Embarking on an Enchanting Wine Journey: A Conversation with Jacob Ner David of Jezreel Winery

S Simon Jacob: 0:09

Welcome to the Kosher Terroir. I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. Before we get started, I ask that, wherever you are, please take a brief moment and pray for the safety of our soldiers and the safe return of all our hostages. The following is a conversation with my friend, Jacob Ner David, the chairman of Jezreel Winery, located in northern Israel, on Kibbutz Hanaton. Jacob is a serial entrepreneur. Having birthed numerous startups In fact, so many so quickly. He probably should be called a parallel entrepreneur. He was also active as an angel investor, as well as the director of a Jerusalem-based venture capital fund. He has volunteered extensively in the public sector and even worked closely with two of Jerusalem's mayors on regional economic development. But beyond all that, he is the first to tell you that his primary focus in life is his partner, javiva, and their seven children. Please join me for this warm and informative conversation. Okay, jacob, you prefer Jacob or Yaakov? Everybody calls you Jacob, I guess.

Jacob Ner David: 1:29

Some people call me Yaakov.

S Simon Jacob: 1:32

I guess in the winery it helps to call you Jacob because of the other Yaakov.

Jacob Ner David: 1:37

Yeah you know, when I was growing up, it was either Yanke for Yankele or… Okay, Ashkenazi totally.

S Simon Jacob: 1:46

So. Welcome to The Kosher Terroir. That's the first thing I wanted to say. All right, I was really… I've never like… We've been friends for a while. I never did any background research on you or looked at you and I said, whoa, what's going on here? There's just so many things, so many things you've been involved with, so it's a pleasure to have you here on the kosher tewa Sure. And now the…is it the CEO or the chairman?

Jacob Ner David: 2:24

The chairman, yeah, chairman of.

S Simon Jacob: 2:27

Jezreel Winery which is up in Hanaton, and first question I have is how did you end up in Hanaton?

Jacob Ner David: 2:43

You know, when we first moved to Israel, so people sometimes would say a bunch of funny stories of it, but people overall would say why? And then I would look at them and I would say why not? And that would floor them for a while. But coming to Hanaton was….

Jacob Ner David: 3:04

We had lived in Yushlin for a long time and love Yushlin and always happy to come for good reasons, but I felt, or we felt, that we were missing two things. We were missing a real visceral connection to nature and to the land. That was number one. I mean it was easier for me to kind of get out of Jerusalem. I would hop on my bike and say, even before a park in Mesila there was a Mesila, there was a train track, and I would ride out and 10 minutes I'd be in Harai, yushlin, on my bike. For Habib it was much more challenging and it was fighting traffic and driving for 40 minutes to see some green, and so that was on the one side and the second side we kind of had done a lot of the things that we wanted to do in Yushlin and we wanted to experience it from part of various Israel, different part of living in Israel.

S Simon Jacob: 4:04

You had kids before your kids were born where?

Jacob Ner David: 4:08

So, thank God, we have seven children. So I would say half grew up in Jerusalem and half grew up more in. Yeah, I can do three and a half children, but the older ones grew up more in Jerusalem. Interestingly enough, three of my older children have now moved back to Jerusalem, so they're now living in Yushlin and the younger ones kind of grew up. My 12 year old was born in Khanaton, so all she knows is Khanaton and kind of from there.

Jacob Ner David: 4:45

But, yeah, we moved to Khanaton in 2009. So you met, the two of you met, we met in Khanaton. So the kind of basic story goes is there was a very small group of families who came to renew this place, khanaton, which had been essentially a failed kibbutz.

Jacob Ner David: 5:03

One of the last kibbutz seemed to be established in Israel agricultural kibbutz and was a failure almost from the beginning, but really you got to a bad place. There were only four families there and we came with a group of 18 families, which was obviously an un-purpose number 18.

Jacob Ner David: 5:22

We came as a group of 18 families to relive them, to renew the kibbutz as a kibbutz and with the connection to agriculture and so on. So we all came in that summer of 2009, more or less, and Yehuda and Tamar were one of those families. Yehuda had actually had a deeper connection to Khanaton than I did because when he was in Nachal he did his Shnat Shirut in.

Jacob Ner David: 5:51

Khanaton 17 years prior and he actually led the rebellion of that group of Nachal, which was the Noam Nachal unit, to not come to Khanaton anymore and from that point forward it's been at Kibbutz Khtua because it was so dysfunctional but even though he still had a special place in his heart and soul. So they came to Khanaton and we met there and he had a landscaping business at the time, but I had quickly discovered that we were both wine people and we drank a lot of wine together and we started to dream about things that we could do at Khanaton that were connected to the land and then connected to our passions. And he did the worst thing you could do to an intrepidnoor. He was intrepidnoorial but I was like that is all I did was start things and he did the worst thing you can do. It's said why you just keep dreaming of having a winery and making wine and here's an abandoned building. We could take it over, we could go out, and that's kind of what sealed the deal.

Jacob Ner David: 7:01

But then we spent about a year. You know it's interesting because in Israel we have all these things like a year right, you have your gap year, a Mechinaak Tam Tzvai, all kinds of year, a year abroad. So we spent our year of Chavrut in wine together with a different rebellion that we chose to work with us. One of them I think you've met, ari Earl, but we specifically didn't want to replicate everything else, because I was coming from the startup world and I'm like okay, Disruption, disruption yeah, we need.

S Simon Jacob: 7:33

there's got to be something new.

Jacob Ner David: 7:34

There's got to be, you know, a campymore. More of the same, even if it's very good. More of the same. And that's what Guy did our original journey together. But we met in Channeton, the relationship was established in Channeton, so yeah.

S Simon Jacob: 7:48

Very cool. So here I was thinking that you actually met your wife abroad, in the United States or someplace else, or what have you.

Jacob Ner David: 7:59

We met in the US but we just we moved here at an early age together. We met in New York and you know people talk about you know your Zionism and so on.

S Simon Jacob: 8:15

And.

Jacob Ner David: 8:15

Chaviv and I both, interestingly, we never had to like have a deep, deep conversation about it. I think we're having deeper conversations today than then, but for us I call it organic Zionism. We both grew up more or less in similar milieus. I was a little bit more black hat than she was. She was kind of Ramaz, you know, in New York. But both of us kind of had the same reaction, which was why wouldn't we move to Israel? Like, after everything we've been told and everything we've studied and learned and we both had visited Israel why would we not move there? So it wasn't such a big decision. It was a big decision but it was a very organic big decision. What about family support?

S Simon Jacob: 9:06

and doing something like that.

Jacob Ner David: 9:08

You know, I think they were more or less supportive.

Jacob Ner David: 9:13

I tell you, there was a family that was more or less supportive Nobody said no and one of the few people who cautioned me against at the time just of moving to Israel full time whatever was a Rebbe of mine and he was a Taravadaskai, wonderful, beautiful human being and he was concerned about Israel, interestingly enough, about kind of education and… no, he was literally concerned about the body politic Israel. This was quite some time ago and I was kind of thrown off a bit for a minute or two by what he was saying, but then I… my organic Zionism came back and we came anyway.

S Simon Jacob: 10:09

You know it's funny, the audience that listens to this podcast. A lot of them have two huge dreams One is to make aliyah and the other one is to get involved in some way in wine. And you've accomplished both of those. I'm living both of those?

Jacob Ner David: 10:35

Yes, okay.

S Simon Jacob: 10:37

So because of that, it's a great example for people to see and for me to ask like, how did that happen? Where did the dreams start? When did you start getting involved with wine?

Jacob Ner David: 10:56

So it's a similar thing, which is I kind of took my education and my kind of the misoah seriously, even as a little kid and I was chutzpah-dick.

Jacob Ner David: 11:12

So those two things I got kicked out of a lot of, you know, a lot of shi'u'yim, a lot of… but I took it seriously. So I immediately reacted to a lot of things that were being taught to me, told to me whatever, it's okay, so why aren't we praying for this three times a day? Why aren't we just doing it? So that influenced me. And same way with wine. In other words, wine I saw as this, even from a little kid, so as this central thing in Jewish life, of our spiritual life, and yet… For whatever reason, in the 70s, when I was growing up, it was the least Mishubach, the least appreciated or invested in, I don't know money-wise, I mean, just from an attention.

Jacob Ner David: 12:06

Attention. What have you, Kavanaugh? Yeah, I mean, like my father Al-Vashal, he loved so many different traditions, whether it be going to the Shukar-Baminim in the Lower East Side and going through all the different booths and looking different at through games and stuff like that. We would always only do it on Erev Sukkot, and the same thing of Mitzvah-Mazah for Behing-Mazah on.

S Simon Jacob: 12:34

Erev Pesach.

Jacob Ner David: 12:38

And so on and so on. So Hidur-Mitzvah was like a big deal, and then it came to wine and he would fill his becharaf with whatever.

Jacob Ner David: 12:48

I don't want to say anything bad about any of our friends who own certain, but he would fill a becharaf, say the bracha, and then take a tiny little sip and if my mother wasn't looking he'd pour it back in the bottle because he hated it so much. And I said to him you know, dad, I can't understand. You've violated so many different things at the same time, whether it be that you're not drinking Rovkos right, you're not drinking the majority of the, which is you're supposed to, that basically, you're turning this blessing into a high-waiverisee brachale batala in English, but, yeah, for your English speakers, a blessing that you really shouldn't have done, an unnecessary blessing, or?

