0450 - The Rebbe Said that Slivovitz is for Women

00:01 We all know that mashke is chametz, and therefore we do cannot drink mashke on Pesach. But there are certain types of mashke which are not chametz, and there are some people who use it. Lubavitch doesn't drink any mashke on Pesach, even the ones that are Pesach dik, but there are people who drink mashke on Pesach if it's not chametz, obviously. One of the types of mashke that people drink on Pesach is Slivovitz. Slivovitz is mashke, strong mashke, but it's made from plums, so it's not chametz, so some people drink it. So once it was a Shabbos after Pesach, someone came up to the Rebbe and gave a bottle of Slivovitz. Now this was obviously before the time when the Rebbe stopped this inyan of people being able to go up to the Farbrengen with mashke. Also, it was before the Rebbe said that everybody should bring the same kind of mashke. There was a time when the Rebbe said that since people bring different types of mashke, and you have to know the kashrus of it, et cetera, et cetera, so the Rebbe said that they should only bring one type, and from then they started bringing only Smirnoff. But this story happened before the Rebbe said this. So it's before the Rebbe said people shouldn't come up with mashke, and it was only that before Shabbos, if somebody had a reason to give him a bottle of mashke, he would give it him before Shabbos. Then by the Farbrengen, the Rebbe would give it

01:15 out to those people. But this was before that, so people would come up by the Farbrengen and give a bottle of mashke for whatever reason they had. And also, you could bring any type of mashke because this was before the Rebbe made this thing that you should bring only Smirnoff, only one kind, and it turned out to be Smirnoff. This was before that. So someone came up to the Farbrengen, by the Farbrengen to the Rebbe and gave him a bottle of Slivovitz. So I remember the Rebbe looked at it, and the Rebbe said to him, "Vos git imir do, flomen? Dos is far di vaiber." What are you giving me here, plums? This is for the women. In other words, since the Rebbe looked at it and he saw it's made from plums, this is not really real mashke, even though Slivovitz is very strong as regular mashke. But the Rebbe looked at it and said, "Vos git imir flomen?" You're giving me plums? Dos is far di vaiber. And the Rebbe sent up this bottle to be distributed in the vaiber shul. I don't remember who went up. Maybe it was Rabbi Weinberg. Usually he used to be the one to get the dollars to bring it up to the women, so I don't remember. But it went up to the women, and obviously they took each one a tiny, tiny drop because it's from the Rebbe. But the Rebbe sent it to the women because he said, "Vos git imir flomen? Dos is

02:22 far di vaiber."