Rabbi Wasserman once visited a former student who was learning in the great Mir Yeshivah in Brooklyn. He dropped in early one afternoon when the students were on their break between learning sessions. After greeting the young man, he suggested that they have lunch while they talk "so that you won't be hungry when you return to your learning. I wouldn't want you to miss your lunch just because of me."

The student agreed, and while they strolled in the neighborhood near the yeshivah, they became so engrossed in their discussion that the young man automatically made his way to a local pizza shop, without thinking that the noisy and smoky place would not be an appropriate place to enter with his great rabbi.

Into the amplified music and the tightly-crowded rows of customers standing around with their orders walked the stately Rabbi Wasserman and his suddenly embarrassed companion. The young man tugged at Rabbi Wasserman's sleeve and stammered, "I... I... I think I made a mistake. We're in the wrong place!"

Rabbi Wasserman motioned for him to relax and as the voices in the room settled and eyes turned toward the elderly rabbinic figure parting the crowd like Moses walking through the walls of water at the Red Sea, Rabbi Wasserman walked straight up to the counter and asked the Israeli proprietor, "Do you serve soup?"

The bewildered man shook his head and apologized that they had no soup in his pizza shop. Rabbi Wasserman looked genuinely sorry, and he too apologized, stating that he would have liked to stay there for lunch but that his doctor had advised him "to stick to things like hot soup when you have lunch."

The Israeli nodded sympathetically and commiserated with the rabbi, and they bid each other "Shalom" as Rabbi Wasserman left with his mystified student.

The young man began to apologize that he hadn't stopped to think that a "hangout" might not be the place to bring his rabbi.

Rabbi Wasserman consoled him and told him no harm was done. "It was no problem!" he laughed. "I didn't want to offend the fellow by just walking out. That's why I asked about soup. This way he'll understand that there was no problem with his restaurant. He won't be offended that an old man didn't stay and eat because there was no soup!"

At a wedding in New York, I encountered Rabbi Wasserman. As we made our way across the now-deserted dining hall to sit down and talk, Rabbi Wasserman kept bending over to pick up challah rolls that had fallen to the floor beneath the tables we passed. I took them from him, telling him that I would pick them up - I refused to let him bend down that way!

"We do not walk over food," he quoted. "It is a disgrace to do so." (Talmud - Eruvin 64b; Bava Metzia 23a)

I nodded, abashed, and placed the collection of uneaten rolls on one of the tables.

Rabbi Wasserman looked sad and said, "You know, even leaving them here is a question; they will just go to waste when the staff comes in to clean up."

I declared, more than asked, "But what can we do? This is the standard they have. No one will re-serve these rolls."

He nodded his head slowly in reluctant acquiescence. "You are right," he said. "What can we do, for this is the standard that is followed these days. It is still hard to watch it happen."

I once accompanied Rabbi Wasserman on some errands which included a visit to the dry cleaners. As he put his garments on the counter, the clerk began to fill out a ticket and asked for his name.

"Wasserman. Samuel Wasserman," he replied.

Once outside, I asked Rabbi Wasserman if he had taken "Samuel" as his legal English name.

He smiled. "No, no. I only give that name when I know they are copying it down. You see, that fellow would never know how to spell 'Simcha' and he would be embarrassed. Besides that, both of us would lose valuable time. Since most people know how to spell 'Samuel,' I use it to make things easier all around."