Major Beer Distributor Left the Ohel With a Decision

By COLlive reporter

Simon Bergson, owner of Manhattan Beer Distributors, the largest single-market beer distributor in the country, visited the Rebbe’s Ohel at the Montefiore Cemetery in Queens this week.

Bergson, along with his brother Jerry and sons Alex and Mitchell made the stop after visiting the nearby gravesite of Bergson’s father, Mordechai ben R’ Yisroel on the yartzeit, 28 Cheshvan.

They were accompanied by Rabbi Kalman Weinfeld, community activist R’ Nosson Sternberg and his son Motty Sternberg.

Bergson’s parents were Holocaust survivors, who suffered the Nazi horrors at the Auschwitz concentration camp and finally immigrated to the United States, where they built a proud Jewish family.

Simon Bergson is active in supporting Holocaust memorials and is passionate about the continuation of the Jewish people and Jewish families. His company has famously sold its Chometz for Pesach every year since 2018, ensuring that Jewish customers have no halachic problem with purchasing his beer after Pesach.

At the Ohel, Bergson recited Tehillim and then visited the Ohel for the first time, where they wrote a ‘pan’ note and spent time in prayer. They also put on Tefillin in their parents’ merit.

After leaving the Ohel and seeing the large variety of people visiting, Bergson said that Judaism was always a part of him from his parent’s warm Jewish home, but wasn’t so much an active part of his daily life.

Since he began with the mechiras chometz, it became even more a part of his life but still not so much in the day-to-day, he said. He said he felt that he should take more action to add Mitzvos and connect more to Judaism in his personal life. “Jews of today have to thank Hashem for giving us the Rebbe and Chabad in general,” he added.

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