The Time the Frierdiker Rebbe Made Kiddush on Beer

By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives

Beginning in the late 1940s, Rabbi Yisroel Jacobson would travel to Italy each year to purchase esrogim for the holiday of Sukkos. There, he would go to the southern region of Calabria, where esrogim were grown that were known not to be hybrids.

Since he did not speak Italian, Rabbi Jacobson always took an interpreter with him. In 1964, Rabbi Moshe Lazar, the young Chabad Shliach in Milan, volunteered to fill this role. The two spent hours in conversation, and Rabbi Lazar basked in the presence of the legendary Chabad activist. He watched in awe as Rabbi Jacobson spent hours in prayer each day, sometimes finishing after three in the afternoon.

At the time, there was no kosher wine available in Calabria, or even in Milan. Thus, when the two men celebrated Shabbos together, Rabbi Lazar assumed they would recite Kiddush over challah instead of wine. But the elder rabbi said he would prefer to sanctify the day with beer.

When Rabbi Lazar asked why, Rabbi Jacobson told him a story:

In the summer of 1937, Rabbi Jacobson had traveled from the United States to Austria, where the Frierdiker Rebbe – Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, was spending the summer.

Before Shabbos, they learned that there was no kosher wine available in the area, and the Frierdiker Rebbe asked Rabbi Jacobson to purchase beer for Kiddush. But they had challah, Rabbi Jacobson pointed out. Why not make Kiddush on that?

The Frierdiker Rebbe responded, “I cannot sanctify the holy day with a knife in my hand.”

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