Jacob Ner David: 13:38

an unfulfilled blessing. An unfulfilled blessing or a wasted blessing. But besides those two kind of halachic issues, right, there's the mahut of it, there's the central aspect of it that this is supposed to be like the way you bring in, whether it bring in Jabhat, whether you get married, whether when you're born or whatever it may be. And I'll tell you a sweet story, it's had to do with the life cycle event, so you know when we're when, for a long time for men and, as it's happening, for women, when they're born. So obviously you have a breed, and part of the breed is wine. It brings you into the covenant of the people.

Jacob Ner David: 14:27

And so there's a really lovely young I say young now that I, now that I'm the great, her person, I can say young but very nice, very nice guy, moshe Ben Dahan, who lives in Khanatun, and he has two things going for him he's incredibly educated, he could quote Aristotle, while you know, mishnath Torah, while Daph Yomi, while like incredible, incredible auto-line act in terms of Jewish text.

Jacob Ner David: 14:58

But he also loves wine and really appreciates, as parents are French. So, anyways, mazatavi, he, he, he. They had a baby boy a couple of months ago, and so, of course, I came to the to the Brittany line and I brought a bottle of wine, thinking it's a present that they'll use later on or, who knows, maybe at the Sudamitvara, or that it'll just take home for Shabbat or something. And he sees the wine, he goes of course and he opens the wine up and that's the wine that they used, that they used. And so the first wine that this baby had it was named Ariye. The first wine that Ariye had was our wine. I was like, oh my goodness, what an incredible thrill.

S Simon Jacob: 15:39

You know that beautiful story. Beautiful story. You know you did an interview with somebody back in August and one of the things that was truly beautiful about it was you got into the brachot of what you make on wine when you start Shabbat, when you end Shabbat and all the rest. And it was a beautiful interview from that perspective because it was just. It's so true that you know people drink wine for just to drink wine, but it's wine within Judaism is so elevated that it's there's almost nothing you can do without having a bracha on wine, right.

Jacob Ner David: 16:26

But I think in.

S Simon Jacob: 16:28

Especially for your life cycle Right.

Jacob Ner David: 16:30

But I've said that you know, obviously we're proud of our own tradition. I think that you know probably in other faith traditions I'll tell you a funny story in a second about that but food in general, right, wine being part of it is something that in our tradition we take seriously, Right. So we not only do we make a blessing before we, but we make a blessing on all different types of blessings and all different types of food. Right, we take it very, very, we're really paying attention and we're really thankful and appreciative and, as you know, right so, wine has its own blessing, Right, it's not the wine that you say on orange juice or apple juice, which share the same blessing. It's not break pre-AIDS.

S Simon Jacob: 17:13

It's not on the, it's not shahakol, it's not Right yeah.

Jacob Ner David: 17:16

So it has its own specific blessing. And so for me, growing up knowing that I was like, oh so this has got to be like a big deal and I have my own theories as to what happened. Obviously, there's lots of history books and different you know, historians of wine in the Jewish tradition.

Jacob Ner David: 17:36

I don't think enough has been written about that and I think there's big gaps. Right If in other words, if anybody that you don't have to do a dafiyomi? Right, you don't have to study Talmud every day? But even if you study Talmud here and there, every, If not every page, every other page of the Talmud, it's mentioned a lot. There's a discussion of wine.

Jacob Ner David: 17:54

It's mentioned a lot and a discussion of A discussion based on that, the, the Amcha. The people knew that there was good wine, that there was great wine, that right they were totally in it, and so there was an awareness. And then something happened right, and so many PhDs, I guess, will probably be written, but where, for a big chunk of time, the Jewish people kind of lost, you know, their appreciation.

S Simon Jacob: 18:29

I think part of that is it's called expulsion.

Jacob Ner David: 18:37

Yes, but we kept so many other.

S Simon Jacob: 18:40

We kept attention to so many other Hedurimit issues, but wine is land-oriented.

Jacob Ner David: 18:47

For sure.

S Simon Jacob: 18:48

It was so focused on the land and you know what. Actually, it's kind of interesting. What I found is, especially among the Heredi community, which really carried on a lot of the Jewish traditions, there was almost a fear of there being an archaeological connection to Aritz. There's almost a fear of discussing that. Like, everything that we have is connected through the Talmud, is connected through the Torah, is connected through all the different Mepharshim and what have you, but they really shy away from any sort of archaeological or connection. And I think it's a fear that we lost Israel once and it almost killed us. And this galut mentality of trying to build a world even though we didn't have Aritz is so ingrained in some of the Rebeim that they're scared to come back, they're scared to reconnect and they're scared for their people to reconnect because again, god forbid if we lost that again they saw what it did to our religion, to our people, and that's a very scary place to be in and I think also just to bring in terms of wine and so on.

Jacob Ner David: 20:32

Once you do reconnect to the land which I know you've done and you've participated in plantings and harvestings and so on the return to the land is both frightening but exhilarating. I find it exhilarating, so exhilarating, and yet we still haven't scratched the surface of what it means or how to deal with it. Whether it be issues like Trumot and Masrot, what do we do with it? Sadly, as you may know, basically they participate in this because wine is spilled on the ground, it's just wasted, because for so long we didn't really practice the tithing of agricultural produce, since we didn't even know who to give it to or how to give it. Or do we give it to the priests? Can the priests still accept it today? They're not pure enough today, and so on. And so I agree with you there's been a distancing from the land, because you then would have to deal with all those issues.

S Simon Jacob: 21:45

Well, actually, we have a perfect wine to try that's going to bring that right to the forefront, and that's again. That's another issue with regard to Schmitt, and do you follow Schmitt? Is there a way around Schmitt? And I don't mean it from purely business money perspective, people who make their survival, whose survival comes from being in the wine business. It's very hard to tell them okay, well, this year we're not going to do anything, we're not going to grow anything, we're going to leave everything fallow. That's a difficult pill for people to take, and though I know that the slash, schmitt, you guys pulled it off.

Jacob Ner David: 22:39

So the Schmitt cycle. Seven years ago we were smaller than we are today, so we were making a smaller amount of wine, and Schmitt sneaks up on you every seven years and as people, but particularly as Israelis, we like to kick things down the road. I was oh, we'll deal with it since seven years from now. But it's man-rats, time flies and all of a sudden you're in Schmitt again. So what happened to us then? That was the first Schmitt for us as a winery, as a kind of family making wine, and it came up on us like whoop, like that, and so we said, okay, the next time we're not going to let that happen, we're going to really focus in on it, we're going to decide which we're going to really think about it well and in advance.

Jacob Ner David: 23:35

And the you know I was explaining this to our good friend, yechih Herzog, a couple months ago because they, for this Schmitt cycle, the Herzog family and Royal kind of went left-name-ish Retah Dina and they really supported various NGOs that are Amutot, that were trying to help farmers who were observing Schmitt. Wow, I didn't even know that. Yes, there's Karen Schvias. Karen Schviat, which augments the money that you can get from the government. But I was explaining to him as that, while all of that is wonderful and gorgeous and is, you know, definitely a step in the right direction, when you're thinking about observing Schmitt, it's not just how much money that specific component, meaning that farmer, is losing by not farming that year. There's the truck driver who picks up the grapes and brings them to the winemaking facility. There's the people who work in the winemaking facility. There's the people who sell the wine. There's the ripple effect.

S Simon Jacob: 24:44

It's huge. It's a huge industry, especially in Israel.

Jacob Ner David: 24:46

Right, but we think of the people directly connected to it Harvest workers who don't get hired that year, and so on and so on. There's a lot of ripple effects to saying we're not going to make wine from the Schmitt year. We did it anyway because it was important to us, to all of us as a partnership, to kind of take it seriously. But we took it seriously in spite of the fact that this ripple effect isn't tended to. So then we have to do all kinds of things to try and make up for that, whether it be making more wine the year before or having a period of time where we don't have wine that's aged too long, and all kinds of issues.

S Simon Jacob: 25:35

Actually, you know, in this, recently I was speaking to another winemaker and they were running into the issue of topping barrels. And you don't even think about that. I never thought about topping barrels. Why would that be an issue? Because you can't use Schmita wine to top older bottles. And you certainly can't. You can use regular wine to top Schmita barrels, but they're still Schmita, but they're still Schmita, right, exactly, but you wouldn't yeah you wouldn't do that.

S Simon Jacob: 26:10

But it becomes really crazy with all the different, because these wines are not things that you just create, like water and sugar and what have you, and make wine and then it's done. These are things that go over many years of effort and some of the bottles of wine take two, three years. So it depends. It depends on what's going on.

Jacob Ner David: 26:37

I always say to people making wine is opposed to certain other areas of agriculture. Other areas of agriculture, you have to place yourself in the hands of the divine for a short period of time. In wine making, you need that support for years because that wine is going to continue to develop and it continues to develop in the barrel and the bottle and so on.

S Simon Jacob: 27:02

You can't stop praying. You can't stop praying, exactly, exactly.

Jacob Ner David: 27:12

So, yeah, so Schmita what's called the 2015 vintage, as my late father would say, the Gregorian calendar, the 2015 vintage was something that snuck up on us, and so we made the amount of wine we were going to make. Obviously, for those people who don't know, most importers of kosher certified wine into the US won't take wine from Schmita here, because there's so many different people who don't know how to handle it or they don't understand it or whatever, so obviously they prefer just to skip it.

S Simon Jacob: 27:52

There's even a religious, there's even a group of Puskian who say that that wine can't leave his home Can't leave, or it can't leave For sure, for sure.

