Drunk On Zion: The Soul Of Israeli Wine

Welcome to the Kosher Teruah.

I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. Before we get started, no matter where you are, please take a moment to pray for the safe return home of all our soldiers, and the full return of all the remains of our hostages. If you're driving in your car, please focus on the road ahead. If you're relaxing at home, please open a delicious bottle of kosher wine and pour a glass, sit back and relax. Today we're opening a very unusual bottle. An episode about the soul of Israeli wine. Our guest is David M. Weinberg, a veteran columnist for the Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, a senior managing fellow at the Miscav Institute, and a man proudly accused by Al Jazeera of wine-washing the occupation. He's also a WSET Level 3 wine professional who has spent years following Israeli winemakers through the vineyards, tasting his way from the Judean hills to the Galilee and beyond. In this episode, we're not just talking tasting notes. We're diving into the Zionism, Jewish theology, and even Kabbalistic ideas behind producing and drinking wine in the land of Israel. We'll explore how modern Israeli bottles connect us back to the Tanakh, what it means to drink with kavanah, real intention, and why the renaissance of Israel wine might be a sign of something much bigger than a good vintage. So pour yourself a glass of something Israeli and delicious, settle in, and join me with David Weinberg as we get, in the very best of ways, drunk on Sion, on Zion.

Welcome, David. Welcome to the Kosher Terroir.

Shalom, Rabbeinu Simon.

It's not a rabbeinu. I'm just a stam pashutiyim. Yid. Okay. So I've got a few questions. Al Jazeera's accusation that you're drunk on Zion and wine-washing the occupation. What do those phrases mean to you when you put your hand on a bottle of Israeli wine?

Well, first of all, Rabenu Simon, it is a thrill and a privilege to be hosted on your respected, sophisticated wine podcast. I'm regularly listener, and I always learn from you.

Thank you.

For me, quality grape growing and winemaking is simply much more than another Israeli startup nation agricultural innovation. The entire Israeli wine revolution, for me, is a sign of divine favor. What our tradition calls a siman muvak, a stark undeniable indication of support for the heavens. Now, when our enemies seek to strip us of any indigenous identity in this land, one of the ways they're doing is by attacking our wine industry. There's a phrase in the anti-Israel world called pinkwashing, where they accuse Israel of using its liberal approach to minority rights, including gay rights, as a way of washing, covering up its sins of Zionism. So Al Jazeera created this term, wine washing on my back, as if I am trying to cover up the sins of Israeli Zionist enterprise by pointing to its fantastic advances in the world of wine.

So you grew up in North America and made Aliyah a few decades ago. How has that journey shaped the way you see Israeli wine compared to, let's say, classic French or California? Benchmarks.

So I've been fortunate to live here in Israel now for 35 years. Raised our family here. Lots of kids and grandkids, thank God, including sons and sons-in-law who've done many, many days of military duty. Meiluim over the line. I have two sons on their fifth tour of reserve duty right now. And I'm basically a yeshiva boy. I studied at Yeshivot Hakotel and Haratzion, hesder yeshivas. I was fortunate to learn directly with the late great Rabbi Shaiel Adari at Yeshiva Hakotel and Rav Aharon Lichtenstein at Yeshiva Hakotel. And when I came here and got into the defense and foreign affairs world, which is what I do professionally, run a think tank here in Yerushalayim. I also began to tour the country and I became somewhat of a tour guide and you meet, inevitably you meet the flora and the fauna everywhere. And then I moved at some point from Jerusalem to our neighborhood of Nofa Yalon, which is adjacent to Modi'in. And my next door neighbor became one of Israel's top winemakers. His name is Shiki Ralph Berger, today the chief winemaker of Tepperberg. He's sort of one of the grand old men, the grand wise old men of the Israeli wine industry. And I started following Shiki around and he introduced me to the world of Israeli wines. And much later, a couple of years ago, I went and studied professionally through the WSET, the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust based out of London. I'm a level 3. Accredited wine aficionado. Very cool.

So when you host visitors from abroad on your tours, what's the single biggest mental shift you try to trigger in them and how they think about Israeli wine?

