Hanukkah Themes with Kosher Wine Pairings and the Legacy of Rav Shagar

Welcome to The Kosher Teruah. I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. Before we get started, I ask that wherever you are, please take a moment and pray for the safety of our soldiers and the safe return of all of our hostages. This being the beginning of Hanukkah, we decided to celebrate the beginning of the holiday with a collaborative crossover episode with the team at the Parsha Wine Club podcast. The following conversation is all about sharing some especially selected wines, along with some especially selected Torah thoughts, specifically for Hanukkah. Joining us on the podcast today from Jerusalem, Ariehiel Chovav and Yitzchak Stern from the Weekly Parsha Wine Club podcast. Also, our guest Torah scholar, Levi Morrow, and myself, Simon Jacob. If you are in your car, please focus your attention on the road ahead. If you are comfortably at home, please select a delicious bottle of kosher wine, sit back and enjoy our wonderful Hanukkah Party Podcast. Which podcast are we going to do this from?

I actually feel like this should stay in. We will do it from both.

Okay, yeah, I was planning to do it from both.

I think just say, welcome to yours, and then I will say, and.

Yeah, okay, great.

I think you always add on the— One second, one second. You add on the intro afterwards, like he explains the intro and then I will say there is a collaboration with.

One second, one second.

It is a crossover. Are you going to say, welcome to our—

It is a crossover episode.

It is.

Say, welcome to a crossover episode.

Um, not that one. Well, should we use the music from what you call it? Hold on.

We don't have music, so if you want to use music, we need to get something.

Yeah, we definitely need to get something. Anything black?

This is from Under the Vines, from the TV show Under the Vines, from, from New Zealand.

So what we originally wanted to do for the Parsha thing Yeah, was to record the sound of flipping through pages on a book and then a clink of a glass.

Yeah, that's like, just like a clink was so loud.

The clink was too loud. We tried, we tried recording the thing and then we couldn't get it. We needed like the flipping and then the recording. We're just gonna have somebody do it for us.

Well, hold up one of the books and flip through it and then we'll clink the glasses. Come on, you can do it.

Yeah, and then we'll record this and have it for all our intros.

No, you got to click it near it.

Really?

The other option was like this.

Okay.

All right, we have options.

Okay. Okay, so we've got a whole group of people here today, so I'd like to welcome you all to the Kosher Terroir.

It's great to be here.

And, and the crossover episode with the Parsha Wine Club podcast.

Pleasure. Really great. It's great having us all together here. And now we might even get through a bottle.

I have a feeling that that's true.

That's in the works.

So we should say everyone who's here.

Yes. So do you want me to announce each person?

We'll start with you.

We have our host, Simon Jacob from Jerusalem.

Simon Jacob from Jerusalem. Simon Jacob. Yeah.

I started, so you got to—

And then, um, Yechiel Chovav. I will actually— this is a good way for me to say this. Last time I was on the podcast, that was not my name.

Okay.

I was Yechiel Wolgo. My wife and I decided to make a Hebrew name. If you have more questions about that, you could message me privately. But my name is now Yechiel Chovav, and I host the Parsha Wine Club podcast with Yitzchak Stern.

Real pleasure. And we have a guest.

Very special guest.

Levi Morrow.

Excellent.

Yes, I think it's a little bit your party tonight.

Fine.

Yes.

Okay, so I, yeah, I guess I had the idea for this episode because, so on the Parsha Wine Club podcast, every week Yitzchak and I, we pair a wine with the Parsha. Um, we decided we want to do a bonus Chanukkah episode. Additionally, recently, Levi, who is amongst other things Simon's son-in-law, so they know each other, They've met. He recently released a translation he made of Rav Shagar's holiday drashos, which has a big section on Hanukkah. We could talk about that a lot more later because there's a whole— we both brought the Hebrew copy, the Hebrew book, which is like a whole volume just on Hanukkah in Hebrew. So I figured we could just all come together, pair some wines that we think pair well for Hanukkah, hear some of Levi's background and how he got to Rav Shagar, Here's some Chanukah Torah from Léviat, from Rosh Chagat. Excellent.

Sounds great.

One big party.

Awesome.

And as we would say, shtayim selos, shagad.

Oh my God.

So he does this to me all the time. Him and my wife actually conspire against me to have— how they can think of like the worst dad joke for him to tell me in every episode.

It's become quite the staple in the Parsha Wine Club.

Yes.

We probably get more comments and feedback about good jokes.

You are the only commentator that, Simon.

As opposed to the wine.

Well. I spent all this time wrangling about Torah, and then everyone's like, oh, that was a good pun by Yitzchak. Great.

Thank you very much.

I think we should start with wine.

Yes, I think we should too. So because of Hanukkah, we've got two wines. So we're going to start with that white. Well, we have whites and a red. But this white is produced by Vitkin Winery, and it's called Maccabael, which I think for the Maccabim is probably a A cute name. I remember last year I brought it up in a Facebook post, but then Yechiel had to, you know, top me.

It wasn't really topping you because I sent it to you in a private message.

Okay, I thought you sent it.

I sent it in a private message and then you posted it.

Yeah, because I thought it was really good.

So we'll get to that one later, the one that I suggested. I haven't had this yet.

So you need to.

Yes.

I think, you know what, I really want to taste it first. There's a reason why I want to taste it first. Let's just see.

So I've had Macabeo from Spain.

That's perfect. It looks good. It'll be fine. It'll be good. Here, I can pour you a wine.

Vida Memorias has a few kosher Macabeos from Spain. I've never had this one. It's also a winery exclusive and I haven't made it up to the winery yet.

It's awesome. That has so much acidity. It is, it is, it has an incredible kick. Um, Avi Davidovitz and myself made a a wine called ASAP, white one called ASAP. And to be quite honest, it was a wonderful blend, but the thing that kicked it over the top was the macabeo that was added to it.

So I just want to point out, like, this is a 2019.

Yeah.

Um, it does not taste like a 2019. For those who don't know, it's 2024 right now.

And tastes super fresh.

It's crazy. Like, how much acidity it still has.

No, no, it's, it's, it's an amazing wine.

I think it's like 2 barrels or something, right?

Well, isn't that cool?

Yes.

Oh, you're doing your— the acidity test.

I got it from Michiel. Yeah, as Michiel likes to mention, his level 3 WSET teacher was a master of wine.

It was It was cool. There's only 417 in the world.

I think there, what is it? There are more people have flown to outer space than have passed that test.

That would attract me if that's true.

And the test has been around a lot longer than space exploration.

As this is, yeah. So what do you think the acidity is? This is a—

You know the actual answer?

No.

In terms of what?

I mean, I only know in terms of like measuring for WCT. I mean, this is high acidity. This is high acidity.

Yes.

Which is surprising to have it So Isaac made a face because he's saying that maybe it didn't last as long in his mouth, but it's the first thing I taste is the acidity.

So no, yeah, putting out the high taste. It also— but as far as making me water, maybe it's because it's still so cold. My mouth isn't like watering up like crazy like I would from some other higher, like, high acid wines.

It's not— it's how long it makes it water.

I know.

Yeah, this is getting so technical. Levy, welcome to Wine Nerdum.

All nerding out over something, one thing or another. Yes, it's okay.

I mean, it's so good though.

Have we ever come to like a conclusion on where Maccabeho got its name?

No. And I can't imagine that it didn't come from Israel.

It wouldn't shock me if it— okay, so we were not— Levi, sorry, not you, but the rest of us in this room were at Kvot last week, and Shivi's like— Shivi Dori, the winemaker there, is very adamant that like that winemaking started parallel here and in Georgia, the country, not the state, around the same time. I mean, it wouldn't shock me. I don't— I've heard people actually say Maccabeus from the Maccabees, which is— I'm not buying it a little bit.

I— okay, it wouldn't be strange if it was originally from Israel and it was just pulled there. It was pulled into Europe.

Some version of it.

Yes. But the other thing is that I mean, the Chardonnay one is like—

I, I—

that's like a—

that one bothers me.

No, that's, that's like, I think, one of these, um, you know, old wives' tales, wishful thinking.

And I was going to say old wives' tales, but old wives aren't this annoying about wine. I know, it's okay. The old husband's tale. Yes, I've seen people say it seriously. Yeah, yeah, they say it's like, like, yeah, and it's like No, it isn't.

It's because—

could be, but yeah, this is really cool. I love this wine.