Jacob Ner David: 28:04

But then, interestingly, there are certain things. It's funny because one of the issues of wine from Schmita here is that it has the sanctity of the seventh year, the sabbatical year. It was a kusha to the speed and in one of those aspects definitely you shouldn't waste any of it, so you should drink to the last drop. You shouldn't make sure you should be more careful in terms of Schmita here? Not necessarily Schmita here produce in general, but certainly Schmita here wine. And my joke is when do I not finish a bottle of wine? Of course, of course I'm finishing Above. It's a good bottle of wine, why would I not finish it Hundreds? But there's a fear.

Jacob Ner David: 28:48

Our fellow, very good friend, the other, yakov Yakov Shorotov. He kind of makes sure when he's pouring wine from Schmita here whatever way it came to be different approaches to still making wine from Schmita here when he's pouring it for other people, he makes sure that they understand Like I'll pour it for you and I took that from him. If I ever do have wine from Schmita here and I'm pouring it for someone, I make sure they know it and I make sure my expectation is that they're going to drink the whole glass.

S Simon Jacob: 29:23

Right, 100%. So there's some people feel that if you use hetermahira to do it, then there's no requirement to drink the whole thing because you've got hetermahira. So I said I'm one of those built-in and suspender guys. I don't, just, I won't Right.

Jacob Ner David: 29:40

But I think we need to, particularly around wine. The law is important, right, but the spirit of the law is for me much more important and that's really what's guiding me. You could always, you know where the Jewish people love to make laws and then find ways, legal ways, around those laws, whatever they may be, in particular around the Schmita year, because, as you know, half of the Schmita year has nothing to do with agriculture. It has to do with loans and, sadly, when they were slaves or whatever, but it doesn't relate it to agriculture. We've kind of written that out of the Jewish practice, almost entirely by various artifices where we get around it. But then we think of things like, you know, yovill, which was the culmination of the seven cycles of the Schmita year. So you know, the idea that you're going to have some sort of economic justice and all of that. But we still have, you know, and I think it's another good thing, I think it's a good thing we have an attention to the legalities of Schmita around wine. Again, I think it's only a good thing because it wakes you up, makes you think about Schmita in general. So you know, my view of hetermichira is I totally understand it, I understand why it came about. Like you know, it's like khametz on Pesach, right?

Jacob Ner David: 31:17

So obviously a practice developed where people sell their khametz for the holiday. And you know, as a chutzpadekid, I always ask the question which some chutzpadekid always asks in the Shior. When they explain selling khametz on Pesach, they say, well, but if the non-Jewish person who you sell the khametz to comes into your house on Pesach, can they just eat your khametz? And the legal answer is yes, 100% yes. So if you have your Scotch whiskey collection, you know priceless collection which you sold for a dollar to someone, and they come and they could drink it all up and once Pesach is over you could say I want to buy it back but it might be gone, 100% yeah. So we as a family chbibonay as a family for many years, most of the time that we're together, we make sure to just get rid of all the khametz in our house. I still sell whatever I have. I can't see like whatever, but from a principal point of view is whatever khametz we have, we You're obviously not a Scotch person.

Jacob Ner David: 32:28

Exactly, I don't have any Scotch in the house.

S Simon Jacob: 32:32

I don't need to sell any of the other khametz.

Jacob Ner David: 32:34

Just a.

S Simon Jacob: 32:34

Scotch If you think about flower and stuff like that. But I can use up everything. Use it up everything. Scotch is another way, yeah.

Jacob Ner David: 32:43

I'm not a Scotch. Whatever we say about Scotch is I'm a person of limited ability. If I'm going to try and understand something, I chose wine. I can't figure other things out, so I don't really know anything about Scotch. I love it Okay.

S Simon Jacob: 33:03

Yeah, I think we should try, let's try it, let's take it yeah. So we have a bottle of carignon from Jezreel. I think it's an old wine, carignon, yes, and it's beautiful. Well, you know, it's from 2015.

Jacob Ner David: 33:24

This is the 2015 vintage. The carignon story in Israel is, for me, is the story of I'm just doing my sniff as I'm talking. Yeah.

S Simon Jacob: 33:38

Let's do a sniff and a little taste. I mean, it doesn't.

Jacob Ner David: 33:42

So the story of carignon in Israel is the. It's being told more and more by lots of good people. Our friend Adam Montefiore and other people are telling the modern story of carignon in.

Jacob Ner David: 33:55

Israel. Because the truth is we still don't know what the varietals were in the time of Baye-Cheney, certainly not in the time of Baye-Rishon. So we could have been carignon. It's a sun-loving varietal, it could have been here. But the carignon we're drinking is a modern planting in the sense of it's the grandchildren of the carignon that was planted by the original Zionist, modern Zionist movement. I'm here in Yemem Morsheh. It was very auspicious to the modern Zionist movement. But when Rothschild, and before Rothschild, the Chovvetsio on its own, they were first thinking of restarting the Israeli wine industry. So they planted carignon because they realized this is not Bordeaux, very different terroir, very different climate. And so they went with something which they felt was going to be a sun-loving in it and it took really well. The trouble was we just didn't know what to do with it.

Jacob Ner David: 35:08

We made a lot of bad wine from it. Anyway, for you to know that I'm here with you, I'm very grateful. Thank you, have a great day. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, Bye, bye.

S Simon Jacob: 35:14

Bye for now. Bye for now, bye, bye, bye.

Jacob Ner David: 35:22

And you served it at the temperature that do you know? Eric Segelbaum, have you met Eric? Oh, you got to meet him next time you come.

Jacob Ner David: 35:32

So Eric is a huge fan of Karanian, a huge fan of our Karanian. He's one of the top Somayans in America, co-founder of the United Somayans Foundation, a great wine educator in general, and he tells people to drink Karanian particularly Israeli Karanian at a colder temperature than they otherwise would serve Karanian. For those people that do Karanian at a colder temperature and basically because I mean I want to paraphrase him you can hear from him directly. But that's his kind of shita, that's his method, and up to the point where he'll actually put Karanian in the refrigerator, not in the wine fridge drinks it cold, cold.

Jacob Ner David: 36:36

I've tried that.

S Simon Jacob: 36:37

It's a little too cold for me, but this is really yeah this is a pleasure, really a pleasure, and it's really balanced and it's doing really well.

Jacob Ner David: 36:52

I haven't had the 2015 in a while, Wow, Great. So the Karanian that we put out, the 100% Karanian, is a single vineyard, as you mentioned. They're old vines. What are old vines To two people with gray hair? What are old vines? So old vines? There's no strict definition of it.

Jacob Ner David: 37:18

These vines are about 50 years old, which qualifies them to be called old vines, and what's fascinating is when you can meet people who planted a vineyard and 50 years later, or more than 50 years later, you're picking those grapes and you're making wine from them and you can talk to them about what it was like when they were planting that vineyard. So we have that, thank God, today in Israel and you have many Moshevniki and so on who planted vineyards in the late 60s and the early 70s and thank God, they're still around and you can go to a harvest with them. It's really powerful.

S Simon Jacob: 38:03

It's such an incredible thing. I remember the first time we planted grapes we did it up near Itamar in Tomer Panini's winery and it was. We planted the grapes and they actually made wine from those grapes. And I was there at the harvest and they gave me a bottle, a couple bottles, of the wine and I said like wow, not only did I plant it, but I'm enjoying the product from it which was delicious.

S Simon Jacob: 38:54

I can't imagine what it's like to have planted vines 50 years ago and have the skut, the benefit, the merit, the merit to be able to drink that wine after planting it 50 years ago. Planting vines is not an easy thing and my hands were not. I guess people wear gloves and the thistles and all the rest of the Right.

Jacob Ner David: 39:30

So there's planting the vines, but the expression in English tending to the vines, which is a very particular agricultural expression only for vineyards, so it really is tending to it. They really do need tender, loving, care to come to their own and you can see well-tended vineyard. If 50 or 55 years later most 95% of the vine survived, I'd say you could tell a healthy ecosystem that somebody really provided that, that TLC, as I would say. And what's interesting is that I think we're in a good place in Israeli wine making because some of these vineyards can continue. Thank God 50 is not like they don't stop.

Jacob Ner David: 40:32

So you have, for example, carnav vineyards that can keep producing, certainly in their 60s and 70s, but you know, there's the bobal grape in Spain. I don't know if you've ever.

S Simon Jacob: 40:47

Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Ner David: 40:50

So they're 100 year old vineyards, so the intensity of flavor and so on will continue. But just in terms of the Israeli wine making industry, for a while we didn't know what to do with all that carnav that got planted and, as I say now, the carnav that we're drinking is kind of the grandchildren of the carnav that was planted 120 years ago.

S Simon Jacob: 41:14

And we finally figured out what to do with it, how to make it.

Jacob Ner David: 41:18

We finally figured out what to do with it and how to use it and how to elevate it, because the what's called mass commercialization of any product will just by nature lessen its quality. Very difficult to, yeah. I mean maybe Apple with an iPhone, I don't know but most things the quality goes down and anything artisanal, anything. So the return over the past 30 years to lots of smaller and we could always talk about what smaller is, but smaller wineries who are elevating carnav, whether it be us, whether it be Vidkin, whether it be now Raziel and others who are focusing in on carnav, I think is such a blessing to the folks 120 years ago. Those are the people we need to be thanking.

S Simon Jacob: 42:14

Yeah, yeah, 100%. I remember one of the first meetings I ever had with you was at Jezreel and you had just made Argamon and figured it out, and before that it was like impossible. It was just like this gray goop. No matter what you did, it just didn't really become a wine.

Jacob Ner David: 42:52

Right Didn't come into its own.

