[Avodah] Gebrokts!

[Zev Sero]

On 11/04/2012 12:41 PM, Prof. Levine wrote:
> So when did the Chassidim start it?  Reb Mendel of Vitebsk is cited by many of the early Chassidim as attributing it to the Maggid of Mezrich and that, believe it or not, *the Baal Shem Tov did eat Kneidlach*!

Of course he did; the concern did not exist in his time.  As the
Alter Rebbe writes explicitly in his teshuvah, previously the custom
had been to knead the dough for a long time, so one could be sure that
all the flour had been properly integrated into it.  It's only "these
past twenty years or more", after a new hiddur took on to hurry in the
preparation of matzos, that one must worry about flour not being
properly incorporated into the dough.

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon