The Kosher Terroir

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

Solomon Simon Jacob Season 3 Episode 8

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Discover the joy of pairing wines with Hanukkah themes in our special crossover episode with The Kosher Terroir and the Parsha Wine Club podcasts. Led from Jerusalem by Simon Jacob, the vibrant Yechiel Chovav, insightful Itzik Stern, and Torah scholar Rabbi Levi Morrow. Embark on a flavorful journey with us, exploring selections like Vitkin Winery's Macabeo, and indulge in the artistry of winemaking. Levi enriches our celebration with his profound insights from translating Rav Shagar's Holiday Dreshas, weaving wisdom and festive spirit together with laughter and camaraderie.

Embark on an intellectual adventure as we unpack the legacy of Rav Shagar, a visionary who seamlessly bridged traditional Jewish teachings with modern philosophy. Journey through his transformative path from yeshiva student to a pivotal teacher and leader, highlighting his collaborations with luminaries like Rav Steinsaltz and Rav Fruman. Our conversation delves into postmodernism through the lens of Jewish thought, exploring how Rav Shagar and his predecessors, such as Rav Kook, found divine value in secular ideologies. By examining historical perspectives, we illuminate Rav Shagar's unique approach to accepting uncertainty and imperfections, offering a profound narrative of self-acceptance and humility.

Amidst the warmth of Hanukkah lights, we also engage in the art of winemaking, debating the nuances of cork selections and savoring the stories each bottle tells. Our lively discussion touches on the symbolism of Shabbat and Hanukkah candles, enriched by Rav Shagar's teachings on conscious choices and divine service. Celebrate with us as we exchange anecdotes, ponder philosophical questions, and appreciate the delicate balance of tradition and modernity. Whether you're a wine connoisseur, a philosophy enthusiast, or simply in search of a unique holiday celebration, this episode invites you to experience a tapestry of wine, wisdom, and warmth.

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S. Simon Jacob:

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 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 a 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 are Yechiel Chovav and Itzik Stern from the weekly Parsha Wine Club podcast. Also our guest Torah scholar Rabbi Levi Morrow and myself, Simon Jacob. If you're in your car, please focus your attention on the road ahead. If you're 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?

Yechiel Chovav:

do this from. I actually thought this should stay in. We'll do it from both. Okay, yeah, I was planning to do it from both, I think. Just say welcome to yours, and then I'll say, and yeah, okay, great.

Itzik Stern:

Well, I think you always add on the intro afterwards Like he explains the intro and then I'll say there's a collaboration with One second, one second, one second.

Yechiel Chovav:

It's a crossover. Are you going to say it's a crossover?

Itzik Stern:

It is a crossover episode.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah, it is Say welcome to a crossover episode, not that one. Well, should we use the music from what you Call it? Hold on.

Yechiel Chovav:

We don't have music, so if you want to use music, it's welcome.

Itzik Stern:

We need to get something. Yeah, we definitely need to get something. You mean East and Black.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

This is from.

S. Simon Jacob:

Under the Vines from the TV show. Under the Vines from New Zealand.

Itzik Stern:

So what we originally wanted to do for the Parsha thing was to record the sound of flipping through pages on a book and then a clink of a glass. But the clink was so loud, the clink was too loud. We tried, we tried recording the thing and then we couldn't get it. We like the flipping and then the recording.

S. Simon Jacob:

We're going to have somebody do it for us well, hold up one of the books and flip through it, and then we'll clink your glasses and then we'll record this and have it for all our intros. Here we go no, you've got to click it, near it the other option was like this okay, 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 Timah. It's great to be here.

Yechiel Chovav:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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, it's in the works. So we should say everyone is here, yes, so Do you want me to announce each person? We'll start with you. We have our host.

Yechiel Chovav:

We have our host. We have our host from jerusalem, from jerusalem, from jerusalem, Simon Jacob. Yeah, all right, started, so you gotta, and then, um, I will. Actually this is a good way for me to say this last time I was on the podcast, yep, that was not my name. Okay, we feel I was well here. We'll go. Uh, my wife and I decided to make a hebrew name. If you have more questions, you could message me privately. But my name is now and I host the partial one club podcast with it's extern, real pleasure and we have a guest, very special guest lady Maro.

S. Simon Jacob:

Excellent.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yes.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

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

Yechiel Chovav:

Fine, yes, okay. So yeah, I guess I had the idea for this episode. So, on the Parsha Wine Club podcast, every week Itzik and I we pair our wine with the Parsha. We decided we wanted to do a bonus Hanukkah 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 Shigar's Holiday Dreshas, which has a big section on Hanukkah. We can 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. Here's some of Levi's background and how he got to Rav Shagar. Here's some Hanukkah Torah from Levi from Rav Shagar.

S. Simon Jacob:

Excellent.

Itzik Stern:

Sounds great.

Yechiel Chovav:

One big party Awesome.

Itzik Stern:

And as we say, oh, my God, so he does this to me all the time, awesome. And as we say, stay in cellos se go.

Yechiel Chovav:

Oh, my God, god, there he goes. 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 of the partial wine club.

Itzik Stern:

Yes, we probably get more comments and feedback about like the good jokes I even comment on it as opposed to the wine.

Yechiel Chovav:

Well, I spent all this time writing the Torah and then everyone's like, oh, that was a good pun by Yitzhak.

S. Simon Jacob:

Thank you very much.

Yechiel Chovav:

I think we should start with wine?

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yechiel Chovav:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

But 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

Let's just see. I've had Maccabello from Spain. That's perfect. It looks good.