S Simon Jacob: 42:54

I mean, it was used as a coloring. It was a color, yeah, and it was actually a clone that was made in Israel. But when it worked and you guys actually pulled it off and all of a sudden you had a wine that was really not just dark purple but actually tasted so special, I remember thinking, oh, I need some cases of this.

Jacob Ner David: 43:24

Well, you know, I think Argamon is as close as we're going to come to drinking modern Israel. I'm saying this in front of my glass of carinyan, so I'm not trying to embarrass it but.

Jacob Ner David: 43:39

I think, and as you know, argamon is a hybrid of carinyan and Suzod, I think, which is an important part of the story among Israel. Right, we celebrate what's here, what's natively here, but you, me, hundreds of thousands of others have traveled the world, have lived outside money generations. Maybe We've come back here, we're bringing with us all kinds of things and then we fuse that, we infuse it, and I think that's what Argamon for me represents, which is like we could take this Portuguese variety, we could cross it with something which may or may not have been here thousands of years ago but was brought back or brought 120 years ago. And then, finally, with skill which you know, my other parallel life is in tech startups. So with the right technology and the right technologists meaning winemakers you can make Argamon, you can make it sing.

Jacob Ner David: 44:55

The first Argamon I had, which influenced my direction in general, but also with the winery, was when Avi Feldstein made I think it was the 2005 Vintage, if I'm not mistaken, and that's what kind of got me thinking much more about Argamon. I also happened to love the taste, but, like with all things, I wouldn't drink only Argamon, or I wouldn't drink only Argamon. I love it, but it has its place, my favorite way to experience Argamon actually, which I've told many people. Somebody was just consulting with me about a pairing menu for their children's wedding a two rabbis marrying each other in a couple of weeks and they wanted to order our wines.

Jacob Ner David: 45:51

So they were, you know, counts kind of reached out to me for pairing advice and so on. So I said, look, I'd love to tell you, you know, buy our most expensive wines for everything and just drink, only drink Argamon, which is our most expensive single varietal. But I think Argamon needs to be experienced. You're not going to pour it at the smorg, you know, or at the path, you know, when they're passing around. You need to be sitting, you need to be focused, you need to really appreciate it, you need to taste it Right. And my favorite thing is actually, while it goes really well with all kinds of food, my favorite thing is just to sit with a bar of dark chocolate and Argamon and that's I get. That could be my meal, but it's usually my dessert. It's not a dessert wine, but it's a wine just to be able to focus on.

S Simon Jacob: 46:57

I totally get that. I absolutely totally get that.

Jacob Ner David: 47:05

I got to try the Argamon.

Jacob Ner David: 47:07

By the way, on the education from which you know, bless you.

Jacob Ner David: 47:10

I think you're doing great work to educate people on wine Trying, yeah, and you know you ask the average audience, even of people who would describe themselves as wine drinkers not just in the Jewish world, I'm saying in general and you say how many of you could recognize Karnian or how many of you have heard of Karnian before, and very low response numbers In once you get to kind of that very top of the pyramid, not in any way a judgmental sense, just in terms of people who are. So there's a little bit of an awareness. But even there, you know, bordeaux so overpowered the wine world for good reasons. You know, I enjoy just as much as anybody else and spent my time touring around and so on, but Bordeaux overpowered the wine world and a lot of wonderful varietals around the world got pushed down or shouted down because of that. And I think now, if you look at, whether it's in the States or other wine markets, israel, people are waking up and saying, wow, there's a whole world of wine, I don't only have to just drink that.

S Simon Jacob: 48:37

You know, if you ever made a Syrah or a Shiraz and you tried to sell it in America 10 years ago, it was just impossible, people. No, it doesn't have the word Merlot or Cabernet, so there's a beautiful guy.

Jacob Ner David: 48:55

He really is a very nice person and really knows his wine, but I don't want to just call him out. So we were talking about wine from Guy, but he knows his wine, really knows his wine in the States, and he was talking about all things that are not Bordeaux, classic Bordeaux, blends, as off varietals. That was his expression. So I said to him more for me, fellow, as far as I'm concerned, well, he's kind of an influencer. So I said you know, you got to get away from that language like off varietals, like there's a whole world, you know Kudishberg, who has given us? You know, you know God's given us all of this to explore and to get to know, and thank God for those people you know who, for all you know wonderful reasons, restrict themselves to wine this kosher certified. Today you can find kosher certified wine from all over the world, right? So many different you know experiences you get 100%.

Jacob Ner David: 50:04

So you're again going back to you know we talked about foreign terms, of violating a Jewish principle, like a Jewish principle is to enjoy life. Enjoy what's been given to us.

S Simon Jacob: 50:15

So if you're a wine drinker, you should you should, you should, you should drink, drink, drink. I'm trying to embrace, I'm here to embrace everything.

Jacob Ner David: 50:27

I'm here to promote the Israeli wine industry, and my own one. Having said that, there's a whole world of wine.

S Simon Jacob: 50:33

Yeah.

Jacob Ner David: 50:34

You know, when I, when I first got started, I was selling wine, I was kind of thinking in a very tunnel vision, as whenever you're with your own kind of startup or your own whatever, and this person says to me, go back to being the consumer, the wine consumer that you were five minutes ago. Right, you were a wine enthusiast, a wine consumer five minutes ago, not a wine maker. Did you have only one wine in your collection? Did you have only one type of wine, one region of wine? No, you had all kinds of right. You want to enjoy it, right? I said, yeah, you're right. And that is. You know, when I tell all people go, go, experience as much as you can. Thank God, there's now a kosher certified wine from the Bobol grape. You know, there's now a kosher, you know.

S Simon Jacob: 51:25

We have some Greek wine, though I would wait a couple of years for that.

Jacob Ner David: 51:30

I tasted it. Let's wait.

S Simon Jacob: 51:31

I would wait a little bit. I'm not recommending it, but I'm just thrilled that it's there. I'm thrilled that people are drinking it.

Jacob Ner David: 51:37

Yeah, I think exactly, and you know, we, as you probably know, we were the, I think, the first winery and I like to always say I'm the first, but among the first, but if not the first winery to put the vegan symbol on our wine.

Jacob Ner David: 51:54

And people automatically ask me the question why are you writing vegan? You know, on your wine, and I said well, because you should get to know the wine making process a little bit more. You know if you're a wine drinker, again, not from Halachik point of view, because Halachik point of view would be, you know again, and and and, regardless it would have to be kosher substance that was used anyway. But but yeah, in the wine making process there are different elements that you use and some of them are don't qualify, you know, as vegan. And since you know a very good friend of mine, once time there was a, a rave that I love think how he's still alive that that I really love and he's a real wonderful person and he surprised me in a certain way. Having to do with wine, let's leave the Halachik out of it, but he surprised me.

Jacob Ner David: 52:46

I didn't think he would be as mach-mir as he, as strict as he, as he, as he is. And I told the story to another Talmud of his, another student of his, who is a good friend of mine, and I kind of was venting, you know, after I heard this, I can't believe he's so, you know, strict. And my friend said to me Jacob, you've learned nothing. I said what do you mean? My friend's name is Brad, by Brad Hershfield, and he said to me you've learned nothing. I said what do you mean? He said you have so much shtick and you would love it if people would respect your shtick. So he has a shtick around wine, respect it. I was like, ever since he gave me that Mousser.

S Simon Jacob: 53:30

A little bit of mousser Mousser, that little, yeah, a little.

Jacob Ner David: 53:33

You know I respect, so you know. So my shtick is is you know that I put vegan on it because I follow a vegan diet. So I want other people who are vegan vegan to know that.

S Simon Jacob: 53:44

So, part of looking you up, I was so impressed that you were in Oxford and that you were in what you call it. You were in Mansfield. And then I'm going Mansfield Wow, you know, like how did this Jewish kid from New York end up in Mansfield? And then, all of a sudden, one of the comments they made was we have one of the best kitchens in all of Oxford, and one of the reasons it's the best is because it's certified vegan. And I went okay. Now I'm beginning to get some insight into how he picked Mansfield.

Jacob Ner David: 54:26

So it was funny. So I was. Yes, I did study at Oxford. I was fortunate to have a scholarship and was able to go to Oxford. The Chabad house at Oxford had just opened up the year that I came. It wasn't the Shaliyah who became famous or infamous, depending on your perspective, but the one who established it was named Rabbi Overlander, and one of the first things that Rabbi Overlander did was to kind of seek out all the Jewish kids and see who he could help in any way he could help. And so obviously, one of the things with food. So he reached out to me and said you know, can I get your food or whatever? And I said you know, I'm not like, I'm not your typical person that you're trying to help. I said what are the kind of things that you're bringing in?

Jacob Ner David: 55:28

He said oh, I'm bringing in beef and chicken and you know schnitzel and whatever I said. If you're really trying to make me happy, you know what I miss Bagels. If you can get me bagels, frozen bagels, get me frozen bagels, kosher frozen bagels. That would be a big deal because at least 30, whatever years ago, there were no bagels in Oxford. And he did and he got me bagels.

S Simon Jacob: 55:53

In America. That was one of the few things that you could eat, no matter where you went. As far as bread was concerned, was Lender's bagels, because they had an OU on them and they were.

Jacob Ner David: 56:06

Well, I have to tell you I have to do with wine, but I have to do with bagels and I have to do with the time we're in right now. I don't know when this podcast will get released, but I just have to do Hakkaratatov to Marvin Lender because you mentioned Lender.