It's—

yeah, and I love everything that, you know, let me try to be a little bit articulate. Um, I love everything that I've— we've—

when we've tried to blend things with it, it just is because it can add a backbone.

It adds incredible um, sparkle to whatever wine you add it to. It's a great wine for blending.

I love that you're saying that now to me today, because today was the first time that I was in the room for blending whites at work. Yeah, because I got hired at Agour. Well, actually, last time I was on this podcast was at Jerusalem Wineries, where I'm still sommelier technically. But afterwards, I went with Simon to Agour, which is a winery I'm a big fan of. Arguably my favorite winery. I don't know who's arguing what my favorite winery is, but if one were to argue, Agourvy towards the top.

Um, it's one of my favorites. Yes.

So I went with Simon and I got hired purely off enthusiasm to the, if you listen to that episode, you just hear me giggling in the background the whole time. Yeah.

But, but it was like that.

Yeah.

But it was, we were trying, we were trying stuff and it was just like off the charts.

It was, yeah. So I'm now on the winemaking team there and today was my first time doing blending for whites. And that's just cool to see y'all do it, but also I could like— I very much see what something like this could— we don't have anything that's a single varietal category, so I could see like what a y'all would play with this.

Yeah, it's crazy. I'm telling you, I, I could— I watched what Asaf Paz was doing with it and it was, um, it was just amazing. It adds sparkle to, to whites, really, really Really does.

It's all— he's also— Asaf is— so I recently did a little write-up on the Carignan, the second Carignan, because I had the 2018, which is ridiculous, by the way. If anyone can— if anyone has any of those, they're— it's so good.

Yeah.

And so I was talking to him about it a little bit, and just like, one thing I really love about Asaf is his— he— any varietal he's working with He really understands it. It's like, there's no— it's so exact and so—

yeah, he just came to wine. He really didn't have a background except he worked in a place called, um, Ponte Cana.

Well, I say famously because I heard it on your podcast.

Yeah, but he's— he, you know, like, he's had incredible background and he's just— he's quiet and Very interesting.

He's so nice also.

He's a really good guy. Yeah, this— we, we all happen— no, we all happen to know a bunch of incredibly nice—

in Israel especially—

winemakers, especially in Israel, right?

It is very— I can tell you that I work in the industry here. Like, it's, it's funny because sometimes people I know, like, like their friends or family would be like, aren't they your competition? Like, why are you so— like, we'll have winery— like, during the harvest, I remember there was— Eyal was like, are you still at the winery? It's like, yeah, because some winery didn't have enough of a certain piece of equipment and they just came, borrowed ours, whatever. And like, it wasn't— there's no second thought put into this, right? Like, it's a lot of information is shared, a lot of equipment to share. Like I said, it's, it's whenever I go to wineries now and like, Rick, I know people now from the industry, it's just like, it's like almost like a family reunion. Wine festivals especially feel like a family reunion.

I feel like it's cool, it's really fun, but Okay, so that was the first wine for our tasting.

For our Hanukkah.

So do we want to get into a little Torah?

I think, so I actually, I think before we get to the Hanukkah Torah, we'll introduce Levi a little more. Please. So first, Levi, if you want to tell us what your day job is, what your, I don't know, just more about you.

Yeah, I'm from Southern Los Angeles. I've been lucky to live in Israel almost 15 years and be a member of Simon's family for about 10, a little more. I work most of the week, I work part-time at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and then I teach one day a week at Yeshiva Torah Reyta. I spend a lot of time taking care of my kids, ages 2 through 7.

Yes.

So, I have a few questions for you about your book and Rav Shagar in general. So the question I want to know the most is actually the fact that you said, I believe, I don't know if you wrote it in here or if I saw you write it on social media, that you went through like 3 different publishers in 7 years or something, but we'll get to that. So first I want to ask you is how you first got to Rav Shagar. So because in Israel he's fairly well known in certain communities, like there's probably like 25 seforim now of his on every topic, like Gemara, Shiurim, Halacha. Like, there's one— there's a sefer for every chag. There's books on chassidus for him, like running commentaries. And he really— because the term is actually— this works for wine. He was very much an ish ashkolot, which is—

that's interesting—

which is a term. It emerges ish ashkolot, ish kol bo, but ashkol also means cluster of grapes.

In English, we'd say a Renaissance man.

Yes, but doesn't—

that's not the same.

It's not the same.

But maybe a word on his history and biography is in order, people know what we're talking about. So, Rav Shagar, Rabbi Shimon Kershon Rosenberg, before he was ever a rabbi, he was Shagar. He was in high school.

Yeah, the teacher called him that, right?

His friends called him that. They saw it on his tallit bag, the acronym for his name, so he became Shagar. He was born in 1951 and passed away in 2007. He was a man of yeshivas. He learned in Kerem Beyavneh at a very young age. He was teaching at Yeshiva Hakotel. He was acting Rosh Yeshiva for a year when he was 32 in 1982 to '83. He was a Rosh Beit Midrash in some other institutions including the religious film school here in Yerushalayim, Ma'aleh.

He also founded a yeshiva for like 3 years with Rav Steinsaltz and Rav Fruman.

Yeah, Shefa. It was called Shefa because of Steinsaltz, Fruman, Shagar, Fruman, Adin, Rav Steinsaltz. And that was called Mekor Chaim officially, and eventually sort of shut down and became today's Mekor Chaim Yeshiva high school.

Yeah, but Shefa is the— is the Steinitz Institution.

And then he eventually founded in 1996 Yeshiva Tziach, now Yeshiva Tziach Yitzchak, in the northern Efrat area. That's where he was Rosh Yeshiva from then until he passed away. And he, like I said, he was a man of yeshivas. He was in a yeshiva environment all his life.

He also studied, I think, by Shlomo Fisher for a while.

Yes, in Yeshiva Itzri. There's a couple of short biographies in the fronts of some of his books. Fascinating sort of life story moving around to different places. He is sort of in that way, something of a man of contradictions. He learned with Fisher and on the COVID of Living Time, the new book of translations, he's got his black hat on and I think he has a sweater. He wears a frock in some photos.

I will say this is very inside baseball, but the way— so it would look heretic to someone who I guess doesn't think about this stuff way too much, doesn't— but the way he has his shirt on is the America's a Rav way. Yeah, the cut, the white collar over the black suit is the America's a Rav way.

Um, yeah, but he said he— what is— what he's most known for, uh, and this will eventually come around to how I got in him, is his interest in, um, general philosophy in general. Like, he was was in yeshivas, but he wanted to read anything he could get his hands on, anything that got translated into Hebrew. He was having his students who went to university, like, bring him textbooks and stuff to read. And so he's most particularly known for his interest in postmodernism, which I think is a little bit of a red herring for understanding him, but that's what he's most famous for.

100%. I will say that—

Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You just mentioned a term that just went, whoosh, right past. 99% of the audience, what in the world is postmodernism?

It's a good question.

Great question.

Part of the problem is that it doesn't have a really good definition. Most— it's very rare to find someone who's going to say they believe in postmodernism or they're a postmodernist. Postmodernism is mostly a bad word people use. It's a name people call other people they don't like. So, okay, but people roughly mean by it. This is somewhere in where towards what Rav Shagar is trying to get at. You know, people mean nothing is true, there's no values or something like that, and Rav Shagar is going to try and thread the needle of what you might call nihilism or atheism or anything like that and not end up in that space, but he wants to like ask the questions of— and this is, he's a student of Rav Kook— of what does the manifestation of, uh, this is a societal belief. The fact that there are people talking about nihilism and postmodernism, is there some religious value that's being revealed in history like that?

He's very big on seeing— we'll get to this in a minute and something that Leiv and I discussed earlier— but he's very big on seeing, like, not just saying like, okay, this is reality, or in other words, certain changes happen in history it can be good or bad, but he is very big on seeing it as hashkacha. And then, okay, if this is hashkacha, what does this mean for us?

Levi, I actually really appreciate the idea of finding some sort of construct for that, because, I mean, my personal, you know, and you can cut this out afterwards if you want, but when I joined the army after yeshiva, I obviously was suddenly exposed to a much larger world and other worldviews, and I started developing some views of my own. And I got a lot of heat from guys back in yeshiva that said, "It's all postmodernism and you're becoming, you know, you're so influenced by postmodernism." And I was like, at one point I kind of grabbed one of my close friends by the shoulders and I said, "Explain to me what that word means." Because it's so widely used, but like you said, they're really— postmodernism, it's like a bad word, but there's no actual—

But you're saying, I just want to get it clear for the audience. Because I know Yechiel is light years ahead of where I am on this, but the question I have is when you are saying, when he is talking about things like atheism, that there is a hashkacha pratit, that people believe this way. Is that what you are saying?

