The Expert Shochet

The chassidim who traveled with Rav Yehuda Tzvi were full of questions that they dared not ask him. They knew that the Rebbe always brought his personal shochet along on journeys, because he never trusted anyone else's knife. They also knew that he never ate meat during the week. So why had he agreed to a meat meal with a simple farmer who slaughtered his own animal without even showing the Rebbe his knife?

The whole episode had been unusual. The group had come to a farmhouse, where the Rebbe asked the woman of the house whether they could have a meat meal. She replied that her husband would soon return from the fields and would prepare one for them. Before long a hay wagon pulled up with a peasant sitting on top. Rav Yehuda Tzvi repeated his request, and the farmer drew a slaughtering knife from his shoe, slaughtered one of his animals, and examined it afterward as halacha requires.

The riddle was only partly solved at the end of the meal. After the Rebbe had eaten, he begged his host to show him the knife. The farmer refused at first, but when the Rebbe asked again several times, he took it out to be inspected.

“Believe me,” he said, “I have never shown my knife to any rabbi or expert, except Eliyahu HaNavi (Elijah the Prophet).” Only then did the chassidim understand that their host was one of the lamed vav tzaddikim, the hidden righteous of the generation.