Jacob Ner David: 56:17

So I was a college student in America. I was back and forth in Israel a long story, but I was a college student in America and we were leading up to the Gulf War, the first Gulf War. All trips to Israel were canceled in the months leading, if you remember before all trips all trips, shul trips, federation trips, everybody canceled.

Jacob Ner David: 56:41

There was no birthright yet, but all trips, everything was canceled and the Israeli tourism industry was dying and just, I also thought it was the wrong message, and I was still living in the diaspora at the time. I was still living, but I thought it was a wrong message. We should all the more so, we should try to support all the more so. And I went to Marvin Lender why Marvin Lender? Not just because he has bagels, but because he was the president of the UJA at the time. And I said to him look, all these trips have been canceled. So I know you've got a lot of money sitting around that was supposed to subsidize federation missions to go to Israel Again, chutzpadek. So he says, yeah, that's true. I said I think Jewish students will come to Israel, but we need to market it. And we were coming up like literally was this time period, we're coming up to winter break of American consciousness. The average winter break vacation if you go to Bokeh or if you go to Acapulco, whatever, I think I remember it was $300. I said it's $300 flights, hotel, the whole thing, it's $300. I have to market a trip to Israel in winter break. Remember, it was literally the weeks before the go for for $300. Anything above $300 you pay for. He said you could get people to come to Israel right now. I said I'm telling you they want to come.

Jacob Ner David: 58:18

You canceled the trips. You didn't even ask them. We put out word. There was no WhatsApp, there was no email, there was anything. We put out the word. My answering machine and was the reservoir of how you reserved your spot and a quick you know wiping it clean. We filled an El Al plain of 470 students in I think three days, four days, but it was thanks to Marvin Lender and he wrote the check. He covered all the money that was above the $300 a person for the flight and 10 days in Israel and we went all over Israel together 470 crazy Jewish students.

S Simon Jacob: 59:06

It was a beautiful moment.

Jacob Ner David: 59:07

So thank you, Marvin Lender Yishkoch.

S Simon Jacob: 59:10

Yishkoch.

Jacob Ner David: 59:11

Wow.

S Simon Jacob: 59:12

Unbelievable.

Jacob Ner David: 59:13

OK, but bagels go well with wine, so I've tried it.

S Simon Jacob: 59:19

I haven't tasted very much, that doesn't go well with wine. But there are some things.

Jacob Ner David: 59:24

There are some things that can react and there's chemical reactions. You know, at the end of the day, right, there's chemistry that's taking place. So there are certain things that you can. There are certain things that you shouldn't cook with wine. There are certain things. I love olive oil. Right, there's certain things that wouldn't necessarily cook with olive oil in the same way. So there aren't certain things that don't necessarily go very well with wine, whether drinking it or cooking with it, but there are things that don't go well.

S Simon Jacob: 59:57

So I used to think that. And then, all of a sudden, people started making these incredible wines, as an example, yakovoria with his orange wine.

Jacob Ner David: 1:00:08

Yes.

S Simon Jacob: 1:00:09

All of a sudden here was a wine that went with crazy Chinese food, super spicy Indian food Like I'm, my Super spicy.

Jacob Ner David: 1:00:20

Indian food, yes, in other words, and I could pair some of my own wine. I wouldn't pair any of our wines with Chinese food With standard Chinese food Unbelievable. But anything. Again we're placing us where we are yes. Mediterranean Anything Mediterranean yes.

S Simon Jacob: 1:00:42

But Mediterranean is, I think, part of the reason people are moving towards the Mediterranean varietals like Sira and Morvedra and what have you are. Well, one is because of the climate. So climate seems to be really changing and it's getting hotter, and these wines do very well in Spain and they do very well here. And as they do well here, I think that the overall move in that direction is a product that is.

S Simon Jacob: 1:01:24

It's not trying to be a cab, it's trying to be spicier, more pronounced, more in your face, more approachable from the beginning, and I think that that style of wine goes really well with Mediterranean food and especially with Israeli food. So I think that the wines that you guys have focused on Jezreel are perfect wines for exactly the cuisine of where Israel is and Israel is going, and it's because of that it's super pleasurable.

Jacob Ner David: 1:02:12

Yeah, the Israeli chef that, I'm sorry, familiar with Eyal Shani. So thank God he's making more of his restaurants approachable to a kosher audience, which he didn't before, even though it's interesting, a lot of his cooking I would say not 90%, but 70% of his cooking was kosher.

S Simon Jacob: 1:02:43

In other words, it was nothing non-kosher in what he was doing.

Jacob Ner David: 1:02:45

Right 30%, he felt, of whatever the Tel Aviv crowd. He needed to spice it up.

S Simon Jacob: 1:02:50

Right.

Jacob Ner David: 1:02:51

Included some. My good friend Inat Admoni of Balabusta, fame in New York, she does the same thing and we have a running kind of argument about it. Do I really need the shrimps in the trina sauce? I think I could have just had the trina sauce with something else, but anyway. But Eyal just opened up a new restaurant in New York two weeks ago, which I think is also an important statement. He just opened it up which is a twin of a restaurant he has in Tel Aviv, so it's called Malca and there's Malca in Tel Aviv and so now there's Malca in New York. So he has two Israeli wines on the menu. Thank God we're one of them. But I was a little like I was happy that he put our wine on the menu, but it was a little like ah, why doesn't he have just Israeli wine? Like there was something in me, right.

Jacob Ner David: 1:03:46

Right and they have just Israeli wine. And then I had to correct myself and say we also can't monopolize the conversation. In other words, if Eyal Seneh, as an Israeli chef with very Israeli cooking, is coming to New York, if he only had Israeli wine on the menu, it would be a little like forced. But all of the wines on the menu if I'll send you a picture of it, of the wine menu, all the wines on the menu, you can understand why they're there.

Jacob Ner David: 1:04:21

In other words, they go very well with his cooking and I think that in a lot of the other Israeli restaurants or Israeli-owned restaurants, particularly in the states, but not only, but in terms of outside of Israel, we still have a little ways to go to educate them to. Here's where Israeli wine is today. It's not the wine that you grew up with. A lot of these people left Israel in the sense of a full time. They left Israel 25 years ago or 30 years ago. We need to re-educate a lot of them, and even people who live in Tel Aviv sometimes don't get out of Tel Aviv too much.

S Simon Jacob: 1:05:12

I agree. I agree. Well, being from most of my life in America, I was not a big French proponent and being in Israel now, I'm so thankful for the French. They have so lifted the level of food, the level of everything, in so many positive ways, and I know that people are going to say I'm already out of your mind, but no, they have, they really have. All of a sudden, all of these restaurants in Tel Aviv that were absolutely not kosher are now all turning kosher, and it's mainly because of the French, to be quite honest.

Jacob Ner David: 1:06:00

I think it's the French, but it's also, I think it's an awareness that it's better to embrace rather than reject Right, particularly these days, these weeks. Right, ahavat Chinam, which doesn't have a good translation, but Ahavat Chinam is the way to go. We know what happens with Sinachinam Unity, right, we know what happens with baseless hatred. That we know what happens. So, but with baseless love.

S Simon Jacob: 1:06:35

Baseless love, or baseless, I said baseless.

Jacob Ner David: 1:06:38

Ahavat Chinam is not baseless.

S Simon Jacob: 1:06:40

Yeah no it's focusing on being positive.

Jacob Ner David: 1:06:45

Right, exactly, exactly, focusing on being positive. And so I think with it's the same way. There are so many people today who have gluten sensitivities whether they didn't know they had them or they're new or who knows right, but they exist, so right. So because you know they exist, so it doesn't mean you have to make your whole menu gluten free, but please tell them so they don't have to go through that painstaking research thing and put it on your menu. A little asterisk, this is what's gluten free, so I know already what I can easily order.

Jacob Ner David: 1:07:26

I think that it's a sensitivity and it's just kind of a love that permeates. And I think for a lot of the Israeli chefs they had to go through kind of a process and they're still getting there in terms of wine, but they're pretty far along in terms of wine. And then there are a lot of other hangups that people have based on whether something they experienced or they didn't experience. For example, I know you've talked about this before, about Mevushal and what is Mevushal and so on. But you and I both know that flash pasteurization in the wine industry hasn't forget about Jews right is happening anyway, and debates in the wine industry is to what its effect on the wine is, and why should you use it, or when should you use it, and so on. Again, nothing to do with kosher.

Jacob Ner David: 1:08:24

But within the kosher world there's a whole conversation to be had. But in terms of getting over people's hangups, somebody will say to you oh, I can't drink any Mevushal wine. Mevushal wine's terrible.

S Simon Jacob: 1:08:37

I get that.

Jacob Ner David: 1:08:40

And so I won't say the names or whatever, but I was with it in a certain situation. When somebody said I would never serve a Mevushal wine, I said I hear you Again, going back to my friend Brad's respect their stick. I was like I hear you, Let me pour you this wine. Just tell me, I just want you to get your feedback on this wine. And I poured them. It was having to be the first vintage of our Alpha blend which, based on requests from royal, we did Mevushal, and that was the first time we and I poured it in the print.

Jacob Ner David: 1:09:16

Ah now this is a wine I would serve. This is a great wine. This is a great wine. To this day, I have not told them that it's Mevushal. Don't tell them.

S Simon Jacob: 1:09:24

Don't tell them. Don't tell them Exactly, thank you. Okay, so we're switching wine.

Jacob Ner David: 1:09:43

So this is a limited production which we may repeat. We'll say you know, sometimes when you do innovation, it works, but you can't repeat it. Sometimes it doesn't work, so you don't repeat it. And sometimes you say, oh wow, that's a good, you know, let's try and do that again.

