In Search of a Source - a PKL story

amother

OP ↓

Sat, Dec 14 2024, 8:34 pm

This is a story about my search for the meaning of life.
Just kidding. It is actually about the search for a source. The source of a halacha.

This story took place years ago, but I was reminded of it recently due to several threads that touched on the differences between halacha, minhag and community custom. People are always asking, "what's the source?"

So, here's the story.
A number of years ago, my husband had occasion to visit Eretz Yisroel for a few days, including over Shabbos. My husband's grandparents didn't want me to be alone with the kids for Shabbos, so they invited us to come to them. I had a very close relationship with my husband's grandparents, so I accepted their invite. Bubby and Zeidy, originally from Hungary, survived the holocaust and managed to rebuild their lives and raise a beautiful frum family on these shores.

So, on that Shabbos morning, before Zeidy got home from shul, Bubby was in the kitchen preparing for the meal. My kids were playing nicely on the living room floor, so I went to offer Bubby my help. I was about to enter the kitchen when Bubby shouted, "Don't come in!"
I froze mid-step, confused.
"Why?" I asked.
"I'm peeling eggs and maybe some shells fell on the floor. I don't want you to step on them- Chas vesholom!"
Well. She said that line as if it it was supposed to make sense, but I was still confused.
"I don't understand," I said. "So what if there are eggshells on the floor?"
Now it was her turn to look at me with surprise. "Because you're pregnant!" She said. "It's a sakana!" Wasn't it obvious??

Well, to me it wasn't. I mean, it was obvious that I was highly pregnant, yes, but I had never heard of any danger involved in a pregnant women stepping on eggshells. I mean, everybody knows that it's a sakana for pregnant women to step on clipped fingernails. But eggshells?

Now my Bubby was really surprised. "You never heard that it's dangerous for a pregnant woman to step on eggshells? Everybody knows!"

I mean, I grew up in a frum home, and had at that point given birth to several babies, but I had never heard of this.
"Is it a halacha?" I asked.
"Of course!" She said. "I can't believe you never heard if it."
"Um.. no, I didn't. Do you know what the source is?"
"No," she admitted."But ask Zeidy when he comes home. He will know."

A few minutes later, Zeidy walks in with a loud "Git Shabbos!"
When the time seemed right, I asked him.
I said, "Bubby said that a pregnant woman isn't supposed to step on eggshells?"
His eyes opened wide and he sucked in his breath. "Oy vay! You walked on eggshells?"
"No," I quickly reassured him. "But I never heard of this. Is it a halacha?"
"Of course!" He said. "Everybody knows this. In the heim, everyone was very makpid on this."

I persisited. "Do you know the source? Is it written anywhere?"
"Yes!" He said. "I'll show you."
And he went right over to the bookshelf, pulled out a large volume, opened it, flipped a few pages and then pointed, "Here! Read it. "

I looked at what he was pointing to.
What I read was that it is dangerous to eat shelled eggs, peeled onions and peeled garlic cloves that were left overnight. Something about there being a ruach ra'ah attached to those foods.
Nothing about stepping on eggshells.

Please don't think I'm a huge mechutzaf, but I (hopefully politely) told Zeidy that it actually doesn't say what he is claiming it says. He took another look, read it slowly, and agreed that he was mistaken.
"It's somewhere else. I have to check. But it for sure says somewhere."

To be clear, I had heard of the idea of not leaving eggs, onions and garlic unpeeled overnight. The idea of an "evil spirit" being attached to these foods is one that some poskim hold does not apply today. And therefore, some hold there is no need to be concerned with it. Others say one should nevertheless be careful not to eat them.

But this wasn't what this was about. Both Zeidy and Bubby were very clear that in the "heim" people were careful about pregnant women stepping on eggshells.
He put the volume away and we started our meal. But I did not forget about the eggshells. Because now, I had a mystery on my hands, and I was determined to solve it.

You see, when I get a bug in my head, I will do whatever I can to get to the bottom of it. My kids might call me obsessed. But I like to think of myself as persistent.

Before I continue my story, let me make a small disclaimer.

I am very well aware that there are some "minhagim" that are actually based on mistakes. Everyone knows about the holy minhag one family had, which was to chop off the head and tail of the fish before cooking it for Shabbos. This was faithfully passed down from mother to daughter. When they tried to research the origin of the minhag, they discovered that the great-great-grandmother's fish pot would only fit the fish if the head and tail were cut off. And that's how the minhag started.
It's funny. It elicits a laugh. But how common are such mistakes?

