61. The Kiddush Cup That Made That The Alter Rebbe Leave The Seder Table Of The Magid

00:16 Hello, kindele. Here is an awesome story that was written by Reb Shimon of Zelichov. Shimon Zelichover was the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin. Lublin is in Poland. He was the Rosh Yeshiva till World War II, and unfortunately, he was killed by the Nazis in the concentration camp. He was a great gaon and a great man, and he said that he saw in the house of a great Rebbe in Poland, the Koidanov Rebbe, and in the house there were manuscripts, that means papers from the Alter Rebbe. And in those papers, the story that I'm going to tell you is being written there. That means it's a true story. The Maggid, the Mezritcher Maggid, had a custom that his great talmidim would come to him for the Seder. And every one of the talmidim of the Maggid received matzahs, wine, and maror, charoses, and all the things you need for the Seder, they would receive from the Maggid. And they would all sit by the Seder. And they all-- But the one thing that they didn't receive from the Maggid is the cup. The cup which you drink the four cups of wine, every brought... Everyone had to bring their own cup. Nobody knew the reason exactly why, but the Maggid said that the one thing he's not going to give to the talmidim is that everybody has to bring their own cup. At that time, the Alter Rebbe was very poor, didn't have any money, so he couldn't get himself and buy himself a special

02:23 cup for Pesach. So what do you do if you don't have a special cup for Pesach? You take a glass cup from chametz and you kasher it. How do you... The Alter Rebbe only had one glass cup. It was chametz dik. But how do you make it Pesach dik? You can't boil it in water like we boil all the pots because the glass is gonna explode. It's gonna crack. So it says that the way to kasher glass is by pouring-- having water, fill it up with water three days in a row. For seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours is three days, and that's how you kasher it. So the Alter Rebbe decided that since he didn't have his own cup for Pesach, he'll take a chametz dik cup. It was made out of glass. He'll do the hechsher kashering of that cup by filling it up with cold water for three days and, and, and, and, uh, change the water and so on. It says in Shulchan Aruch. That's what it says in Shulchan Aruch. Came the night of the Seder, and the Maggid came to the table and all the talmidim. The Maggid was dressed in white clothes. That's how the Maggid would dress on the night of the Seder. And the mashamash, the, the Maggid had a mashamash. The mashamash would hand the cup with the wine for kiddush to the Maggid. So the mashamash picked up the cup full of wine, put it into the hands of the Maggid. The Maggid stood up to

04:03 say kiddush, and then he looked around the room, and he put down the cup. Did not say kiddush. Sat down on his seat. Then again, the mashamash says, "Sh-should we make kiddush?" He said, "Okay, yeah, give me the cup." The mashamash picked up the cup, put it on the hand of the Maggid, and again, the Maggid looked around, and he changed his mind. Put down the cup, sat down, did not make kiddush. He looked somewhat concerned. This happened a third time, where the mashamash again gave him the cup, and he held the cup in his hand, ready to say kiddush, and then he looked around and changed his mind again. Put down the cup, sat down again. At that table, all the great talmidim of the Maggid were sitting by the table, by the Seder, waiting for the Maggid to start kiddush and to start the Seder. So there were great tzadikim from the talmidim of the Maggid, like Rabbi Mendel of Vitebsk, Rabbi Shmelke of Nikolsburg, and Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaCohen, who gave us Kamar and the Tanya, and Rabbi Israel Plotzki. There were other great... He was the Baal Tefillah. Rabbi Israel Plotzki was the chazan, the Baal Tefillah of the Maggid, was a great tzadik. And, and they're all sitting by the table. So the Maggid said to Rabbi Mendel of Vitebsk, "You have a good sense of smell." Obviously, he didn't mean like smell, like you smell samim, or you smell, you know, something bad or something good. He meant a

05:46 spiritual smell that you could smell when something is not good, something is evil, is bad. So he said to Rabbi Mendel of Vitebsk, "You have a special sense of smell. Please go around the room and search with your sense of smell to see if there's something evil, something bad in the room." Rabbi Mendel went around the room and used his spiritual, his spiritual sense of smell, but he didn't find anything. Came back to the Maggid and says, "Everything is good. I don't smell anything bad. I'm not sure what the Rebbe wants." So the Maggid says, so the Maggid said, "When I got up to say Kiddush, three times I tried to say Kiddush, and every time I got up to say Kiddush, I saw the Rama, the Rama, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who, uh, wrote the, the commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, and he's part of the Shulchan Aruch, and he's standing there, and he's very upset. The Rama is very upset. His face looks awesome, scary, very upset." When the Alter Rebbe, who was at the table, sitting at the table with his glass cup, when he heard this, he got up and left the room right away. Why? Because the Rama writes in Shulchan Aruch... See, the Mahara... The Shulchan Aruch was written by the Beit Yosef, Rabbi Yosef Karo. Yosef Karo was a Sephardi. He was from the Sephardi community. And Yosef Karo writes that you can kasher a glass cup for Pesach by pouring water in there for three days. Says the

07:34 Rama in his commentary, in his little note, he says, "Ein nu hagin ken, our minhag is not so. Ashkenazi Jews don't do that." And we are Ashkenazi Jews. We don't kasher glass cups for Pesach. So why not? Because it's like pottery. Some people say that glass is like pottery. Pottery you can't kasher. So as soon as the Alter Rebbe left with the cup, the Maggid got up and said the Kiddush.