I love to generate among my friends and people that I guide here the sense of amazement at the divine bounty that God has given us through the world of wine. And what I'd like to do today with you and with our listeners is take us on a journey. A journey through Jewish thought about wine and the drinking of wine, a journey that inevitably is also a Zionist adventure because everything in the Torah is really rooted in the land of Israel. It's a journey that will take us from the Bible to the Talmud, from theology to halacha, from the Ginosar Valley in the Galil to the mountains of Binyamin, from Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden, into Jewish mysticism, and from Shabbat to Purim. And we can divide our learning, because this is how I view this, this is Torah learning, this session, into 4 parts. First being the biblical prophetic foundations of wine. Second being the halachic world. Third, agricultural and theological whisperings in Jewish tradition relating to wine. And fourth is the mystical Kabbalistic layers relating to wine that run very deep in our tradition. Cool.

I'm looking forward to the journey.

Fantastic. So let's begin.

Okay.

As I said earlier, Jewish tradition has this phrase, siman muvak, a stark divine undeniable indication of support from the heavens. And when you look back into the Bible, you see right away that wine as a sign of the great bounty of the land of Israel is rooted in our forefathers, Jacob. Our forefather Yaakov blesses his son Yehuda by telling him that there will be so much wine in his portion in the Land of Israel that he will wash his clothes, his garments, with wine and his eyes will be shot red with wine. And already in the early monarchy periods, in the time of Shlomo HaMelech, King Solomon, Torah tells us that vayeshev Yehuda v'Yisrael avetach ish tachat, Dei natov ishtachat kafno, a very famous phrase that from, you know, from Dan to Beersheva, every man dwelt safely under his vine and under his fig tree. And we know from archaeology and from history that there were hundreds of ancient wine presses that have been discovered from that time and wine storage and foray from the First and Second Commonwealth periods. But of course, after the destruction, of the Second Temple. Jewish agriculture and viticulture in this country, you know, went to rot, went into decline. And in the 7th century, the Muslims literally ripped every vine out of the ground in this country, and they put an end to wine production for hundreds of years. And the land of Israel lay desolate. Now, this is prophetically prophesied. This is prophesied by the Bible over and over again in the prophecies of the prophecies of destruction that appear in Yirmiyahu, Jeremiah, and in Hosea. The desolation of the land of Israel relates to wine and olives and relates to figs. Assef Asifei Nu'mashem, one of the most horrible haftorot that we read during the summer, during the period of mourning over the destruction of the Temples, it's all about ein anafim, Anavim begefen, ve'enteinim beteinah. There's nothing left. There's no fruit of the vine left in the ground. And there are many, many psukim like this, to the point where Nachmanides, the Ramban, comments that the prophecy in the Torah that v'shamamu alecha oivechem hayashvim bat, the land of Israel will be desolate and our enemies will be astonished at how desolate it is. He says that is the ultimate expression of the destruction of the Land of Israel, but it also gives us the glimmer of hope because the Ramban points out that no one else will settle the land. G-d will never allow any enemy to truly make the Land of Israel blossom the way it had in the time the Jewish people were the, were the sovereigns in this country. And that brings us to the great famous prophecies of Yechezkel, where Yechezkel says that there's a time coming. Yechezkel says, God tells Yechezkel to tell the people, the mountains of Israel, Va'atem harei Yisrael, anfachem ti teinu ufir yachem ti sel am Yisrael ki kervavot. Mountains of Israel, you get ready. The Jewish people are going to be returning and you have to be ready I'm to grow again and to yield your fruit to my people Israel for their soon coming. And the Gemara says, the Gemara on Sanhedrin, Rabbi Abba says, famous Gemara, on this phrase, Ein lecha ketz meguemizeh, there is no greater revealed sign of redemption than the agricultural reblooming of the land of Israel. Famous, famous phrase in the Gemara. And you reach the point where In halacha already, there are expressions of this, that the Bach, which is one of the most famous commentaries on the Torah, or HaChayim, on the Shulchan Aruch, says that when you eat fruit of the Land of Israel, specifically grapes, but not only, the Shechina, the Divine Presence, not only reenters the Land of Israel, but it reenters our soul. That you can ingest a divine presence by eating the holy fruits of the Land of Israel. So as I say, this is all part of our return to the Land of Israel. Almost as if the heavens have commanded the long-dormant and deep-rooted vineyards of Israel to grow. It's as if the land has awoken from hibernation, as if the roots have stretched their arms, stretched their roots, and smiled, and turning dusty, nearly dead Israel into a verdant agricultural world superpower.

