[Avodah] Rav Gustman and Baking Matzos

[Professor L. Levine via Avodah]

A person has to be sure that the matzos s/he purchases were baked properly.  The following  from the recently released bio of Rav Gustman illustrates this.  I am really taken aback by the rabbi who supervised a hand matzah bakery,  but was not careful about what went on there,  since he ate only machine matzos.


Note also Rav Gustman's preference that the matzos be baked by the workers in the matzah bakery and not by those  who are "amateurs."


YL


One year, R' Gustman decided to go a hand-matzah bakery that
was run by a prominent Chassidish sect. He was upset by some aspect
of the baking, and on his return he called the Admor of the sect and
said, "What kind of an operation is this that such things are done in
the bakery? You should shut down the bakery!" The Admor himself
went to the bakery. He checked out R' Gustman' s complaint and then
changed the entire process to ensure that everything would be done
as it should be. The Rosh Yeshivah spoke to a prominent Jewish leader
just as he would to an ordinary person, and he would admonish that
leader in a kind way regarding any issue that needed adjustment.

A similar incident occurred in a Yerushalayim matzah bakery.

When the matzah came out of the oven, the Rosh Yeshivah took a
matzah and wrapped it around his hand. He then said, "It's not
baked!" He left the bakery and afterward told one of the rabbanim
in charge of the kashrus in Yerushalayim what had happened. He
said, "I don't understand; if such a thing had happened in Vilna, we
would have closed down the bakery!"
The Rav responded, "That's why I eat only machine matzos."
The Rosh Yeshivah asked him, "What do people do who eat only
hand matzos? You're in charge of kashrus for everybody, not just for
those who eat machine matzos."

>From then on, R' Gustman went to bake his matzos on Moshav
Kommemiyus. He pointed out that this was preferable because
women rolled out the dough, and women knew how to roll dough
better than men.

In general, he encouraged the students to go to observe the matzah
baking, because eid echad ne'eman b'isurim (a single witness is to be
believed in matters of forbidding items due to kashrus issues), and
he wanted to rely on the eid echad because he was worried that otherwise
he would never eat any matzos if he himself saw what was
done. But he preferred that the experienced matzah bakers in the
matzah bakery should do the actual work, because they were more
proficient than amateur matzah bakers.
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