Something like that. So he is, just to give a little background that might help, I think, with some easier examples at this point. 100, 150 years ago when you have Rav Kook, Rav Aharon Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, and he— one of the things he does in terms of his project as a rabbi and a teacher, a theologian if you want to get fancy, is to say the things we're seeing in the world right now— he identifies particularly atheism and secular Zionism, and secular Zionism not just as a phenomenon of people who don't believe, who are often anti-religious. He says, well, this is happening in history, and God is in charge of history, so what could be the divine value that's being revealed here? And Rav Kook says atheism has its own divine value in terms of purifying our religious beliefs and trying to move away from mistakes, but also secular Zionism in terms of their nationalism, who believe really deeply in the land and the Jewish people, people who believe in the value of freedom, which is a religious value. So Rav Kook was finding those religious values in the history and historical events of his time. And Rav Chaggar said, as a student or grand student of Rav Kook, how can I do that with the events of my time, which he identified with postmodernism, right? What is the value revealed that is somehow religious or divine in the fact that lots of people believe you can't prove anything is true, everything's just social constructs, there's no meaning. What about that could possibly have religious value? And that was the question he was asking.

Gotcha. That's much more clearly—

yes, but I would say that that goes back further. Even if you look in the Rambam, when he talks about Islam and Christianity, obviously in the time of the Rambam, both religions were giving Jews a very hard time. Now they're giving us an easy time, but you know, but he— so he says, but there's a great value in them and that they're teaching the world monotheism. So like, this is an idea— these are ideas that are not what we believe in at all, but there's something— there has to be something positive coming from this ultimately.

Otherwise, why would God allow it to happen, basically? Except that sometimes you need a bad example.

Well, obviously he's not— I mean, he's not— I would not categorize the Ramam as a fan of either of these religions, but No, it's just, it's just a different way of looking at things, I guess.

Got it.

But so, Levi, how are you— so like I said, in Israel he's fairly well known. In English, there's, there was some translations years ago that you can't get anymore, but there's one book that came out a few years ago of like collected essays that I have some issues with. People can message me about this offline or online, but not on the podcast, obviously. But until this sefer came out now, which has the Chagim ones, there's not much of it for the English public. So I guess I was asking, how did you get to him?

So I did my undergraduate degree at what's called Miklele Yaakov Herzog. It's a religious teaching college attached to the Hartzion Yeshiva, also known as Gush. So in my studies at Herzog, I eventually took a course on Rav Chagar, but that was well after I was acquainted with him. I had a few teachers who just like in an offhanded way mentioned This is the only rabbi who ever took seriously postmodernism, really dealt with it in a serious way. I'm fresh out of yeshiva. I don't know anything about postmodernism except rabbis use the word to mean everything that's wrong with modern society. So, like, you're telling me there's one rabbi? I'm interested. I got to take a look. I'm going to read an essay or two. And something about his language and— well, I think I couldn't have picked it out at the time. I think there's a real sense of honesty and sincerity that I felt in his words, and it really grabbed me. It became almost everything I studied for most of a decade. I started— what turned out that some of the people who mentioned him were his students, and there were other students teaching at Herzog. I took their classes. I wrote my senior thesis on him, and then I wrote my master's thesis on Rav Chagar as well, and while I was finishing my first degree and working on my second, I started translating his essays, his drashot, for the Chagim. I should mention, in this context, Professor Alan Brill, who I met through Facebook, who was helpful in me making my way into Rav Shagar, and then he also initiated the translation project.

So, if you could— this is not really what next I want to ask, but I've just been wondering this— explain the fact that you said it took 7 years and 3 publishers.

Okay, so this is a mix of the way publishing works in general, And then just the— not translation errors— the communication breakdowns that happened over time, and the fact that this is a book of translations of essays that are, you know, have copyright owned by Rav Shagar's widow, Rabbanit Miriam, but also has, you know, under the authority of the Vatik Tavim, the institute for his writings. And so getting them to work with us took time, not because of any ill will, just as a process, and so while we were working on that, first we were thinking of going with a more academic publisher that Professor Brill knows, but then they wanted specifically Rushdiegarh's essays on Zionism, and he's sort of grappling with the state of Israel, and is it redemption? What does that mean?

By the way, there's a lot— it's very interesting stuff. There's so much of it.

And then when that was— we decided that wasn't the direction we were going to go in, we were working with were impressed. It was wonderful. I think we almost signed an agreement with them. We just were not quite there. And then the people who are in charge of Rav Chaggar's writings said, okay, so we're going to do this as a joint project now. We're all in. And we're going to go with Magid, Magid, who put out a first volume of translations in 2017 called Faith Shattered and Restored. And so we are going to put it out through them as like they should go together, just the best way to do it, which I think makes some sense.

It's also— I should say, I'm happy it's with them because it's so easy for people to get.

Yeah, this is the new volume called Living Time: Festival Discourses for the Present Age. Um, and that's two sentences that have like six people's handprints on them. Um, but, uh, is a collection of his drashot for all the chagim, uh, including, you know, we call it here in Israel, chagay iar, uh, Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron, Yom Atzmoutz. Yom Yerushalayim, and as well as something in here for, uh, for the Three Weeks. Um, it was a really excellent, like, full year collection. I'm very happy with it.

I mean, it is really good. I will say that I'm grateful that this exists because a certain relative of mine who I've been looking for something to have a chavruta with over the phone for a while has heard about Rav Chagar from me and from one of his brothers-in-law. So now that this— when he heard this exists, he went the next day and bought it, and now I learn with him, uh, once a week.

Amazing.

Yeah, it's very— I guess it's awesome. But I want to point out one thing that you said, that like I said, there's a volume for each chag. In Hebrew, there's a volume for each chag. We have the Chanukkah one here. There is one volume, like I said, from Moadei Iyar, which would never exist in an American— it's American Rabbi, really, but which covers all those things. I think I have another question for you on this, but I think we should go to the next wine.

Sure.

Because the next question is more loaded. So the next wine, so again, famously, as Simon said, last year you posted the Maccabeo for Hanukkah.

Yep. And Yechiel came right back and posted.

So I sent him a picture of this wine next to my wife's menorah. This is Bayakhovoria, who anyone who listens to Simon's podcast hears his name a lot. Because they are very close friends, to the point that Yaakov once made a wine based on a dream that Simon had about his father. This wine is called—

actually, two wines.

Well, right, it's a set.

Sorry, it's a set, but it's okay.

This wine is called in Hebrew Ohr Me'Ophel, and in English, Light from Darkness, which is perfect for Hanukkah.

It's absolutely perfect.

It almost writes itself. This is a blanc de noir, meaning a white wine from black grapes, meaning red wine grapes. This, if you want to go into the real details of Blanc de Noir, I'm going to plug myself here and say Itzik and I used the Blanc de Noir a few weeks ago on the Parsha Wine Club podcast for, I believe, the first episode. So that was actually for Toldot, which we did a few videos first on Instagram and Facebook, and then we did the podcast.

I remember that.

So Toldot, we did the first podcast we did was was a Blanc de Noir, so I explained it a little there. But briefly, basically, not the vast majority of black/purple grapes which I use for red wine have the colored skin, but the juice is essentially white, like a white wine. So if you take the first free run, meaning right when the juice starts coming out of the grapes before you really press them, it will be white. The way red wine exists is because the fermentation is with the skin. It gets color most importantly gets flavor and body from the skin and tannins from the skin, but also color. So in a blanc de noir, you're getting almost no color, and it's pretty cool cuz you get flavors of— they would associate with a red wine, but none of the heaviness. And Isaac pointed this out to me on the website, on Yoko's website. He says he really harvested it earlier, so it's gonna be a lot more sharp and acidic than you would— than a classic red wine. So, Chaim.

Chaim, tovim shalom. Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam et tova aneitiv.

I also love this wine.

This wine is super lovely.

I mean, this is kind of— the thing is, like, I could in theory be in the running for the biggest Yakovoria fan if your father-in-law didn't exist. Because there's no, there's no topping Simon in the Yakovoria fan club rankings. It's a lost cause, but it's so good.

This is what year?

This is '23.

This is '23.