Jacob Ner David: 1:09:59

So we were coming into 10 years of making wine and we wanted to celebrate in some way, and part of the ethos of the winery, what I brought to it, what Yehuda brought to it in his own way, is innovation and not standing only on the past. And even though our past, in wine making terms, was very short, we wanted to do something new, to celebrate where we were. You know it's funny because you can say 10 years. So in Jewish life, 10 years is like it's not, you know, it's not bar mitzvah, it's not bat mitzvah, it's just 10 years. There's nothing. But in popular whatever, it's like you've gotten to double digits, like you're there, right, You're not even a teenager, You're a nothing, you're just 10.

Jacob Ner David: 1:10:56

So you're 10 and then you fall back, you're 11 and 12. What is that Like? Yeah, but whatever 10. So we want to do something. So we have a neighbor, a neighbor in the sense of, you know, in our right, in our area, we try and be very, very local whenever we can and a fellow who planted some vineyards in Alona Galeo, which is the neighboring town town, and one of he's not really a wine maker, his real knowledge is around honey, but he planted some p'titzirah and he didn't know what he was going to do with it and, as we talked before, it takes a while, right, takes a while until you get fruit that you can use in terms of both of Jewish law, but also there's just wine making.

Jacob Ner David: 1:11:47

And so he had this p'titzirah and he hadn't really done anything serious with it and we said you know what would? What would? Here's a varietal we haven't worked with yet, let's see what it would be like. We brought the p'titzirah sirayin, sirah carnyan kind of started blending, and blending is, you know, a mad science. I've watched some master blenders at work, some of our mutual friends Jeff Morgan, ami Ha'ilour you know people who are master blenders we're still learning right, but we're you know, you do it enough times and Yassi Chachmon, who's a co-wine maker with Yehuda I'm a wine drinker, but they're you know I sit, they put the whole thing together and I get to drink the 15 different.

Jacob Ner David: 1:12:39

You know examples and say what I think, but they're really, they're doing the real work. And we came up with this blend and we said you know, we want to celebrate both the community that we're in for many, many reasons, and so we said we're just going to name the wine Hanaton, and it's a beautiful blend, I said, of Si'ra Karanian and Petit Si'ra and we didn't know if we'd repeat it, not repeat it.

Jacob Ner David: 1:13:09

And then came Shmiitah here, so we didn't make that and now, from this current vintage harvest that we just finished, we're looking to try and repeat it. But what was funny is that for some of the people in the winery as we were tasting this.

Jacob Ner David: 1:13:32

you know it's sometimes new is always better, so the people get used to kind of what you have. And then we had this blend and then like, ooh, this is my favorite wine. I said I think it's just because it's new, but it did come out very nicely. So we have no idea how well this particular blend will age. Again, it's a vineyard. It was the first time we were working with it and it's of right, it was the first time we were working with it in terms of Petit Si'ra.

S Simon Jacob: 1:14:05

But it's a blend with Petit Si'ra.

Jacob Ner David: 1:14:07

Yes, Si'ra, karanian, petit Si'ra, and we'll see we may make more of it, but for many people in the winery it was, funnily enough, it was their favorite. I love blends because I think blends is kind of where you see people playing yeah Right, you see the creativity of the winemaker.

Jacob Ner David: 1:14:34

Exactly, and it doesn't mean that everyone is going to suit everybody. And you know, at the same way, there are certain wines that I just don't like, even wines that we make, but I know other people like them. We make a Gauvert's semi-dry. I can't drink it. It's too sweet. Going to what you've talked about before, about with sugar and everything. I can't drink it. It's just way too sweet for me. But people love it.

S Simon Jacob: 1:15:03

So initially I love Gauvert's in its sweet form, but I've become madly in love with it in its dry form because it's so floral and there's so much.

Jacob Ner David: 1:15:18

Well, the aroma stay Right, Right and then. But if you bring it to a dry then you don't have that overpowering sugar content. But you know, a lot of people come to the winery, they come with their friend who's the wine person, or they were on a trip that decided to stop at the winery.

S Simon Jacob: 1:15:37

They're 100%.

Jacob Ner David: 1:15:39

And they've never. You know the amount of times I've had people say to me wow, I've never enjoyed wine before. And I think the reason why they've never enjoyed wine before is, you know, one of two things One, they only drank really cheap bad wine that's a real possibility and but two, they just didn't find the wine that they liked.

S Simon Jacob: 1:16:04

It's also an environment thing and it's also a social thing, if you're not with the right people. I mean, you can drink wine with people and it can be, it can be unbelievable and, as far as an experience, a wonderful experience, and then you can taste that wine later by yourself.

Jacob Ner David: 1:16:25

Right.

S Simon Jacob: 1:16:25

And it's like what was so good about this wine? It's really a social elixir, Right.

Jacob Ner David: 1:16:33

I mean, there's the Jim Morrison line, right. When I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself, but yeah, most of us like to be with other people.

S Simon Jacob: 1:16:43

So a soft pause, has a line that was actually in one of the past podcasts about why can't we make peace with the Arabs? And when he was in France and he was harassed by the French after a while, he said you've had all these years, why haven't you made peace yet? He said simple, simple answer they don't drink wine. And as soon as he said that they all said oh really. Oh, no wonder why. Well, I know, I'm only kidding, yeah, yeah.

Jacob Ner David: 1:17:12

But it's funny because there are two religious texts that I believe were, and I say this to my Mormon and Muslim friends there are two religious texts that wrote wine out of daily life, right, the Book of Mormon and the Quran, but much like our religious texts right, there's Maphorshim, there's commentators, there's this in Islam, it's called Hadith, and I think they're misinterpretations.

Jacob Ner David: 1:17:41

I mean, if you read, like, for example, the Book of Mormon, which is easier to read because it's in English so we don't need it in translation. But even the Quran, right, was not even according to Islamic tradition, muhammad didn't write the Quran. It was told over and then written and then interpreted and then reinterpreted. So I say to a lot of my Muslim friends, again, respecting their shtik, but that you don't drink alcohol, and to my Mormon friends that don't drink alcohol I say I get it. I will continue to maintain that they were misreadings of your prophets, but I respect it. And there is in the States and in Europe right now a no-low movement around wine, which is a no-alcohol, low-alcohol movement growing and you'll find shelves yeah.

S Simon Jacob: 1:18:39

It used to be one shelf, now it's whole sections of no-low.

Jacob Ner David: 1:18:45

There aren't very many kosher certified, but growing a thing of no-alcohol or low-alcohol wines.

S Simon Jacob: 1:18:54

most of them are terrible, Just right, most of them are really bad. The ones that taste that are terrible Are really bad, but I've only tasted the kosher ones. Anyway, of course they're terrible.

Jacob Ner David: 1:19:05

And I have a good friend who's Muslim, for a while was a lapsed Muslim and then he came back to his devoutness and he's from a village not far from Hanaton and what he enjoys doing is coming during harvest season and drinking the grape juice before it's started to ferment, literally that first day, because then he's getting the reminder of what that could be. And so we've talked about it and we started to make some steps towards trying to do a no-alcohol wine.

Jacob Ner David: 1:19:44

And then he told me a funny story. So I just tell you, in terms of cross, we're here in Yushalai, right, so the center of at least three Religions, right at least three, yeah, and we have all of them here. Four if you count Mormons as a separate religion. Yeah, anyway, that's true. So he's been teaching in London. He's been a visiting professor at a business college in London the past few months and he was in a supermarket and he saw one of these no-alcohol wines.

Jacob Ner David: 1:20:20

He's like, ah well, great, and he bought it. And he bought it at home. And again, he's from Muslim and he bought it at home and he's just drinking. He was really enjoying it and he said you know, I should really look, check. You know, he looks at the label and he sees that the label says that it's.07 alcohol content. Meaning it was okay for the labeling to say no alcohol but in reality it was.07.

Jacob Ner David: 1:20:55

So he Googles, of course, looks up the halacha, like the poskim, and he finds that the major post-sac that he respects in his tradition, out of Cairo, says the most it could have is .05% alcohol content. I said so what'd you do?

S Simon Jacob: 1:21:18

Pour water in it. So I said so what'd you do?

Jacob Ner David: 1:21:21

Because he said he was like halfway through the bottle. I said what'd you do? He said I poured the rest of the bottle out.

S Simon Jacob: 1:21:29

I said wow, you're from earth. And me I said you're from earth, and here?

Jacob Ner David: 1:21:33

I would have finished the bottle.

S Simon Jacob: 1:21:35

I would have taken a shot glass with water poured it and said, yeah, now I've deleted it down to.05.

Jacob Ner David: 1:21:41

Yeah, anyway, but yeah so there's this growing, growing thing, which is which is important, which is interesting, because I think the alcohol content of wine is part of our experience. Going to what you were saying in terms of the experience of wine, it's definitely part of the experience, but can you remove part of that experience and still enjoy it? I think it's possible, right, I think it's possible.

S Simon Jacob: 1:22:10

But who knows?

Jacob Ner David: 1:22:11

We'll see.

S Simon Jacob: 1:22:13

I guess it's some. Oregon news came out one year with a 9% alcohol. A 9%.

Jacob Ner David: 1:22:26

Oh, that's already high for the no low movement. No, no, no, no.