You know, it's— I've seen that with my own eyes. We have a close friend, I have a close friend who has a winery up north next to Itamar called Tom, Tom Winery. He took an area, a new area of ground, and watered it. And all of a sudden, out of the ground started to grow gefen and hitah. This is ground that is absolutely desolate to your eye. As soon as he started to water it, and as soon as it was a Jew who was watering it, all of a sudden, all of this, all of this started coming out of the ground. And it's just sitting dormant, waiting. For somebody to come along and water it. It's just— I remember seeing it and crying because it was just so beautiful.

There's a beautiful story told by Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan, who was the son of the Netziv, the Netziv of Volozhin. Back in the spring of 1893, the first bottles of wine from Carmel Winery in Israel reached Poland. Now these were the last months of the Netziv's life. He had moved from Volozhin, he was in Warsaw, which is where he passed away. And despite his physical sickness, he received his first bottle of Israeli wine. And Rav Meir Bar Yohan describes that the Nasi'v's eyes brightened and shone with joy and he said, thank G-d that we have merited to drink the wine of Eretz Yisroel, a vine planted by Jews in the Land of Israel, and it is a great merit to eat from this fruit, and he made a bracha, he made a shehecheyanu, on enjoying the fruits of the land, and this continued for several days. Today we take it for granted that we eat the fruits and drink the wine of the land of Israel, but that passage about the Nitziv in 1893 is a reminder for what, for what us, for us it's a daily reality, but it's a fulfillment of both prophecies and dream. I had a friend and mentor here in Jerusalem, the late great Rabbi Shalom Gold, New York, Toronto, and for many years, Charnov. Rabbi Gold had an incredible line. He said that if you want to pray to G-d, you want to speak to G-d, go to the Kotel. If you want to see G-d, go to the shuk in Machaneh Yehuda and see the fruits and the vegetables of the land of Israel. Yep. It's true. It's very true. Very true.

There's a prophecy that says, that in the future Jerusalem, older men and women and children will be dancing in the streets of Jerusalem.

Correct.

Okay. I never realized until this last time I finished Makot that those children dancing in the streets are my children and grandchildren.

We live in historic days. We're so privileged.

It's an unbelievable time.

So privileged to be living in this generation as opposed to 80 years ago in Europe or 400 years ago in Poland. Which brings us to the theological part of the conversation that I want to get into. In Jewish thought, we seek throughout our lives to bring the divine presence into this world. We seek to make our lives holy. And that's not possible, according to core Jewish theology, when sadness and pain is the primary experience that one has. Holiness is only possible when you're happy. This goes back to the Temple times.

Prophecy, everything.