Super interesting because it has more of like somewhere between, I want to say, like a very aged white or even an orange wine. Yeah, this is nothing like what you would get. It's not really a blondened wine, it's not a rosé. It's, it's a very, very interesting color. I mean, the grapes here are fascinating too because you have a great combination here of— here, look at this. You have, you have, you know, France, Spain, Italy.

What are the grape varieties?

Grenache.

We have Grenache, we have Mourvèdre, or Mouvèdre, Cinsault, and Barbera. He went all over with this one.

I really like, I really like this one.

This, this has, um, this has some skin contact. It has to from the process. Yeah, but it's so— it's got like some of the early beginnings of an orange, enough to make this white really interesting.

It looks like there's an amazing mouthfeel.

Yes, the mouthfeel is so silky. It's— yeah, it's beautiful.

I like the '22 a lot, the one that I sent you last year, Simon. But I think he's— I think this one's even better.

I think it's even better myself.

I don't remember what the blend was last year. I remember— I don't remember if it was the same one.

I don't think so. I don't think you had Barbera last year, and I, I don't think it also had the— what you call it— the, um Sinsault. Yeah, Sinsault. It's really, uh, I mean, it's got really genius. It's got really silky mouthfeel. It's wonderful.

It's funny, this is the second time we've used, like you said, the second time we've used the Blanc de Noirs, except that sometimes we'll take— for those who haven't seen it yet— sometimes we'll take like a very, the really obvious pairing, you know, like a wine called Jacob's Ladder, Jacob's Dream, for for, you know, Jacob's dream, or in this case, Hanukkah, light from darkness. Super easy, that's the title. But the first time we did it was like, you know, I mentioned in, uh, in Toldot, was the idea of a wine looking like one thing but in fact being something else. You know, a kol kol Yaakov, a day made of Esav, it was a red grape that became a white wine. Um, so I think it's cool that in this case we just went for the easy option.

So it's interesting because, um, one of Yaakov's other wines is, um, uh, which is— it's a rosé that was supposed to be a white. And rather than, uh, when he came out with the rosé, rather than saying, oh no, it was supposed to be a rosé, he just said, no, it wasn't. It was supposed to be a white, but it's as beautiful as a white. Yeah. And it's like, you grip it, it's pretty as the moon.

It's pretty. It's a great wine from experience. Something a little Tip out there for the husbands: great wine to buy for your wife's birthday. Okay, um, so I'm looking online for previous vintages of it. You know, like one year it was Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah, and Mourvèdre. Okay, so clearly, I mean, he's always tinkering, obviously.

No, he only puts blends together that he agrees with. He doesn't put them together— he'll put them together formulaically, like, this is what I want to get to. But he always will adjust based on, um, on what he's tasting. That's what he does.

That's what it is.

Well, so that's what SOB has been all along. Initially, when we started going down the path with this, I feel like you should explain what SOB is to those who don't know. Okay, Special Oreo Blend. It has no other connotation besides that.

No other acronym.

Yeah, no other acronym. The OU put a hashkafah on it, so that's it. But the thing that's cute with that is that initially, there was a group of us who spoke to Yaakov Ori and asked him, you know, we decided to get him to— I think the instigator behind it was a person by the name of Andy Sinton, who's a super person, and he basically caught wind that Yaakov would do a make a wine in the service winery for X amount. And that was well within the reach of our team. And he said, you know, like, if he'll do that for that amount of money, that's crazy. We should get him to make us a wine. So everybody, all hands went up. They said, yeah, great, thanks, Andy. Let's do it. Let's approach Yaakov. So he approached him and we told him what we wanted to do. And he said, Well, wait a second. In the service winery, you're giving me all the instructions. But we were asking him, look, we want you to make the best wine you can and we're giving you carte blanche to do it. So he said, if I'm the one who's responsible for buying the grapes and all the rest of that stuff, then it's not that price. But it wasn't much more. It was still well within the range of what we were thinking. It was actually wonderfully within within the range. So when we spoke to him and we asked him, "Okay, so think about it. This is what we'd like to do." And he said, "Okay, I'll do it." So we told him, you know, "Okay, have you come up with what you want to do?" And he promptly came back with 5 varietals that he was going to mix together. And all of us looked at each other and said, "That's nuts. This is going to be like a total mishmash." And he said, "No, no, it's a dream of mine to be able to do something like this." And he then, after he'd gotten the grapes and after he'd started the fermentations and what have you, we came back and had a tasting.

Actually, was it here?

Blending session in the house here. And it was absolutely off the deep end.

It's a solid wine.

It was, it— but it was the first time I've ever experienced, as we were putting pieces together, of a wine um, what complexity meant. Each varietal that we tasted tasted wonderful, and then as you mix them, we got things like complexity and, and, uh, really incredible, incredible things that the sum of the parts is, is, is nowhere close to what the whole ends up being. So it was very cool.

I'm happy to hear you say that because every time I've been— you've visited us at Agour. Yeah, you keep tasting barrels and saying, oh, you should bottle this alone. Yeah, well, then we make some crazy blend with it.

But that's what we did. Actually, we tasted each one and we said, this should be bottled alone, this should be bottled alone, this should be bottled alone. And then all of a sudden, Yaakov started saying, okay, let's take the first one and the last one and put them together and 'And what do you think?' And, and, 'Let's take 3 of them and put them together. What do you think?' And as we were building this, we were getting this depth and this richness in flavors, and again, this balance and complexity that was, you know, was far beyond any of the individual ones. So it's cool. It was an interesting experience. I'm very happy I lived through that experience. That was great.

So I've only had that wine with you.

Yeah.

I had it here.

Well, that's the '17, was the first one. There's an '18, '19, '20. So '20 is the last vintage that we made.

And so you continued being involved in all the vintages?

Everybody, yeah, the team did. Avi Davidovitz did a yeoman's job on it and everybody else pitched in and did quite good, you know, quite, an amazing amount of effort in, in different countries. Other people stepped up to the plate. Um, uh, Richard Davidoff in England really coordinated the whole English side of it, which was pretty huge. And, uh, we had a whole group of people in America who bought into it as well. There's some great people in this business.

Yeah. Um, so I'm going to ask my next question to Levi, which I'm also I'm going to answer my own question eventually on this specific one. So this, this one, I gave him a heads up just so he could prepare, prepare a little bit. But I'm assuming— I think it's a fair assumption that most of the listeners of the podcast, this is basically their first introduction to Rav Chagar. Uh, so what would you say are some of your favorite either smaller— either small tidbits from him, or opposite, I guess, or bigger ideas that he has that you find unique to him and especially meaningful to you?

That's a good question, and I'm very glad that you gave me a couple days to prepare for it. Um, I want to start with a broad idea that comes up in a bunch of different contexts for him, and then talk about— go back to the postmodernism question and the way it applies for that. So the idea I have in mind is what's called in Hebrew, the way he says it is kabbalat atzmiy kichaser. Kabbalat atzmiy, self-acceptance, accepting myself, kichaser, as imperfect. Right, so kabbalat atzmiy, self-acceptance, is an idea he will come back to in a variety of contexts, but it relates to what I was saying before about, you know, if Hashem is in charge of history, then history looks the way it's supposed to look, and you you have to try and see God in that somehow. And the same thing is true of yourself. If you think you are failing and imperfect in some way, there's a standard you should be living up to that you're just not making it, then you are failing to see God in your own life and in your own existence. And Rosh Hashanah, you have to be able to recognize your flaws and the things you're not capable of. And not deny them, but also see that they're not, you know, a failure on the broadest sense, that on some level God wants you to be who you are right now. And to return to postmodernism, I can say this is also one of the things that really, you know, grabbed me and brought me into Rav Shagar's Torah, is the value, the primary value he finds in postmodernism is anava, is humility. He says that if the postmodern claim is that you can't prove anything, right, nothing is sort of knowable with certainty, maybe that's how it's supposed to be, right? Like, I— there's a certain point in my life where I was, I would say, wracked by doubts. I say wracked, there's this deep and uncomfortable emotional experience of doubt. And at some point in learning Rav Shagar, I realized, you know, and because he says that it didn't have to be uncomfortable to have doubts. It's okay to have doubts. In fact, he says there's a certain way of thinking about Hashem. He draws on Kabbalah and Chassidut, thinking about the most foundational layer of our engagement with Hashem as the Ayin, the metaphysical nothingness beyond everything. Hashem is just transcendent and beyond. If you think of Hashem as transcendent, and beyond our understanding, then it makes sense that you would never be able to reach certain knowledge about Hashem, because that wouldn't be knowledge of Hashem if it was final and certain. And then, as human beings, we're not capable of that sort of thing. So the ability to come to accept myself as a person who cares deeply about truth and is seeking truth and never going to find it in a final and certain way, is something that I took from Rav Shagar, is really important to me to this day.