S Simon Jacob: 1:22:29

Yes, it wasn't. It was really. I think they made it and then they stopped making it, but it was a wine that they really wanted to bring out for pessach, so that people with arba cosod could drink and not get totally hammered by it, and it wasn't bad. It tasted like something was missing to be quite honest in the taste it didn't. I'm not a. I don't drink wine for the buzz. In fact, it actually is in the way for me.

Jacob Ner David: 1:23:06

It stops me from being able to drink wine. You who just says the same thing?

S Simon Jacob: 1:23:10

Yeah it stops me from being able to drink more wine. Right, my wife is exactly the opposite she drinks it for the buzz. When she gets the buzz, she's set. I don't need any more wine. I'm perfect. I feel very comfortable right now, but that's not that's not, yeah, me neither, you know.

Jacob Ner David: 1:23:28

It's just a real life story. You know I like to run no-transcript. One of my favorite things, by the way, in Yerush Lime is to run around the old city. We've talked about that a little bit, but one time I was doing a run and it was a night run and placed up by us. We finished the run. You can't really see that much because it's at night. We finished the run and they do a very nice thing. They put out food and drink and so on. It's just a sponsored thing. Anyway, somebody hands me something and he says, here, would you like a beer? I was like sure, yeah, I just ran 15 kilometers, I like a beer. I took a couple of sips of it and I said to him exactly the same thing. I said to him what am I drinking? This tastes kind of off, which is funny for beer, because it's only usually like 4%, 5% alcohol. I said something good off about this and then I looked up it was the 00, heineken the 00. I said, wow, I can really taste the difference.

Jacob Ner David: 1:24:39

It's fascinating because, again, I'm not a huge beer person, but I do drink it, so yeah, there's something to it. I think nobody should be drinking wine to get drunk. That's definitely not. If you are trying to get drunk, there's a lot of other things out there.

S Simon Jacob: 1:24:59

You could drink much faster, much more efficiently. Yeah, much more expensive. Yeah, the whole thing.

Jacob Ner David: 1:25:06

I think, the experience of wine. Going back again to what you were talking about from a social point of view, and there's one of the things that we've started sadly that we've started over the past few weeks, which is, again, I don't know when this has come out. Hopefully it will have ended before then. But as you and I both know, because we will experience it viscerally, we have and talking about percentage terms, we have basically like half a percent of the country is drafted into the reserves right now, over 300,000 people who have now spent five, six weeks away from their families, and all kinds of conditions and whatever.

S Simon Jacob: 1:25:54

So we said okay as a winery.

Jacob Ner David: 1:25:56

what can we do so we can bring them wine? And you didn't do the army here. You didn't do the army here. When you were younger, you didn't do the army here.

S Simon Jacob: 1:26:09

No, no, no.

Jacob Ner David: 1:26:11

So I had a very short army service, but anybody who did do the army here knows that certainly years ago the Rabbanout of the army did try and bring wine for Qidus to soldiers, but it was usually like the cheapest, worst possible wine you could find, which is where the expression of yain patishim came from, which you might be familiar with. But that's perfect Hammer, hammer, hammer wine Like really really really bad wine.

Jacob Ner David: 1:26:42

You know, either you drink it and you feel hammered, or when you drink it you feel it's like somebody's hitting a hammer or whatever. But it's really bad. Nobody, but it's for Qidus that's the Qidus wine expression. So we said, you know what about? It would just elevate that experience for soldiers and we had two plugoot, two units of reserve soldiers who were based at Hanatom. Hanatom became a, as was called in Hebrew, a shetachkinus, an assembly point, particularly for the north, because we're very close to the north but we're not in range of day-to-day.

S Simon Jacob: 1:27:20

hopefully you'll say that Activities right.

Jacob Ner David: 1:27:23

So we had these two plugoot that assembled at Hanatom but they didn't know where they were going. So they were with us for a couple of weeks and we realized they didn't have wine for Qidus, which was Shabbat. So first we invited them Friday afternoon. The laundry was closed. We've been closed basically since the war started. But we said, you know, come Friday afternoon and they came Friday afternoon and we did a little wine tasting together and it was just a moment of both joy and normalcy for these people who at that time had been away for two weeks from their family, and we saw the impact that it had on them and how much they appreciated it.

Jacob Ner David: 1:28:04

So since then, for the past few weeks, we've been donating wine every Thursday, friday, to mainly in the north, to soldiers in the north. This week we did an even more special thing. As you know sadly been a lot of injured and worse and people have fallen. But you know a man of injured, we forget what doesn't mean to be injured. Right, there's so many injured people.

S Simon Jacob: 1:28:31

There's so many injured people. I know the deaths are high, but they're in. You know, thank God they're in.

Jacob Ner David: 1:28:43

It's way too many. It's way too many, but the people who are injured.

S Simon Jacob: 1:28:47

We're talking about thousands of people, exactly, exactly.

Jacob Ner David: 1:28:52

So there's a unit of, there's a commando unit called Maglan, which kind of was an offshoot of Talkhanim, but there's a commando unit called Maglan and we discovered because of how this Everything is played out, there are very high rate of injured people in. Maglan and there's a group of volunteers that just help the soldiers and the families of very injured soldiers from Maglan, and it's about 70 volunteers, and we just discovered that this week, and so we quickly put together a special label for them and delivered the wine today.

Jacob Ner David: 1:29:43

Or it's being delivered today To the volunteers who are helping the Maglan unit. You know very similar conversation we had before about Shemitah, like how many circles of things when you think of, yes, there are 300,000 people in reserves, but then how many families, how many businesses, how many? I mean even just at our little winery, right, we had two of our seller rats, as it's called in Napa right.

Jacob Ner David: 1:30:16

Two of our assistants to the winemakers who were drafted. Our part-time CFO was drafted so I have to step in. Like you asked me about my title before, my true title is Chief Wine Drinker, but I'm still an owner of the winery and I can. So the CFO is not around anymore, so I have to step in. I'm sorry, we haven't been paid in a month. I'll pay you All kinds of things. You know these, the circles, right, the circles of people, and you know, when you think about the wine industry in general, what I try to explain to people. Everybody has their holy spot in the wine industry.

Jacob Ner David: 1:31:01

You know I got a little bit of a bad name again because I'm usually the chutzpadec or the enfanterebiel of the whatever, so you know whether it's. You know why can't direct a consumer, why can't this, why can't that? I think everybody has their place right in this wider community and if we all can work together and I think that's what we're seeing in the country right now, when we work together, wow you know it's so much better.

S Simon Jacob: 1:31:37

It's so much better. It's so amazing to watch what people can do together and it's just. It just elevates your Nishama, elevates your soul to watch.

Jacob Ner David: 1:31:47

You know, when you look at the going back to what we talked about again because of the title of this podcast, the Kosher Terwa. So when you look again, when you sensitize people in a good way, right, and you think of I don't know how aware you are, how aware of this, you are all these restaurants in Tel Aviv who were, as my late father would say, glatrave, who cautioned their kitchens so they could make food that everybody could, that everybody could have.

S Simon Jacob: 1:32:16

I can't, I can't even talk about it because it makes me cry.

Jacob Ner David: 1:32:24

Look it's. You know, when we use the expression, right that's, and I think you know there's an expression in, we know, in here in Ert Israel, sadly, of a kviyat, a forced religion, and a forced religion never really works, it can't, but God, it can't. It doesn't, just can't. So when you look at what happened with restaurants and wineries after the start, after October 7th right, no one had to say anything to the wineries or to the restaurants that you should be closed. It's like, like like driving in Yom Kippur.

S Simon Jacob: 1:33:13

Right.

Jacob Ner David: 1:33:14

There is no people don't know that there is no law against driving in Yom Kippur, just nobody does Right.

Jacob Ner David: 1:33:19

Right, and when you allow, you know, am Yisrael to to react in the way that they want to react and you don't put so, then they stand up and they're counted. You know, kadosh, kadosh, kadosh. So I think what we've seen over the past, over the past few weeks, is a beautiful thing. We're trying to, you know, as I said, help out. I just got a. You know we're doing it for for soldiers, because you know, you know, another one of my rebame called, you know, called the soldiers, the kadosh, the kadoshim.

S Simon Jacob: 1:33:58

So it's true, it's true. You know, if you have the opportunity to speak to a soldier especially the soldiers are on the front ask them for a bracha. That's a much more kashuv, a much more important bracha than you can get from any rabbi, any rabbi you know. There was one of the other, rebayim, was talking recently and he said you know, the people are coming to Israel to visit Qvarim, to go around and visit you know all of these graves of famous rebayim and he said Har Herzl, every one of those Right.

Jacob Ner David: 1:34:48

Yeah, you know, but I got an email this morning on the way here. Got an email this morning from a community that's. We talked about this a little bit before the before. We started taping the communities that have been evacuated from their homes when they were going on six weeks right. Communities have been evacuated from their homes Like what is it just imagine being homeless for six weeks, right? So one of these communities reached out and they said they heard about this campaign we're doing for soldiers and Yassi Harwitz is doing a campaign similarly for these communities that have been pushed out of their homes. It gets to over a hundred thousand people who are homeless right now.

S Simon Jacob: 1:35:32

I know there are a bunch of them around us, yeah.

Jacob Ner David: 1:35:36

You know, in Khanaton we have also from here and from there. Anyways, community reached out and they said, as a community, you know, they reached out and they said we really, really, you know, would love some quality wine for Shabbat. We just, we're really, we apologize, we just can't pay, we're like down to the whatever if you could donate, you know, some wine. So of course I said yes, but you know, the need right is like enormous and to be able to be bring, and I think that's you know, we talk about wine.

