The Three who Ate

The Three Who Ate – By David Frischmann The great Hebrew and Yiddish writer David Frischmann (1859-1922) wrote a famous short story with the same title: שלשה שאכלו – Three People Who Ate. It describes an event that took place in Vilna during one of the terrible cholera epidemics that broke out in the city. Three of the community leadership ate on the bimah of the congregation on the Eve of Kol Nidre – their message to the people is that eating was an essential mitigation of the danger of the cholera epidemic, and would be a mitzvah even and especially on Yom Kippur.