It goes back to prophecies. V'Yayin ismach levav enosh latzil panim Hashem, this is a famous phrase from Psalms, from Tehillim, that wine makes the heart of man glad, making the face even brighter than oil. And hamasamech Elokim van Hashem, it's the phrase from the book of Avoshotim, that wine cheers man in God. And the Talmud, actually Puskins decides, and this is where we get Kiddush and the use of wine for all our ritual events. She'en omrim shira ela al hayayin. You can't really give thanks to G-d unless you have a kos shel bracha, a goblet, a glass of wine that represents the bracha that G-d gives us in this world. And therefore all our ritual life cycle events, as you well know, are focused on wine. Now, this also comes through, and people don't notice this, through the cycle of holidays throughout the year. There are several references in Tanakh to the fact that when the harvest was celebrated, the grape harvest, they went out to the fields and they held a festival, they held a celebration. And there are some psukim, particularly in Yeshayahu, where multiple expressions of joy are used. There's a famous pasuk in Yeshayahu, this is from Parashat Tetzayin, the 16th chapter, 17th chapter, that pasuk talks about how they would go out into the fields to harvest their grapes and, "Me'rananim umiri'im tz'akim," they sing out, They shout out through joy, gil, exaltation, hilulim, jubilation, khilu milashon khilu, and khilulim, festive cries, heydad, which is a cry of hooray, zemer, which of course is song, and naval, which is a word that is both used for a harp and it's the word used for a leather pouch or a flask of wine. A navaal of wine. The whole concept is that around the harvesting of grape to produce wine, there's tremendous joy, tremendous celebration. There's a great passage in the journal of one of the first wineworkers who worked for Baron Rothschild back in 1890 at his first new winery in Richefontaine, and they took in their first harvest. The guy's name was David Yudilevich. He wrote a journal and he describes how the bell rang at 4 AM to wake up the army of young men, women, and children armed with pruning shears, and their carts overflowed with grapes began streaming into the crushing vats. And they all sang, "Awaken, O people of Israel, your youth has returned to the land, your redemption is near," followed by song and dance. There's a festival around the harvest of, of grapes. Now it's more than that. There are 4 basic agricultural products that the, the Bible emphasizes over, over again, and they're tied to our 4 major holidays. There is, of course, oil, which is tied to the Festival of Sukkot. There is barley tied to the Festival of Pesach. Wheat tied to the festival of Shavuot. Where does wine come in? Wine has a holiday, Tu B'Av. Yeah. Tu B'Av. And it goes much deeper than the fact that they went out into the fields and the women would dance and the men and women would find their shiduch. The notion being that around the harvesting of grapes became a festival of celebration towards G-d. And the Torah takes this one step further by tying that to our most basic relationships. What are our two most basic relationships in this world? One is the relationship between man and woman, and the other between man and G-d. Torah says about the relationship between man and woman, ishtecha kegefen beitecha, ishtecha kegefen poriah beyarkatei beitecha, banim kishtiwei zeytim saviv shul chonecha, your wife is like a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house, and your children are like olive plants gathered around your table. So the most basic familial relationships are metaphored into wine and the olive harvest. And the same thing in terms of the relationship between man and G-d. Another pasuk in Tehillim, this is Tehillim pei, 80th chapter of Psalms. Hakim tzvaot shuvna habed mishamayim ureh ufgod gefenzot v'chanasha anatai minechal ben imatz talach, We ask God, we beseech God, that He should look down from heaven and be mindful of His vine, of His stock, which He Himself planted. That's the Jewish people. We are His stock. We are the vines that He planted, the branch that He's made strong for His own glory, for His own name in the world. That's the Jewish people. So again, the relationship between man and woman, between man and God, is expressed through the vine.

Through the vines.

