The shochet and his dog

שמות כב ל 

וְאַנְשֵׁי קֹדֶשׁ תִּהְיוּן לִי וּבָשָׂר בַּשָּׂדֶה טְרֵפָה לֹא תֹאכֵלוּ לַכֶּלֶב תַּשְׁלִכוּן אֹתוֹ

Shemot 22:30 

And you shall be for me a holy people. Do not eat terefa meat; send it before the dog instead.

There once was a shochet who worked in a small village slaughterhouse processing chickens for the townsfolk. When he was unsure if a chicken was taref or not, he would approach the dayan of the village and seek an answer.
The owner of the slaughterhouse learned of this practice and disapproved.
"Why do you waste so much time traveling out to the local dayan?" He asked him one day. "I have a more efficient way to determine whether or not the chicken of question is kosher. Offer it to the dog! If the dog accepts, it must be terefa, for it is written in the Torah 'Do not eat terefa meat; send it before the dog instead.' If the dog rejects it, the chicken must be kasher!"
"Okay," said the naive shochet, "I'll give it a try."
The next time a kashrut question arose, he took the chicken and placed it before the guard dog. The dog was well trained to not accept food from strangers and did not attempt to eat it.
"Must be kosher!" the shochet said.
The next day, another questionable chicken was placed before the dog. Again, the dog held itself back. The chicken was ruled to be kosher.
On the third day, the dog's instinct finally kicked in and he willingly accepted the chicken. The chicken was ruled to be taref. Once he saw that no harm came to him, he no longer refrained and all the chickens that were placed before him were ruled to be not kasher.
After two weeks of taref rulings on his chickens, the shochet decided to go back to the dayan with his questions.
"If you don't mind me asking," the dayan told him, "Where have you been these past two weeks? It was the longest stretch I have ever seen you go without coming to me with a kashrut question!"
"Well," said the shochet hesitantly, "The truth is that I tried a new posek. But he turned out to be way too machmir."

Lost in Translation

פסחים מב.

אמר רב יהודה אשה לא תלוש אלא במים שלנו דרשה רב מתנה בפפוניא למחר אייתו כולי עלמא חצבייהו ואתו לגביה ואמרו ליה הב לן מיא אמר להו אנא במיא דביתו אמרי 

Pesachim 42a 

Rav Yehuda said: "A woman should only bake matzot with mayim shelanu."
Rav Matna taught this halacha to the people of Papunia. The next morning, the whole town knocked on his door.
"Give us some of your water!" they demanded!
"Why do you want our water?!" he asked them.
"You said, 'You must use mayim shelanu - our water - to make the matzot.' We would like some of your water to use to bake matzot like you taught us!" 
"No you idiots, not 'our water'! I meant mayim shelanu - water that was drawn the night before! 'Lanu' means 'slept', like the Aramaic word 'bitu'!"
"Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhh" the people of the town collectively said.

Amelia Bedelia would have fit right into this town. And if I had to guess, I would presume that Rav Matna was probably exceedingly elaborate when he taught classes in Papunia from then on.

Cleaning for Pesach

People are often surprised at how much less strict the halachot of Pesach are when compared to how Pesach is treated in most homes today. People have accepted upon themselves many stringent customs today, such as peeling all fruits and vegetables before consumption, even though they do not always have a legitimate halachic basis. A"A shares the following story when these customs come up:

A man once arrived at home on Erev Pesach to find his wife blowtorching the doorknobs in the kitchen.

"Why are you blowtorching the doorknobs in the kitcken?!" he asked her. 

"What do you mean? I'm preparing them for Pesach!" she answered.

"You don't need to blowtorch the doorknobs!" he told her. 

"Says who?" she asked.

"The Shulchan Arukh!" he answered. 

"Please!" she retorted. "If we listened to everything it said in that 'Shulchan Arukh' of yours we would practically be eating chametz all Pesach long!" 

The Relationship between Stringency and Righteousness

A"A often points out that, unfortunately, Rabbanim today are often valued based on how machmir they are. The more one is oser, the better. Knowledge is only secondary to all this. He illustrates this with the following story:

One erev Pesach, a newly-hired Rabbi was sitting in his office, preparing a derasha. A congregant bursts into his office, nearly in tears.
"Rabbi, something went wrong and I don't know what to do!" she said frantically. "I was hanging up my tablecloths after washing them to use for the seder tonight. After it was all up on the line, I remembered that I forgot to do hag'ala on my laundry hanging rope! What should I do? I won't have tablecloths for the seder!"
"Don't worry," the Rabbi told her, "you can use the tablecloths on Pesach."
Outraged, she stormed out of his office. Taken aback by her response, the Rabbi watched her from the window as she left the bet kinesset. She met one of her friends on her way out, and the Rav heard her tell her friend the following:
"What were they thinking when they hired this new Rabbi?! He's a complete idiot! I went to him with an important question, and he dismissed it without giving it any thought! Our previous Rabbi would always hear my questions out, investigate the topic, read up on the question, and only then would he tell me the halacha. This guy is scamming us!"
The Rav decided to remedy the situation before people start spreading rumors about him. He ran outside and stopped her.
"Excuse me," he called after her, "can you please repeat your question? I'm so sorry, but I was so busy preparing my derasha that I didn't hear you out properly."
"Okay," she said, "I accidentally hung my Pesach tablecloths on a line that wasn't kashered for Pesach!"
"Oh no!" he said. "What were you thinking?! Do you have a spare tablecloth?? Was it intentional or by accident?"
"Please Rabbi!" she pleaded, "it was an accident! I don't have any other tablecloths and I don't know what to do now!"
"Okay, okay, I'll see what I can do. Come back to my office in an hour."
When she came back, she found his desk littered with books. Aware that he was being watched, he walked over to the bookshelf, mumbling to himself and stroking his beard, and procured the largest, oldest-looking volume of the Ri"f he could find. ignoring her, he placed in on his desk, flipped it open to a random page, and stared at it intently for five minutes.
Finally he looked up, saw her there, and said, "Look, since you have no other tablecloths, and since you didn't do it on purpose, there are opinions that you can rely on. I'll let you use the tablecloths this year, but don't do it again! Next year you need to be extra vigilant to not mix up your hanging lines!"
He watched as she walked out of his office. Outside the bet kinesset, she bumped into her friend again.
"I'm sorry," she told her friend, "I seem to have been mistaken. The new Rav is great!"