to Hashem and uttered something along the lines of: “HaKadosh Baruch Hu, between now and Shabbos, You want me to do a lot for the community. The only way this can all come together is with Your assistance. Please help me accomplish everything that needs to get done.”

After walking through the school’s doors, almost immediately I bumped into a member of the community kollel. He excitedly related that Rav Mordechai Finkelman, the venerated educator and mashgiach of Yeshiva Ohr Hachaim in Queens, New York, had davened with the school that morning. Rav Finkelman and his rebbetzin were spending Shabbos in Memphis, visiting family. The kollel member wondered aloud if Rabbi Finkelman might share some divrei Torah with the community over Shabbos.

I could hardly believe my ears — Hashem had already answered my prayer. Before running into class, I reached Rav Finkelman through his local family, introduced myself, and explained the developing turn of events. Rav Finkelman instantly understood my predicament and readily agreed to help in any way he could.

I thanked him exuberantly and remarked, “Wow, what incredible Hashgachah pratis!”

Without missing a beat, Rav Finkelman responded, “Yes, and it even involves hashgachah.”

As soon as I collected my class’s Gemara quizzes, I hurried back to my car and called my contact at the kashrus agency for a few more details. Then I was quickly on my way to several supermarkets in the Memphis area. Concurrently, my wife Layala helped get the word out to the community to avoid this mislabeled product. (I would have loved to involve my yeshivah students in this hands-on learning experience, but they still had a few hours left in the school day.)

It had to have been a strange sight — an Orthodox rabbi rushing around in supermarkets in search of canned pork and beans. Prior to that day, I can’t say I ever noticed where that product was located on the shelves. Every time I located a store’s stock of that item, I scanned the cans for the unauthorized kosher symbol, and added them to my cart.

Although it was surreal to wheel my shopping cart to the checkout filled with cans of pork and beans — and on an Erev Shabbos, yet — I had total peace of mind. I knew that a major kashrus agency would cover my non-kosher shopping bill, and that Rav Finkelman would cover the Shabbos derashah.

After collecting my haul, I went over all the labels with a black permanent marker to obscure the unauthorized kosher symbol. I then donated dozens and dozens of cans of pork and beans to a Memphis-area food pantry that serves a non-Jewish clientele. I emailed all this information to my contacts at the kashrus agency and felt quite satisfied.

Driving home to prepare for Shabbos, I imagined the grocery store managers going over the day’s sales records and being shocked by the volume of canned pork and beans that had suddenly flown off the shelves. What would they make of that? Would they check the security footage?

Rav Finkelman’s Shabbos derashah was incredibly meaningful and he truly uplifted everyone in attendance. I even had an amazing story with which to introduce him to the shul! We can’t thank Rabbi Finkelman enough for enriching our Shabbos that week.

Dovid Hamelech famously taught: “Cast your burden upon Hashem, and He will sustain you” (Tehillim 55:23). After this incident, I’m going to make an effort to do that more than I have in the past. If we honestly relied on Hashem the way I did that Friday,  our Shabbos preparations — among so many other aspects of our lives — would become  much more manageable.

Rabbi Akiva Males serves as the rabbi of Young Israel of Memphis. He also teaches Torah at the Cooper Yeshiva High School for Boys.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1051)