So I'm a little bummed at how similar an answer I have, but I mean, that's— but you're also like the expert on this more than me. But for me, a lot of it is— we've been talking a lot about the history, the hashgacha history side of it, where for me specifically it's with Pesach. I actually recently sent Levi a list. I had this list that I compiled from all different sefarim of a few different places where he said from a few different perspectives about how a lot of times when changes happen in society and, and some poskim will just like sort of get boggled down about like dealing with like, is this good, is this bad? Rav Shagar is saying like, see the side of Hashem in this. Like, this is— these changes are happening because these are changes G-d wants to have. And then he says it from like the perspective of the Rambam, of Rav Kook, of Hegel, of the Maharal. Depends on which book, which sefer of his he's speaking. And he says it from so many perspectives. And in general, like Levi said, this idea of truth. But I feel like he's— I mean, everyone's obviously striving, in theory, striving for truth. It's even the name of a Rav Dessler book. But he is always asking, always asking questions of himself. I feel like he has a quote in one of his forewords where he basically says This is from Narech B'lagash, which is like a collection of essays they put out after he passed away, where he says, when you're doing something— this is technically my translation for an essay I was writing— but he says, how are you going to do it? In the name of what are you doing it? And for what are you doing it? Like, we don't just— in other words, always be questioning what you're doing, which goes back to original medieval Jewish philosophy where they say that like if you're just accepting that blindly, it's a lower form of understanding, etc. But he also holds this for the post-game, where he— like, in his, uh, perusha on the Kutim Ha'aran, he talks about how, like, Pesach has to have mercy in it. If you don't think you're going to benefit your, your congregants by giving them the Pesach, don't— then maybe don't give it. Like, um, it's just this— I, I wonder this a lot because he, he could come off as a little depressive at times, because I feel like it's because He's very hard on himself as a leader. But also, like Levi said, it's not depressing that leads you to like real— I don't ever leave sad when I'm reading his farm. It's always like just a— I really feel like it's like beautiful Torah and that he's really just like everything he knows, he's trying to funnel into this. I wouldn't even say one greater truth, but his greater truth. And I'll just finish on by saying that my, my relative I'm studying this with, I actually should I can't say this verbatim what he said, but he tried to read one of the Chanukah chapters before we learned it together. We started learning it together because he never— there's a lot of Kabbalah, a lot of chassidus, a lot of philosophy, and he had never learned any of this. But he said, he sent me a message, he goes, I've never not understood something and enjoyed it so much at the same time. And it's— I feel like I'm just going to say this to anyone who's trying to now, maybe now that we have this great English translation by Levi, who wants to maybe try to access it. It's not easy in Hebrew either because there's a lot of internal logic, and it's almost like you won't understand the first piece you read until you read the third piece, and then the way he speaks in the first one will make more— it's like, it is a labor, but I personally find it to be a labor of love to go through his, his stuff. I don't know, how did you feel the first time you read it?

I think I, I managed to start with some pieces that were more direct, uh, essays on postmodernism or that people recommended to me. So that was a good place to start. And then I moved more into, yeah, the drashot in particular. His drashot for the hagim are my favorite texts by him. That's why I translated a book full of them. They can be a little bit, yeah, his language that he's using, that's not always the most popular widespread language. Sometimes he's just, he'll say an idea in part in one place and more in another place. Baruch Hashem, I realized, I don't think I did this on purpose, but when I was re-editing the translations, I was like, oh, actually, there's a lot of connections between the drashot. A lot of the ideas come up again in multiple drashot. And so as you sort of learn them over the course of the year with the chagim, you'll come to the same ideas and be able to appreciate them more in a way that I think helps with reading the book. There are definitely a couple of essays in particular that are just harder. There's no question about it, but they're not all of them. Some of them are much easier. The first essay was actually one of the first things I ever learned from Rav Shagar, and it also is very powerful. But not philosophically complex.

Which one is it?

The one that Rav Elazar ben Dordaya, Hakol Tolei B, Hakol Einadavar Tolei Elohim B, it all depends on me in the English translation, which is about recognizing your own ability to take charge of your life and do teshuvah. But he puts it incredibly powerfully. And that one, I think part of the reason I'm happy it's the first essay is you don't need any philosophical background to get it. You shouldn't be running to Wikipedia to look stuff up. It's just good Torah.

Do you see yourself— I mean, you mentioned there are approximately 25 books. Is this your full-time gig? I mean, do you see yourself doing more and more of these books?

No, no. I would love for there to be more translations. I don't see myself putting out another collection of them, in part because I probably did some of the translations after I had a kid or two, but most of it was done when I didn't have kids yet. So it's just a matter of time. And like, not just the time, but also mental headspace to like sit and translate. I don't necessarily have as much anymore. I teach. I've been teaching a year-long shiur on Rav Chagat right now at Oishiva Torah Reitah, trying to write up some of it. We'll see how that goes.

I mean, I wonder how much of this they will translate, but also I feel like I'm saying because you got all the— a little from all the Chagim ones. So anyone— this could— people can— there's more than one for every Chag. So this— people can have this, just this sefer, for at least 3 years, because you could have— learn one for every Chag each year and keep going with it. But I recommend for people who have a good enough Hebrew, it's worth trying the, the Hebrew ones as well. Also, I'm pointing this out just because Levi and I have spoken about this before. The Hebrew Rosh Chaggar svarim are beautiful. Yeah, it's—

I didn't know svarim could look like this. Like the Hanukkah one in particular. So I'll show it to the people in the room. My Hanukkah copy is like fully falling apart.

I think one of the first books I got from him.

And it's just, again, I didn't know svarim could look like this. It's beautiful. Like they put art on the COVID but they're also around the art, they're all just in bright colors. Like things don't have to look like blue or red leather.

When I was still living in the States, a few of my more yeshivish friends, when I, every Chag I would bring the Rav Shagar sefer, I had it with me in shul, and they were always like, it is ridiculous, you have all this stuff, and all my shelves are just different shades of brown and blue, like you said. But, so it looks nice on the shelf regardless of anything else.

You know, so I have not studied Rav Shagar. I just have not up to now. But I, A lot of the things that you're saying resonate really incredibly with me, because as I was studying Itzchayim, which is a Kabbalistic sefer that was very challenging to go through, and I was learning with a Rav in English and Hebrew, Rav Yaakov Shephard. One of the things that I noticed was that I was learning it, and I'd go through days of reading through stuff and going, "Oh, okay, whew, it went like straight over my head," and what have you. But after a couple of days, 2 or 3 days, all of a sudden you'd read something and it would click back, and the pieces would suddenly fall into place with the things that you'd already learned. So where you thought you weren't actually making any progress in the past, all of a sudden those pieces clicked into place with what you were learning now. The thoughts repeated, re-expressed just in a different terminology, but the pieces fit together. And the feeling of satisfaction when that happens is just absolutely awesome. You just feel so good, like, whoa, it's— it is really worth it.

Yeah, I've definitely had those moments with Rav Shagar, both in terms of specific pieces, or also just realizing, oh, this is an idea he's doing everywhere, that there's sort of internal coherency to his Torah, that there's a sort of internal illumination that emerges. I should mention in context of Etz Chaim that he actually told his students to study the Etz Chaim, particularly the Arizal's kavanot, sort of intentions for davening or for doing mitzvoth, and in a couple of the essays, one of them for Pesach and Shavuot, and one for for the three weeks. He's really engaged with trying to understand what the kavanot of the Arizal could be telling us about our moment in history.

I hope this doesn't come off as too sacrilegious, but part of why I love studying wine and working in wine so much— I mean, I taught much more boring things than wine before this, and I just started— whatever, people can listen to my interview with Simon last time I was on where I explained how I started studying wine, but it's one of the few areas that I feel similar to Torah, that the more I learn about it, the more, like, things fall into place more, but I'm just like, "Oh my God, there's so much more to know." The really great winemakers don't make great things once.

They can actually reproduce them. So, part of the problem is, there's a lot of people who can make incredible wines, but they can't reproduce what they made the last time. So, you've got to be an incredible winemaker to consistently produce what your goal is.

