Rabbi Pickle stood about 5 feet tall with a green apron and a big, red beard.
Behind him was a buffet of 200 cucumbers, dozens of garlic cloves and cartons of kosher salt, all waiting to be squished and sealed in a jar.
Rabbi Pickle, or Menachem Margolin, visited the Lubavitch-Chabad Jewish Student Center on Wednesday night for kosher-pickle making, a free workshop for students and area residents to teach people how to preserve kosher dill pickles.
More than 20 students took home free, handmade pickle jars stuffed with seven curled green cucumbers in salted water for preservation.
"They're nice and cute and short and fat," Margolin said. "They're just my style."
The workshop marks the end of Jewish Heritage Week for the center in Gainesville.
"We like to use pickling as a vehicle to teach people about the laws of Kashrut [keeping kosher] in a fun, refreshing way," Margolin said. Kosher is the strict dietary law for the Jewish religion.
Margolin and a group of students from the UF Lubavitch-Chabad student group pickled on Turlington Plaza on Wednesday afternoon. About 700 pickles later, more than 50 people left with a jar in hand.
"It's hard to get in a fight about pickles," Margolin said.
Eric Bassan, co-president of the student group, said the group is trying to incorporate the fundamental rules of kosher with a fun experience.
"It's the only event where you come to a place and leave with a nice, big jar of pickles," he said.
The Lubavitch-Chabad student group is a subgroup under Jewish Student Union. Events such as the pickling workshop are co-sponsored by the Center.
The kosher pickle-making workshops started three years ago in Los Angeles, but Margolin began in December. He has pickled in Arizona, New York and Illinois, but this was the first workshop at the center.
"People are very pro-pickle," he said.