Here's a story you probably didn't hear.
(When I heard the story, I believe I heard it with names, but unfortunately, I cannot remember the names anymore. Still, it's worth repeating, I think. )

So, the story goes that the Rav of a certain town retired and moved away. So they hired a new Rav. It was erev Pesach, and among the many shailos the new Rav fielded, someone asked him what he holds regarding bananas.
"Bananas?" asked the rav, puzzled. "What's the shayla?"
The man replied, "The shayla is if the Rav holds that bananas are mutar on Pesach."
"Of course bananas may be eaten on Pesach," said the Rav, no doubt wondering at this odd question.
The questioner left, and the Rav quickly forgot the strange query.

A few minutes later, he got a call from another member of the town.
"Is it true that the Rav holds that bananas may be eaten on Pesach?"
"Yes," he confirmed. "There's no chometz in bananas. "
The man hung up. A few minutes later, another caller asked the same question. This was getting really strange. This repeated itself several times. The Rav became more and more confused. Why on earth would these people think bananas are chometz?
Finally, when the next caller asked the same question, he asked him why everyone in this town assumed that bananas are problematic on Pesach?!
"Well," said the caller, "the previous Rav held that it's chometz."

Now the Rav was seriously perplexed. His predecessor was known to be a big talmid chochom and a posek. It didn’t make sense that he would say such a thing.

He tracked down the number of the old Rav and called him.
He introduced himself and asked him why he held that bananas were not permitted to be eaten on Pesach. The old Rav had no idea what he was talking about.

So the new rav told him that everyone in town believed that he was against bananas on Pesach.
At first, the elderly Rav was just as mystefied. But finally, he was able to recall something.
Over 40 years earlier, he was a new immigrant when he got the position as Mara d'asra of the town. That first erev Pesach, he was asked if bananas are kosher for Pesach. He had no idea what a banana was. Probably a new product.
So he said, "better not." On Pesach the custom is to be stringent, so it's better to stay away from new things.

The psak was accepted unequivocally. And for the next 40 years, everyone in that town knew that their Rav held that bananas were not kosher for pesach, and they all adhered to it.

Truly this story is remarkable for several reasons, but my point is that sometimes a minhag or chumra is actually based on a mistake.

And yet...I remember once hearing a shiur from Rabbi Reisman, in which he quoted the Chassam Sofer. He said that one should be very careful not to dismiss things we hear from our bubbies and zeidies. Things we think are "bubbe mayses" may actually be real and holy minhagim that were kept in their town or family.

And so, back to my story about the eggshells...

I was not going to just dismiss it out of hand. If my Zeidy was so convinced that there was a source, I was determined to find it. We live in the age of information, and I was going to search until I got to the bottom of this.

So, as soon as I got home after Shabbos, I began my search. I pulled out some sefarim, both Hebrew and English. I read. I searched. Then I started googling.
I put in "pregnant women stepping on egg shells." Nothing. I tried wording it differently.

Finally...I struck gold. Or at least, I struck something.

I came across an excerpt from Shulchan Aruch Harav.
This is what it said:.
Many are accustomed to abstain from stepping on egg shells due to danger. Accordingly, egg shells are not to be thrown in areas that people walk.

(There is a footnote that says that there is
no known source against doing so, other than a story of the Rebbe Maharash, and accepted custom.)

So.
Nothing about pregnant women.
BUT- the idea of not stepping on eggshells is written somewhere.
It's not in the Shulchan Aruch or Mishne Brura.
But the Shulchan Aruch Harav was written by the first rebbe of Chabad, and based on what I read, it is followed by Chassidim.

So, at this point, since I could not find anything else, I'm assuming that either my grandparents remembered incorrectly, since they were young when they were taken by the Nazis. Or maybe, somehow the town had this stricture for pregnant women. Unfortunately, I cannot ask my grandparents anymore. (As an aside, they were not Chabad. They were Hungarian.)

I'm sure that if I had known about Imamother then, I would have come here and asked if anyone else had ever heard of it.

So that's my story on the search for a source. And in a way, it is also the search for truth. The truth can be very murky, and even when we think we know the truth, we can still be mistaken, or partially mistaken. Our memories can be faulty. Our understanding can be faulty. Sometimes we understand things differently years later.
So I think the real truth lies in the search itself, not always in the answers we find.

Anyway. Just curious if anyone out there has ever heard of this idea of not stepping on eggshells?