And you can attest to this as well since he does so many tastings with so many different types of groups. But a lot of times people will ask me— first of all, I have the world's worst poker face, so it's really bad when people ask me about wines that I genuinely don't like. But they'll ask me like, oh, what do you think about such and such winery? I'm like, it's not for me. And they say, oh, I had an amazing wine from them. I'm very happy for you. And they'll say, and then they'll say, oh, it was— I had the whatever, 2016 or 20— I'll say '16 or '18. I'm like, shkoyev. In '16, everyone made good wine because basically God made good wine in 2016 because the weather was perfect. I mean, this is— we've talked— it's like, I spoke with this a few times that like, it's like, if a winery didn't make good wine in 2016, then we have a much bigger issue then. But like you said, it's not consistent if it's—

you know what, there were so many variables that even in situations like 2016, there were some wineries that are good wineries that just couldn't pull off some of the things. So it's just the way it is. In that instance, Rav Shagar is perfectly on. It's the will of God. Next, what can I learn from this?

Except that they're not perfect.

Nobody is.

That's why I spoke about this with Asaf. I was mentioning I spoke to him about the 2018 Keren Yan. And he said, even though 2018 is considered a very good year, you just had Sam Sofer on. It's like the biggest 2018 chassid I know. But Asaph told me that actually the 2018 Carignan wasn't the perfect harvest. He said it was just the winemaking. They had to— I would not have expected that. I assumed that just because 2018 was so great— I'm not going to say, obviously, it's never an easy job, but I was surprised to hear him say that, because I think that is a borderline perfect wine, the 2018. So we need to hear from Levi. I hope you prepared something for Hanukkah. We are going to open one more wine.

Yep.

To make it still wine.

How are we going to make, how are we going to keep the feel of the Hanukkah? Is this a grape pun on Hanukkah, this wine?

So sort of. This is partially, there are a few things going on here. One, this is just a wine that I honestly hope it's alive. This is one of the last— it's the last bottle I know about in existence.

Wow.

Okay, so hold on a second. No, no, we're not going to drink that. I'm going to buy that from you and I'm taking— I'm hiding it. I'm only kidding. This is an incredible bottle, so I hope this is still alive. I'm pretty sure it is.

Yeah, so yeah, so I've spoken about this wine with you, Levi. Uh, Itzik's never had this.

Um, you're in for it.

So this is a wine made at Agour where I work now by the previous winemaker, Shuki. Agour does only blends, especially now with Eyal, the winemaker that we have now, who's a real genius. The rosé is 4 varietals, but everything else is at least 6 or 7. So I did a tasting this past week at a store actually, and people ask me what's in the wine. I'm like, we don't have time. There's a lot of people in line. Do you like it? Great. but every once in a while, twice, there were just single barrels that were so good that Shuki decided to bottle them as they are. If this ever happens again, it wouldn't shock me if Agora did this again, but this is not standard. We do all blends. The wine, this is a 2015. It's a Cabernet. Levi, I know you know the reference because when I told it to you, you quoted it to me right away, but this is called AOP, which is Greek letters, which stands for Epi Onepa Ponton, which means a sea as dark as wine. So we are playing with the darkness theme again, so that is my connection to Hanukkah. Also, it is a name in Greek, so that is another connection to Hanukkah. Levi, you know where the quote was from, so where is the quote from?

The Iliad, I believe. Yes.

So I will just read the back of the bottle here. It says, as Achilles said at the funeral of his friend Patroclus, okay, great. Indeed, I care that the sea is as dark as wine, wrapped in fog, so I can swim away, conquer my rage, exhausted as an appeased savage. If any of you ever meet Shuki, he's all of those things. Yes. But he's also like all our wines at Agour still have quotes on the back, either from a pasuk or from a poem. And he's a real man of literature, Shuki. But in any event, Simon loves this wine.

One of my greatest regrets was the first time I went to visit Agour, they had a wall full of these for sale. And I thought—

That was the last wall.

Yeah. And I thought for sure, you know, this will be available. So I took, I think, 2 or 3 and I took them home and I drank them and I was just like blown away. And I called back and said, oh, what I really want is a couple of cases of—

Cases.

Cases of EOP. And he said, there isn't any left. And I went, what? I never knew it was that rare. It's just an amazing wine.

So I feel like this is appropriate. This might need a Durand though. What, you think I need a Durand?

9 years?

No, let's just look. I, I'll have a Durand. I have a Durand really close by, so that looks pretty clean. Yeah, it looks fine.

For all the listeners who don't know what that is, a Durand.

Yeah, Durand is a type of opener that has— it's a combination of what's called an asso and a normal corkscrew in the middle of it. So the asso, when you turn it, clears the cork. Normally when you try to pull a cork with a corkscrew, if the walls of the cork stick to the bottle, then you end up pulling the middle of the cork out and not ending up with anything except a bunch of cork in your glass. You want me to do it?

Having some technical difficulties here.

Okay, don't worry.

I just showed Livia a picture online of what a Duran looks like.

Here we go. Yeah, it's coming up.

I'm actually optimistic based on how high the wine is in the cork.

I'm telling you that the wine, when I drank it, it wasn't that long ago.

No, it was great.

Absolutely fantastic.

I had it with you not so long ago when we did the Carcot tasting.

Yeah, crazy. Yes. I'll take some of that.

So this is also my last bottle of this, so I figured— I told— I promised Simon a while back that my last— I would open this with him, so this figured as felt as good an opportunity as any.

Well, thank you very much.

You know what, let's get it cleared, some air first.

But it's fine.

Yeah. Oh yeah, it just needs to— you need to swirl it a little bit. This is a 2015.

Yes, that's the last time they— I believe he made one in 2008. I haven't seen any pictures of it, but that's what I was— that's what we're taught at the winery, that he made one in 2008. I think the 2008 was a Merlot, according to legend. But there's not a lot of bottles of these. Like, this was 2 barrels, the AOP 2015. I think the 2008 was 1 barrel.

B'raha Tadonai Elohim, Malchol Hamah Tovah Hametiv.

Amen.

So that bracha can just be made again and again, hypothetically?

You know, people will tell you no. Okay?

Ashkenazim will tell you no.

Some rabbis will tell you no. But the truth is that you are supposed to say how many bracha today? 100?

100.

And, you know, I don't see why it's a problem, especially when you're tasting something that's new, that wasn't available. I never knew I was going to get this.

You didn't know it was coming.

This is a classic case of saying, "Ata'ameiti," because, Simon, you did not know.

And this is a bottle I have longed for, for a while. So, this is crazy. Thank you very much.

When Levi and I started planning this, I told him, I have this That's when I knew he knew the quote. I was like, your father-in-law's gonna appreciate this, I have a trick up my sleeve.

Yeah, normally I surprise you, but it's—

this is a great moment for me. It's not dead. I'm very happy it's not dead.

No, it's definitely not dead. Very good. It's not— it's definitely not dead.

I'm also happy I opened it though, because yeah, it's time. I mean, we're a few weeks away from it being 10 years. I originally was going to wait for like the first Shabbos in 2025 to like say, oh, it's 10 years, but then I was like, this is a better—

and now it's Birkhanukkah.

I mean, harvest time, it's not really going to be 10 years. Yeah, no one needs to know that.

What?

No, I was just saying I'm shocked by like how tannic it still is.

Yeah, it's alive.

It's good.

Oh, it's not the classic like Israeli Cabernet. I think, I think just because of the older—

probably like it.

No, no, but I think there must have been more fruit in it at some point.

I mean, the whole point of aging is the fruit.

You know, I'll tell you the truth is we've got to give it a little bit of time because we pop this cork and you're getting, um, some of the, uh, some of the funk coming off the cork.

So I'm actually glad you said that. Yes, because this gives me an opportunity to say something I'm very passionate about, which is that we need to put an end to using natural corks. Um, Shooky— this is a natural cork. Yeah, this one that Shooky used. You know this, Simon, but other people here don't know this. At Agora, we do experiments on corks as well. It's like every— not every wine, but at least 3 of the 6 wines we make, we bottle with at least 4 to 6 different types of corks, and we open them every few months to see the impact. None of it's natural cork. For those who don't know, natural cork is literally just a piece of cork tree bark, whereas you have what's called technical cork, which I'm showing, which is, um, basically they clean the cork from all possible funguses and diseases and then they— the question is, is it macro pieces or micro? The smaller— like, DM is the classic one that people use for micro, which is like really small pieces, and they'll— it'll say on the cork how many years they guarantee the wine will stay if the wine is worthy of staying that long. So smarter wineries will use different levels of DM for all their wines. I've seen wineries use like a DM 10 for a rosé, which is just a waste of money because they're pretty expensive.

