Acting on our Faith

 

Every Wednesday, there is a circular from my frum supermarket with the week's specials.  I often find myself planning my Shabbos meals around the sale items.  Eggplant is on sale? So let's have eggplant salad.  Fresh mushrooms and grape tomatoes are on sale? So let's have the salad that calls for those ingredients.  Napoleon is on sale in the bakery department, let's buy that for Shabbos.

I feel bad about it because I believe the Gemara that says that the amount of money we are designated on Rosh Hashana for the year, does not include Shabbos and Yom Tov expenses.  So why should items on sale have any bearing on the Shabbos menu? Then again, just because our Shabbos expenses are not taken off our annual monetary allotment, doesn't mean people have the actual money to lay out for full-price food items.  True, we will be repaid for our Shabbos expenses, but right now, I might not want to use up my available cash.

I had a conversation with someone who said, there is no way they are going to pay $12 a pound for flanken, it's too expensive! Their alternative was to use another, cheaper type of meat.  All I said was there are often sales on the meat that goes into chulent which they can look out for.  What I thought, but didn't say, was - if you believe the Chazal about repayment for Shabbos expenses, what difference does it make if it's $12 a pound or half that?

It might be a good idea to occasionally buy something expensive at the full price just to demonstrate our belief that we will be repaid for Shabbos expenditures.  Otherwise, do we genuinely believe or not?