Kiddush and the Town of Prozhina

It is told that when the Taz served as Rav of Prozhina he was extremely poor. He could not afford to heat his small home in the cold winter nights, and he would learn Torah all night while the bitter cold seeped into his bones. Not far away was a tavern, and sometimes he went there for a drink to warm himself and keep learning. His salary was too small for him to pay in advance, so the tavern keeper wrote down what he owed on the wall. A man who saw the Rav's name there asked what it meant, and when he heard that the Rav bought spirits on credit, he was astonished that the Rav drank at all. One person told another, and soon all the local tongues were wagging with exaggerated tales of the Rav's drinking and debts. He was voted out of office and removed from the town with great dishonor on the wagon used for refuse.

Later, when the Taz was Rav of Ostroh and began to print his Turei Zahav, the price of wine rose because grapes were scarce in the region. The Taz ruled that whiskey and brandy may also be used for kiddush, but he wrote a condition that in Prozhina this was not so, since they all dislike spirits. He wrote this in complete sincerity, because he truly believed he had been removed for drinking something the townspeople considered unbecoming for their Rav, and that spirits must taste poor to them.

When the people of Prozhina heard of the ruling, they called an urgent meeting, since it hurt them financially. They sent a distinguished delegation to Ostroh to ask the Taz's forgiveness. His home was above the beis medrash, and when heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, the household assumed the visitors were the householders of Prozhina, who wore heavy boots.

The delegation asked forgiveness in the name of the whole town, as law and custom require. The Taz asked them to sit and had the Rebbetzin serve them cake. When he noticed they had not touched it, he asked why. The delegation saw its opening. “How can the Rav set cake before us with nothing to drink? Everyone knows the main refreshment is the drink, and the cake is only a delicacy to flavor the spirits.” They explained that this was why they had come. The Rav had written that one may make kiddush over spirits except in their town, because they dislike it, but that was not true. They liked it very much. They simply did not want their Rav to be a drinker. They asked him to change his ruling, and the Taz had the line erased from his Turei Zahav.