Guarding His Zeide's Path

Rabbi Thumim, the Alshtadter Rav of Boro Park, arrived in New York in the early 1940's and attended yeshivas Torah Vodaas.  This is a memory from those early years in yeshiva as recounted in an interview in Mishpacha magazine:

"I was a frumme bochur and I didn't want to eat the yeshiva's food since the shochet had no beard.  R' Heiman called me over and told me that he felt I was being too stringent and that I needed the nourishment of wholesome meals.  I said, "Rosh Yeshiva, with all due respect, I am a bochur who is all alone in this country.  If I drop the minhagim of my father's house, I am lost.  I have to maintain the beard, the chassidishe shechita, all of it, if I hope to guard my zeide's path." 

R' Heiman said he was right.  As to what he ate, his mother sent him sardines which he would share with another chassidishe bochur who also did not eat the yeshiva's meat, Levi Yitzchok Horowitz, son of the Bostoner Rebbe.

Mind you, Torah Vodaas was an exemplary yeshiva! The food was 100% kosher.  And yet, a bochur had the pride and backbone to forgo good meals in order to preserve who he was and what he stood for.  What sort of chinuch creates teenagers like these?

A Solution We Don't Hear About

Despite the endless articles and speeches about the "shidduch crisis" and "economic crisis," we have yet to hear the Chofetz Chaim's solution: grow a beard! 

Here is what the Chofetz Chaim says:
(published in his sefer Kuntres Tiferes Adom ch. 1)

“If one lets his beard grow...one can certainly expect that Hashem will provide him with a fitting marriage partner, an intelligent and G-d-fearing woman, who will be a helpmate during his life (as our Sages say: ‘If one has merit, she will help him’), and they will be privileged to raise a generation of upright children in whom he can rejoice as they sit around his table...his marriage should be pleasant, that Hashem should provide them with their livelihood, that they should be privileged to have upright children, and that he should experience a good life with the wife whom Hashem has designated for him...

“On the other hand, if one does not place his trust in Hashem and he turns from the path of the commandment, surely Hashem will not desire to treat him well.

“Instead of the love and favor he hopes to gain by trimming his beard, eventually it will turn, G-d forbid, to bitterness and poison through lack of livelihood and other prevalent causes, because Hashem’s blessing will not rest between them.

“Sometimes it will come to the point where he has to wander far away to find his livelihood, and then, what benefit does one have from this [temporary] joy?

“In fact, all this is explained in the holy Torah sources, that by standing firm to fulfill Hashem’s commandment, one is privileged to raise a generation of upright children”.