Is There Barely in My Soup?
Pesach 5765
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Rabbi Shmuel Salant the Rav of Jerusalem was in the midst of his Pesach Seder one year when an angry newly married man appeared at his door.

Rabbi Salant had anticipated his arrival as he heard the commotion from some distance of this man carrying a bowl of soup in his hands, screaming down the street.

Rabbi Salant asked him to step inside with his bowl of soup in his hands. The angry man pointed to the middle of the soup where a single piece of barley was floating. Rabbi Salant calmed him down and took him outside with his bowl.

When in the street he started to scream again. "I thought I was marrying a Frum girl from a Frum family. Now on Leil Seder I find chometz not only in their house, but in the soup. This "Frum" family cheated me. This marriage is a mechet toas".

Rabbi Salant asked the newlywed to as he took the young man's shtreimel off his head and shook. The both of them watched several barley grains fall out of this man’s shtreimel. It is the custom in used to be Jerusalem aufrufs to throw roasted barley grains at the chosson.

Rabbi Salant was not surprised with his find, but this newlywed was "bowled over" with the abundance of chometz in his shtreimel. Rabbi Salant said to him "before you find fault in your mother-in-law's kitchen, find fault in your own shtreimel!" A person should do a cheshbon hanefesh before they do one on someone else and all the more so a close relative.