Jacob Ner David: 1:36:16

You know when is the? What is the one life cycle event in Jewish life that we don't use wine? Death, right when we're burying someone, because wine is about celebrating life. Judaism in general is about celebrating life. Yeah, it doesn't celebrate death. Respect for death.

S Simon Jacob: 1:36:37

Right, but not.

Jacob Ner David: 1:36:39

Kavodhamit, kavodhamit, right, but not celebrating death. And so, in the ethos of celebrating life, there are 100,000 people who are homeless, who just want to have a sense of normalcy for Shabbat, right, yeah, right. So you know, if we can as a community, again, we're not, we're not, you know, we're a tiny little winery I'm talking about as a community, as an industry, right, if we can react to that. You know, there was a beautiful group from Texas of evangelical Christians, you know, and I always say somebody loves me first of all, I love them back. Afterwards we can talk about, you know, if we have ideological differences, Somebody comes to me and says I love you, I say I love you back. So they're also wine lovers, and they've been. They started a wine club and they're sending out our wines, in other words, really, wines.

Jacob Ner David: 1:37:38

For the past couple of years, everything that was happening, they raised money and they came to Israel from Texas and they came to Israel and they were running around to donate wine both to soldiers and to refugees, to displaced communities, and they said can we buy some of your wine? We've raised this money. I said you know what? Our wine's kind of expensive and we're donating already and if you want to support that, support that, you know I want your money. That is Kadozh, let's stretch it out as much as we can. So I introduced them to my good friend Nadav Aaron's, the CEO of Carmel, who have some beautiful wines, you know, but they're cheaper.

S Simon Jacob: 1:38:29

They're less expensive. They're less expensive.

Jacob Ner David: 1:38:32

I said talk to Nadav Nadav immediately, boom, they went and they were able to use their budget and buy wines for it. So I think as a community, we need to come together and remember that there are literally I mean, it's an unfathomable number over 100,000 people who this Shabbat will be now their fifth or sixth Shabbat. Yeah.

S Simon Jacob: 1:38:58

We have a family coming to us from Steyroth who is living nearby. I think they have 10 kids and they're living in one of the houses nearby. We have a family from Silver Spring who have literally a house two houses here, one for them and one for their kids in here in Yimin Moshe and they've got either five or six families living in them from the Tivot. It's unbelievable that the whole of Yimin Moshe I mean they're people who live here part-time and they've reached out to all of these people and many, many of the houses have been taken over by families or clusters of families you know, like you have you know brother, sister what

S Simon Jacob: 1:40:01

have you and all of them together, the ones who've taken over this other house from the Tivot. There's like 16, 20 of them that are. They're all close, they're all from the Tivot, from the same, you know group and what have you. It's an incredible experience. This people keep calling me and saying you know, we really we're praying for you and we feel sorry for you and what have you. And the Jews are saying that to me. I really say to them, like you know, I'll tell you something it's incredible being here when everybody's so united. It's such a pleasure. It's unbelievable to see this. It's unbelievable to experience it, and it was a lot more difficult for me three months ago. It was just terrible for me three months ago.

Jacob Ner David: 1:40:59

So it's such a it's such a pleasure to see you. As we say, let's go vital. I know I know, 100%, 100%. I agree with you and it wasn't it was.

S Simon Jacob: 1:41:10

You know, these are friends on all sides and we have so many feelings, and we have feelings that are so strong that it's really quite remarkable.

Jacob Ner David: 1:41:23

Yeah, you know, I think so.

S Simon Jacob: 1:41:27

I was going to ask you about the war.

Jacob Ner David: 1:41:29

I preempted you.

S Simon Jacob: 1:41:30

Which is very good, exactly where I wanted to go anyway, yeah.

Jacob Ner David: 1:41:34

No, I said to somebody. I said to somebody I was on a call yesterday. There's a beautiful initiative here in Jerusalem which I'd just been blessed to be like a bystander kind of a board member, but I don't really have to do anything, I just lent my name to it. It's the perfect type of board responsibility. So it's called the Jerusalem Youth Chorus and through song usually very spiritual song they bring together all the different communities of Jerusalem, east West, etc. Etc. Etc. It's a really wonderful initiative and we were on a call and it was a board.

Jacob Ner David: 1:42:11

It was a board call of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus and people are talking about sides and I said I said, gosh, I just have to stop you for a second. I said we're all on the same side. Everybody on this call is on a different side. We all celebrate life. That's it. We're all in our different ways. We're praying for peace X times a day, whether it's three times or five times or whatever. One time. We're all praying for peace. We're all on the same side. There's nobody here who's on a different side. So let's stop using that language.

S Simon Jacob: 1:42:51

And we're all on the same side.

Jacob Ner David: 1:42:52

It's so hard. But yeah, we're going to keep reminding ourselves of that. And, of course, there was a beautiful moment when somebody who I didn't know yet, who was on the call, she said I don't know you, but I love your wine. I said great.

S Simon Jacob: 1:43:07

Thank you.

Jacob Ner David: 1:43:08

Thank you. All I can ask for is people always say to me I'm sure you've heard this before and I said you know. Going back to my kids, right, I have seven kids and I know you have, you know, similar experience. I said I have nine. I know I'm saying you have so many experiences of people talking about your kids, so I'm like it never gets old. Tell me how great my kids are. Yeah, for course. Yeah, tell me again 100%.

Jacob Ner David: 1:43:38

You know, you want to tell me you love my wine. Great, it never gets old, it always sounds fresh, it always sounds new and happy to always have it here. The only other thing I wanted to say about not really the kind of the war leave that aside for the war, part aside for a moment. But you know the going in terms of Kiddush for Shabbat and families or soldiers or anybody right. There's a great line from a Hadag N'Hash song. Do you know Hadag N'Hash?

S Simon Jacob: 1:44:16

I know exactly His father used to live on the street. So yes, yes.

Jacob Ner David: 1:44:21

So there's a great line from a Hadag N'Hash Yom Shashi Yagia, which you don't need to say more than that right In a Jewish country. When I say Jewish country, I mean a Jewish flavor country, israel, israel.

S Simon Jacob: 1:44:34

The Jewish flavor country. You don't have to say more than that. In Israel, yom Shashi Yagia. Even in the Dachim, it doesn't make a difference.

Jacob Ner David: 1:44:39

It doesn't make a difference. Yom Shashi Yagia right, and there's an expectation, right. And when that expectation isn't met, I think people feel a sense of loss, even if they didn't know right. And so, for me, well, I enjoy wine every day. People always ask me oh, do you drink wine every day? And I say, well, god's help. I'm like, usually I do, thank God, you know. They're saying, thank God, I don't drink that much. Maybe I have a half a glass, whatever. But yeah, I do drink wine almost every day and, as you know, there was a period of time where I wasn't allowed because of medical issues. I wasn't allowed to drink wine for six months, and that was difficult. But, yeah, usually every day.

Jacob Ner David: 1:45:31

But there's nothing the same as Yom Shashi Yagia. Everybody's sitting down together and whether you say kiddush like this or you say kiddush like that, whatever, there's nothing like that. So I think that is something we need to. You know, and I think one of the most powerful things I don't know if you've, I know they have it here in Yush Lime I went to the one in Tel Aviv, which is the Shabbat table that's been set up for the hostages, for the, and the powerful thing for me, and from this I also started to cry. But for the powerful thing for me, when I saw it in Tel Aviv a week ago, friday, which is you had closed bottles of wine on the table Right, wow.

S Simon Jacob: 1:46:28

Yep.

Jacob Ner David: 1:46:29

So you know, our only blessing should be that they should get opened up and everybody should come home and be able to say kiddush together.

S Simon Jacob: 1:46:41

Thank you. It's a pleasure to have had you on the kosher tehrwah. I look forward in the future as well.

Jacob Ner David: 1:46:47

Yeah, we got to change the name to the Jewish tehrwah, but otherwise I know.

S Simon Jacob: 1:46:55

You know, somebody asked me a question, so this is over the top of what we were discussing. Somebody asked me a question recently that you mean, wine actually isn't like Coke. You don't make it like Coca-Cola, what have you? And I said no. And as we're discussing the types of flavors in certain wines, I said yeah, but okay, so it's like Coke. You add those flavors and what have you? And I said no, you don't. They come from the tehrwah, they come from the Right, the tehrwah for sure.

S Simon Jacob: 1:47:33

And he said he just like was stunned. And he looked at me and he said you mean, there's a difference between wine that's grown in Israel and wine that's grown other places in the world? And I said, yeah, Right. And he goes you mean, when I buy a wine from Israel and I drink it, I'm actually tasting Israel.

Jacob Ner David: 1:48:00

I mean I mean. I mean I mean, yeah, drink Israel. I said do it, now it's the time. Hashtag drink Israel. Yeah, now it's time. Now more than ever.

S Simon Jacob: 1:48:09

It's time to buy Israeli wines.

Jacob Ner David: 1:48:11

I mean, I mean so shalom brahah. Thank you.

S Simon Jacob: 1:48:14

Thank you. Thank you. This is Simon Jacob, again your host of today's episode of the Kosher Tehrwah. I have a personal request no matter where you are or where you live, please take a moment to pray for our soldier's safety and the safe and rapid return of our hostages and, whenever possible, buy and share Israeli wine. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of the Kosher Tehrwah. It was exciting and informative for me as well. Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released. If you're new to the Kosher Tehrwah, please check out our many past episodes. The Kosher Tehrwah is also available on the Nahum Siegel Network at 6.30 pm New York time Thursday evening and on the world famous NSN app. Again, thank you for listening to the Kosher Tehrwah.