They make them in 5s too.

Yeah, they make it anything from 1— they do 1, 3, 5, 10, 30.

Okay.

And then in those there's also subcategories. Um, but so this is from the previous winemaker. It's a natural cork. We wouldn't use this anymore. We only use technical corks. And it, the whole point is that it avoids that issue.

Um, which issue is that?

First of all, cork taint, what people call the, say the wine is corked. It's a specific sort of fungus.

Isn't this from, you said technical one is, is, is using pieces of real cork, but it's cleaned.

It's cleaned before.

Ah, okay.

It's cleaned from all the possible fungus.

Natural cork is they literally just took a piece of tree bark.

You should— it's cool to look up. I mean, it's very romantic when you think about it, but I get—

go— if you visit, um, Portugal, visit Vitkin, he has a chunk of tree bark with the corks punched out of the, of the tree bark.

Not as far as going to Portugal.

I wouldn't say go to Portugal. Much easier to get to.

But I, um, I mean, I've had some expensive wines that we bought that If it had a different cork, it would, uh— this is why my wife says that all the winemakers need to go to the Eyal School of Corks, which is not a thing that exists. It's just having a conversation with Eyal about corks. Um, but here, having a grow wine, you see with the old types of cork that it's like you said, there's a little bit of funk that comes off of it.

Yeah, no, I think it'll— I think it'll— I think it's already settled down.

Yes, yeah, give them a little more.

So you're against the natural corks for that reason, or also just because of like You know, harvesting.

No, this is, I mean, this is natural. I hear what you're saying based on, because knowing you, I would think it would also be like a, uh, environmental thing. Environmental thing. I mean, but technical corks are wood. It's not like, this isn't like a synthetic cork.

Correct.

I'm not, I'm not, well, that's what I'm saying. I was surprised that, that the alternative to this was, yeah, it just, I feel like it, it works the best for my experience, especially if I'm spending a lot of money on wine. Like it's very, I actually, this past Shabbat I had, I opened two wines that I spent a, not small amount of money on, and both of them were corked. One wasn't corked, it just— the wine was leaking through the cork. I opened the capsule and it was wet, and I was like, this is going to be a disaster. And the other one was just— the cork wasn't— it was an aged wine, but the cork— it was a wine that— a cork that I now know because I work in a winery is meant for immediate consumption. Like, we use it for a wine that I brought. Actually, maybe you were there too. All three of you had it, the Harvest wine that we make. That it's, um, It's basically a barrel sample in a bottle that we had at that time. I met you all in Jerusalem when Levi gave me— he was generous enough to give me a copy of the sefer he translated. Well, we swapped it for a bottle of wine. I've twice now bartered a bottle of wine for a sefer with Levi. You got a good thing going on. Yeah, I know.

I think you both are happy with the exchange.

Very happy. So it's a wine that's meant to be consumed within a week. So the cork that we use for that, for wine that's meant to be consumed in a week, I had in a wine that was almost 10 years old. And I was like, that's— it's just bad. It's just not smart to do that.

Actually funny, I said to Yechiel, I think it was earlier this week, it was the weirdest thing. I was— you know, shower thoughts, right? You're just— you're showering and suddenly like something— actually, I had a friend at work once. I worked for a, um, I worked for a company where one of the main, uh, one of the head engineers actually was developing this entire system that started in the shower to the point where he wrote it out in the fog on the glass, got out of the shower, took a picture, and that's, you know, so these shower thoughts are quite monumental. And I'm in the shower thinking to myself, you know, they say 1 in 7 bottles is corked, yet I don't think— and I've opened obviously at this point hundreds of bottles— I've never opened a corked bottle. I haven't. And, you know, I sometimes like to say about myself that, you know, I have, I have a lot of the, um of the theoretical knowledge, but I don't— I don't— my nose doesn't always pick up on everything, but I would pick up on a corked bottle and I've never opened one. And then of course in the shower it suddenly hits me. I'm like, oh, because hardly anybody's using actual cork. And so I like, I don't remember if I called you. I think, I think the first time I met you, Phil, I was like, you got to hear this thought I just had. He's like, yeah, obviously.

Yeah.

No, there's—

but then I told you, joke's on me though, because I knew this and then I still got duped for 2 bottles of wine.

No. Well, that's what happens. There was always a risk. There's always a risk with wine depending upon storage and what have you. And if a person has a bottle of wine that looks pseudo-perfect, but if it was in a warm place, it could do all sorts of things to it.

This one's one of the ones specifically I'm especially upset about because I bought it from the winery and put it in the fridge. So I take it as a personal offense.

Um, but they should be able to take it back.

I wanted to take a picture and send it to them.

Yeah, they'll take it back because the wineries will do that.

It was also a '22. It wasn't even that old.

Like, whatever. So it's definitely a problem with the cork.

I will say this is meant to— there's a very like Jewish podcast now. I got even more Jewish because we're just doing petty grievances. So we've had all the wines. I think we've had— I've asked most of the questions that I had planned, but part of the deal, Avi, was us were already with wine, but you were going to give us a nice— so on the— I'll just say on the Parsha Wine Podcast, which is a crossover episode with— we start with pairing a wine with the Parsha. If there's any especially interesting— well, to me, and it's interesting— either winemaking details or like We've done a few wineries so far that actually I knew nothing about, that Itzik knows better than me, so he gave us some background about them. If there's any technical winemaking stuff that I could say from my less than a year working in winemaking, um, I share that as well. And then I— we try and end with a dratora that connects— I try to make the dratora connect whatever the connection was of the wine to the parsha. Sometimes it's just a dratora on the parsha if the connection is too loose. So as this is a crossover episode, we have to end it with a dratora. Solevy, the floor is all yours.

Okay, so you asked me to prepare a piece of Shigar's Chanukah Torah, and I today was thumbing through my copy of Le'ha'ir et pachim, to light up the doorway, some of that, his book of Chanukah drashot, and it was so hard to choose something. These are probably some of my favorite texts of his, and they span such a wide range.

I just want to say I agree with you. I think this Dahan HaKosefer is—

studies in chasidut, there's studies in, in, uh, the halachot of Mishnah Torah, like the details of Rambam's legal rulings about miracles, and, um, so much stuff. It's, it's incredible things. Um, I ended up deciding on one essay. It's also in Living Time, the translations. Um, and I want to walk through the series of ideas. I think we'll actually end nicely connecting to this last wine, the wine about the wine-dark sea. So this is an essay where he's exploring a teaching from the Baal HaTanya, the author of the Tanya, Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first rebbe of Chabad. It's about the meaning of the mitzvot in the teachings of the Baal HaTanya. And he starts with— he says the chasidut likes to, you know, start from the pesukim, that there's one pasuk that says Ner mitzvah v'torah or, that mitzvah is a candle and Torah is light. On the other hand, there's another pasuk that says, ner Hashem nishmat adam, that the candle of God is a person's soul. And Chasidut would ideally like these two candles to be the same, that there's some sort of innate connection and parallel between the soul and the mitzvah, right? That you should feel like you want to just do mitzvot, like they come up from within you. But the Baal HaTanya, Rav Yehuda HaNasi, wants to go in a different track entirely. He says there's a deep teaching in Chabad that light, often connected to spirituality in a sense of illumination and meaningfulness, is a revelation of G-d. But that there's a revelation that comes from higher than that. That G-d is just beyond meaning. Meaning is a human category in some ways. And the mitzvah of feeling meaningful is good, but is also a human thing. And so for Chabad, the mitzvot come from above and beyond the divine light. They come from, you know, the sphere at the level of Keter, which is beyond Chochmah, from the divine will that is beyond the divine wisdom. And that the appropriate response from, you know, Jews, from Jewish people, is to embrace Hashem and the mitzvot even when you don't have a sense of light and illumination. In your life. We all, in our own individual lives, in our life as a people, we go through moments of light and we go through moments of darkness. And it's easy to feel like, okay, that's just how it works. You have moments where you're connected and moments where you're not. But what Rav Shagar is pointing out, and what the chasidut is pointing out, is in fact there is a way of thinking about Hashem that makes you realize that actually the moments of the moments that seem to be moments of disconnect are in fact moments of greater connection, exactly because you're not asking the question of what does this mean to me? You're saying, how can I, you know, shape my life in a way that puts me into contact and puts me into relationship and, and, you know, moves my life in the way I think, you know, it should be going? So sort of a tangential relationship to the holiday of Chanukah in general, but it's about that image of the candles. I'll take you to another piece he has in there where he talks about the difference between the Chanukah candles and the Shabbat candles. So, a famous halachic discussion about what has greater priority, the Chanukah candles or the Shabbat candles, if you could only afford one of them. But Rav Chagar points out the candles The candles also just function very differently. The Shabbat candles have a functional purpose in your life. They are meant to provide light, to make it possible to have a good Shabbat meal at night. They have a real purpose in your house, and that shapes where you're supposed to light them and things like that. The Chanukkah candles, one, you don't put them in your house unless you have— you put them outside. They shine out of the house. Very interesting discussion. But also, hanero talalu kodeshem. These candles are holy, ve'ain lanu reshut le'histameshem, we can't use them. The sense of kedushah as something that is not always about the light and illumination it gives you, but the way that it calls to you, makes a demand, creates an orienting force in your life that you create a life oriented towards Hashem, even in moments where you don't feel the warmth, as it were. Do you have any favorite stories you want to add?

