The 3rd of Cheshvan is the yahrtzeit (anniversary of the passing) of the famed Chassidic master Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin (1797-1850), known as "The Holy Ruzhiner."
Rabbi Israel was a great-grandson of Rabbi DovBer of Mezeritch; a close friendship existed between the Ruzhiner Rebbe and the 3rd Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch.
Link: Three Stories
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a leader of Sephardic Jewry and chief rabbi of Israel, passed away on 3 Cheshvan, 5774 (2013), at the age of 93.
A widely published author on Jewish law, Rabbi Yosef was considered by scholars of all backgrounds to be a rabbinical authority with a rare grasp of nearly every area of Torah scholarship. He was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of a wide swath of halachic texts, ranging from the well-known to the most obscure. In his halachic rulings, he would often list dozens of previous rulings and then decide in accordance with what he perceived to be the majority opinion.
Some people think that if they were truly spiritual, they would never eat.
In truth, few acts are as divine as eating food.
Eating is similar to sifting gold. You grasp the divine spark within a food and reject the dross. And then, in the mitzvahs energized by that food, you carry that divine spark back to its origin within the oneness of its Creator.
That is why there are foods that are forbidden and foods that are permissible. The Hebrew word for “forbidden” is assur—meaning tied down. “Permissible” is mutar—untied.
Kosher means “fit.” Foods that are assur are not fit for the divine act of eating because the divine spark within them is tied down and cannot be released. If we would eat them, rather than carrying that spark upward, we would be pulled down with it.
But foods that are mutar are fit and ready to release powerful divine energy into all the mitzvahs we do.