This takes us to perhaps the mystical or Kabbalistic part of our conversation. I'm looking, you're pointing to a Kabbalistic candelabra chart that's up on the wall here, just behind me. I'm not at that level of Kabbalistic understanding, but let's start with the basics. There are dozens of tales, myths if you want, in the Talmud about the magical properties of the fruits of the land of Israel, particularly grapes, and particularly from the Galilee. There's a valley in the Lower Galilee, the Valley of Ginosar, attached to the Kinneret. And there are dozens of tales about the magical properties of the fruits, particularly the grapes of Ginosar, so much so that at one point, Talmud says they banned the sale of these fruits in Jerusalem during the festivals because people were coming for the Shalosh Regalim, they were coming up to Jerusalem, and they're saying, we're going to Jerusalem so that we can buy the fruits of the Valley of Ginosar, instead of saying we're going to Jerusalem in order to commune with God. That's how powerful these grapes were and these other fruits. And there's also stories about how people literally got spiritually drunk. By ingesting these magical fruits from, from Ginosar, there's stories about, the famous story about the four rabbis who saw dawn breaking over the Kinneret and over the escarpment of the Golan, and they made this into a parable about the coming of Messiah, that this is the way the Messiah will come, bit by bit, slowly, slowly, as the first light appears. And then the dawn breaks and then the sun becomes strong the same way. They say that wasn't bikat Kinosar, that was in the valley of Kinosar. So there's all sorts of mystical traditions around that. And as I said, to the point where there are halachic authorities who say that ingesting the holy fruits of the land of Israel brings the Shechina into our life. Now you take this a step further, it brings us back to the Garden of Eden. There are 4 opinions in the Gemara as to what was the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, good and bad. Eitzadat tovarah. One of them even says it was bread. Ready-formed, fresh French loaves of warm bread. But the dominant opinion is that the forbidden fruit of the Itzadat Ovarah, the Tree of Knowledge, good and bad, was grapes. And that Eve picked grapes, squeezed them, made wine from it, and that's what she gave to her husband to eat, essentially, to drink. Now, what's the essential story from the Jewish theological perspective there? There was a world prior to the sin. In the Garden of Eden, which was perfect. Perfect in the sense that knowledge of God was the only thing that existed in the world. There, there was no confusion between good and evil. Sinning by eating the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, good and bad, brought confusion into the world. They brought bad into the world, brought confusion. That's the world we live in today. Our aspiration is to return to a world where there is no confusion between good and evil. Where only G-d's presence reigns dominant. Man communes with G-d, seeks to draw inspiration from Him, to obey His commands, and be raised from a spiritual and conscious point of view to a world where there is no evil. That's the story behind Purim. Because the Purim story is about confusion of good and evil. About this great empire where they got drunk all the time. Every major decision in the story of Purim was made while they were in the midst of some wild drunken party, which also involved prostitution and all sorts of lewdness. Our work, the work that we go through, that we try to put ourselves through on Purim, is that we seek to reestablish the boundaries between good and evil, to discern where evil ends and to knock it out. We seek to eliminate Haman, we seek to drown out, we seek to make noise to drown out the name of Haman and everything that he represents, what's known as the Amalekite influences in this world, and to clear a path towards a world where there's nothing but knowledge of G-d. Nothing but the good that existed in the Garden of Eden prior to the sin. That's where wine comes in. Because drinking wine has this incredible property, as we all know. It can, it can knock you out completely. It could make you go nuts. You can become drunk. And do the worst things. Or it can elevate your consciousness to a place of clear thinking. In other words, instead of the shushan world, the Purim world of drunkenness and bloodthirsty passions and atheistic creeds, instead we elevate our thoughts to a perfected world where G-d's presence is overwhelmingly dominant. That's the concept of Ad Eloyada. Of drinking to the point where the arrogance of the supposedly superior world, what's today sometimes called the enlightened world, which can be extremely fascist or Marxist, that world is tempered by mind-bending drink and we erase the gap between good and evil that distances us from God. We try to efface, erase the Amalekite influences in our world, and then we're able to connect to the whispers of Divine communion that run through the universe. So therefore, we raise a glass, we say l'chaim, to life, we express our determination to strive for the good, and we articulate our desire to reveal the Divine values embedded in Torah and the eternal ideas latent in Jewish history. And this is a reminder to us that Judaism is not ascetic. Jewish life is meant to be lived through bounty and beauty and joy. And if you channel that delight through the right spiritual principles, it can lead to true cleavage, to true dveikut, cleavage to G-d. And that's what halacha tries to do, to channel our behavior through the correct kavanot, thoughts and intentions. That's why we have mandatory blessings over food. That's why we have unique blessings over wine, both before and after, as you all know. And that's why we have this unique holiday of Purim, where, as I said, we seek to erase the artificial, dangerous blockages between us and G-d, using this special, intoxicating properties of our holy fruit, the fruit of the vine.

Awesome. I love it. And now I realize where wine critics come from. They come from the original sin of drinking from that tree. And all of a sudden, instead of things being good and evil, all of a sudden we have critics. Subjective critics.

We don't know whether the wine from that first, in that first glass, from Eitz Hadath Tovrah was red or white. By the way, there are authorities in our tradition who say that Eretz Zavat Chalav U'Dvarshth, that Israel being a land of milk and honey, means white wine and red wine.

Cool.

That's a cool combination.

And there's a famous Gemara in Eruvin, I always like this, where Rabbi Nachman, who was a judge, had a couple drinks early in the morning before ascending the bench. And he was criticized by his colleagues. How can you drink before sitting down to be a judge in court? And Rav Nachman says, ana ko kama de lo shatina reviata de chamra, lo tzalaydatei. He says, any day I don't have at least a rivit, a basic amount of wine, my mind is not clear. He used wine in moderation to clear his mind and to connect to the right spiritual principles that would allow him to judge effectively.

Awesome. I thank you very much for joining me.

As I said, for me, and I try to transfer this, convey this to people who I guide through the wines and the valleys and the mountains of the Land of Israel, there are so many layers of deep meaning and spiritual striving in the wine world of the land of Israel. It is indeed a siman mufak, a stark, undeniable indication of God's favor to the Jewish people in this generation. And the Al Jazeera types who accuse us of being drunk on Zion, well, they're right. We are drunk on Zion. By the way, that's the tagline on my website. Davidmweinberg.com, Drunk on Zion.

I love it. I absolutely love it. Toda. Thank you for joining me.

V'akasha.

Pleasure. Shalom, Abracha.

This is Simon Jacob again, your host of today's episode of The Kosher Terroir.

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