For Chanukkah?

So wait a second— I'm not going to let you off that easy! How does that equate to "a sea as dark as wine"?

The vision I was seeing when my head tingled is I think about when I read this Dvar Torah from Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach he starts with the classic image of sort of these other forms of chasidut and has in mind Meir Hashiloach , maybe Rabbi Tzadok, but then it goes on about the ner mitzvah burning within the ner Hashem nishmat hadam, that the equation of the mitzvah and the person's soul, you should feel the light of the mitzvot shining within you, as that's like the ideal way of serving Hashem, of being an eved Hashem. But for the Baal HaTanya and for Rav Chaggar, in many cases, actually the ideal form, since you are in fact closest, is when you don't feel it burning within you and you choose to do it anyways. He uses the Chabad term itkafia, where it's like you compel yourself, you force yourself. But he also uses the term, I think, sort of more familiar, kabbalat ol machut shamayim, of accepting the yoke of heaven. That there is a conscious choice you're making. You're saying, I'm not forced to do this by my, you know, or compelled to do it by a religious experience I had. It's a choice I'm making. I'm deciding this is what I think is the right thing to do, and I'm doing it. And that comes from a space not of divine illumination, but if anything, in a sense, divine, you know, darkness feeling, or intense— a word to put for that— but an absence of light that enables you to make that creative choice.

Cool. Um, very interesting.

I wish you had told me you wanted me to add something before you said your whole thing, because I wanted us to finish on your thing. But I'm just going to add one thing, that is, it isn't a, um, it isn't the first sefer that Koren put out of translated essays. There is a Hanukkah essay in there as well. A big part of Hanukkah is basically about Torah truth versus what they call Greek truth or philosophy. And this is in the Hebrew version, this is a footnote. I, I actually thought they took it out of the English one because it wasn't a footnote, but they just put— it's so important, they put it into the big text. Which Levi— it's kind of impressive how you just knew that off the top of your head. But he's like, oh no, it's— and he sent me the page number pretty quickly.

It was—

yeah, Simon, your son-in-law is a very impressive person. Um, I know, but yeah, so, um, a lot of times when you—

by the way, it's my daughter who— oh, they're both very, very impressive, to be honest. Um, they are.

I met a fair amount of your children. I don't know, I've spoken to your wife yet, but they're all—

it's—

for those who don't know the Jacob family, it's— no, no, it's very much highly, highly recommended. Um, but it's— this is just a footnote, but I— it's one of my favorite single things he said. But like, if we talk about Torah morality or Torah values, he talks a lot here about values versus secular values, which I personally feel are very important for ultimately Torah values, which connect to what we spoke about earlier. But he says a lot that there's no— you shouldn't waste your time with apologetics or dishonesty in saying that no, the Torah is really doing a certain value. One example he gives is, um, the relationship between men and women. And he goes, you could be sort of dishonest and say about like, oh yeah, halacha was always elevating women, which is just not true. He goes, but don't waste your time with apologetics. He says, ask, but instead say What is the— in other words, don't be— I don't know the exact vocabulary for this, but can I go for it?

He says don't come up with an idea what you think is a good thing, that we have good value, good in context, that's a good form of marriage, what marriage should look like, and then try and explain how halacha fits that and expresses that. Look at halacha. Look at your life when you keep halacha. Look at people's lives when they keep halacha. What kind of life does it make? Right? Don't start with the idea of trying to force Jewish law and the mitzvot into your framework.

Your preconceived. So I have in this same—

Or your subjective perspective, especially in today's world, or in a timed— it's a timeless perspective of marriage rather than a perspective of marriage that is limited to the general population's attitude as to what marriage is today.

This translation is not as good as Levi's, but this is again from this essay I was working on where I translated it. But I said that— I translated it as halachah, that you need not attempt to rationalize itself and attempt to dishonestly defend halachah from criticism stemming from the value structure of Western culture. Instead, when we approach the halachah, we should present the virtuous and existential implications of halacha. For example, do not falsely claim halacha has always elevated the woman. Rather, ask what type of romance exists between a couple living in the halachic framework. In other words, what— okay, like I said before earlier about what, what's the ultimate goal of what we're doing. It's like, fine, this doesn't necessarily match, you know, the flavor of the day. If it does or doesn't, doesn't really matter. But like, you want to follow halacha, you want to follow Judaism. What is this? What positive value is this bringing? He actually has a similar thing in the Pesach Drashos, where he talks about what the Jewish holidays are not versus the goyim ones, but also in a positive way, what are they actually bringing to the table? So I felt like Chanukah, a lot of times there's a discussion about external thought, philosophy, etc. But I feel like Rav Chagat, who learned a ton of secular philosophy, is saying here, okay, but we have our own, we have what we stand on. Don't try and just— don't feel so— don't feel like you have to excuse anything or be apologetic about anything. Say, this is what I believe in, this is, this is the positive thing this is bringing to the world and the positive way of life we can get from this. Yeah, I'll just jump on a little bit that way because I wanted you to finish this.

So I think one thing I, I really like about Rav Shagar, I found very meaningful, is that part of, uh, when he talks about a variety of these halacha drashot is that As you said, and we talked about, he's very interested in, you know, philosophy from outside of Judaism, existentialism, postmodernism, what have you. But he wants you to be able to think about your Judaism and the things you're learning from outside of Judaism and the relationships between them without pretending they're all the same thing. He's in fact like, you know, the Rambam example we looked at before, of someone who's very fruitful relationship between Judaism and philosophy, but part of that comes from not necessarily, you know, in Richard Gard's reading, not assuming they're the same thing, that you can create interesting connections where you see them, but he thinks also recognizing what he would call these two different languages is really important, and the ability, as you're pointing out, to live with a life of brit, covenant, he would call it, within Judaism rather than trying to sort of stand outside it and evaluate it is something he thinks is really important.

Important.

Turning back to Hanukkah, he connects that to the pach hashemen, right, the little jug of oil that was left with the seal of the Kohen Gadol. Can you live a life of covenant, a life where in whatever context you're in, in some ways your life is marked with the seal of the High Priest, of the Kohen Gadol, that there's some, you know, spiritual marker on your life that makes it a life of breach of covenant.

So, Hanukkah Sameach, everybody.

To sort of end this, I just want to say that I love how all of your episodes start and end with a prayer for the safety of our soldiers and the safe return of all of our hostages. And I feel like now, it's usually in the Parsha Wine Club, it's Sihil's job to sort of at the end say, you know, l'chaim, and may we all merit so and so. And my job is the joke, but I feel we're kind of just going to take your role here. And really say that in a time of so much darkness, you know, may we see light and may this Chanukah really be a beacon of light. And may we see the safe return of all of our hostages and of course the safety of the soldiers.

You in particular, Elitzur.

I'm going back to reserves in Gaza for 2 and a half months starting January 1st, which is on Chanukah. I'll be out March 11th. So if anybody here is coming to Israel anytime, they don't want to meet up. Have to wait till then, but I would love to see you all.

L'chaim.

L'chaim.

Please, safety. We look forward to seeing you in March.

Okay? Sounds good.

Please, God. L'chaim tovim shalom. Amen. This is Simon Jacob again, your host of today's episode of The Kosher Teruah. I have a personal request. No matter where you are or where you live, please take a moment to pray for our soldiers' safety and the safe and rapid return of our hostages. Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released. If you are new to The Kosher Terroir, please check out our many past episodes.