S. Simon Jacob:

It'll be fine. It'll be fine here.

Itzik Stern:

I can pour you more.

Yechiel Chovav:

Vita Memorias has a few kosher Maccabellos 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

It's awesome exclusive and I haven't made it up to the winery yet. It's awesome. That is so much acidity it it is. It has an incredible kick. Um avi davidavitz and myself made 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 Maccabeo.

Yechiel Chovav:

That was added to it. So I just want to point out this is a 2019. Yeah, it does not taste like a 2019. For those who don't know, it's 2024 right now. And it tastes super fresh. It's crazy Like how much acidity it still has I know.

S. Simon Jacob:

No, it's an amazing wine.

Yechiel Chovav:

I think it's like two barrels or something well isn't that cool.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yes, oh, you're doing the acidity test.

Itzik Stern:

I got it from Echiel, as Echiel likes to mention his level 3 WST teacher was a master of wine it was cool. There's only 417 in the world I think there, what is it there? There, more people have flown to outer space than have passed that test. I wouldn't track 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?

S. Simon Jacob:

This is you know the actual answer. No.

Yechiel Chovav:

In terms of what I mean. I only know in terms of, like, measuring for.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

WCT. I mean, this is high acidity.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yeah, this is high acidity, yes, which is surprising to have it. So is it made of face? Because he's saying that maybe it didn't last as long in his mouth, but it's the first thing I tasted, the acidity.

Itzik Stern:

So putting it up to high, you 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 high acid wines.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Itzik Stern:

I know.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yeah, this is getting so technical, levi, welcome to wine nerd home. How are we doing?

S. Simon Jacob:

we're all nerding out over smells amazing one thing or another.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yes, it's okay.

Itzik Stern:

I mean, it's so good though have we ever come to like a conclusion on where Macabeo got its name?

S. Simon Jacob:

no, and I I can't imagine that it didn't come from Israel maybe it wouldn't shock me if it okay.

Yechiel Chovav:

So we were not Levi. Sorry, not you, but the rest of us in this room were at Gvot last week and Shivi's like Shivi Jory the winemaker, they were very adamant that winemaking started parallel here, and in Georgia the country, not the state, Around the same time, it wouldn't shock me. I've heard people actually say Makabeabeus from the Maccabeum, which is. I'm not buying it a little bit.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yechiel Chovav:

Some version of it.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yes, but the other thing is that I mean the Chardonnay one is like that's like a.

Yechiel Chovav:

That one bothers me. No, that's like, I think one of these you know old wives tales Wishful thinking, 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. The Ch drunk's tail yeah, they say it's like Shara. I don't like.

S. Simon Jacob:

Shara yeah.

Yechiel Chovav:

Shara Shaman, it's like no it isn't.

S. Simon Jacob:

It's because it could be. But, yeah, this is really cool. I love this one. It's yeah, and I love everything that you know. Let me try to be a little bit articulate. I love everything that I've when we've tried to blend things with it. It just is Because it can add a backbone. It adds incredible sparkle to whatever wine you add it to.

Yechiel Chovav:

It's a great wine for blending.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 Cause I got hired at a gore. Well, actually, last time I was on this podcast was at Jerusalem wineries, where I'm still Somalia technically. But afterwards I went with Simon to a gore, 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, it's one of my favorites, yes. So I went with Simon and I got hired purely off enthusiasm. If you listen to that episode, you just hear me giggling in the background the whole time. Yeah, but it was like that.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah, but it was crazy. We were trying stuff and and it was just off the charts.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yeah, so I'm now on the winemaking team there and today was my first time doing blending for whites and it was just cool to see a y'all do it. But also I very much see what something like this could. We don't have anything that's a single varietal at a gourd, so I could see what a y'all would play with this.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yechiel Chovav:

He's also Asaf is. So I recently did a little write-up on the Carignan, the second Carignan, because I had the 2018. Just 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 a little bit and just like one thing I really love about us office, is he any varietal he's working with? He really understands it. It's like there's no. It's so exact and so yeah.

S. Simon Jacob:

He just came to wine. He really didn't have a background, except he worked in a place called um Pantikinay. Well, yeah, well, I say famously, cause I heard it on your podcast but he's he, you know like he's had incredible background and he's quiet and very interesting. He's so nice also.

Yechiel Chovav:

He's a really good guy.

S. Simon Jacob:

We all happen to know a bunch of incredibly nice winemakers, especially in Israel.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 a competition? Like why are you so like we'll have winery, like during the harvest? I want I remember there was al 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

Right, there's a lot of information to share, a lot of equipment to share. Like I said, it's, whenever I go to wineries now I'm 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

It's really fun. It's really fun. Okay, so that was the first wine for our tasting, for our Hanukkah.

Yechiel Chovav:

So do we want to get into a little Torah? 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 where your day job is, what your, I don't know just more about you.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Yeah, i'm'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 Roraita. Spend a lot of time taking care of my kids.

Yechiel Chovav:

They're just twos through seven. Yes, so I have a few questions for you about your book and Rav Shigar in general. So the question I want to know the most is actually the fact that you said 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 three different publishers in seven 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 Sepharim now of his on every topic, like Gemara Shirim Halacha, like Gemara Shirim Halacha, there's a Sefer for every Chag, there's books on Hasidus for him, like running commentaries, and he really it's actually this works for wine. He was very much an Isha Shkolot. That's interesting which is a term when it emerges Isha Shkolot, isha Kolbo. But a Shkol also means cluster of grapes.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

In English we'd say a Renaissance man.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yes, but it doesn't have the same.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Maybe a word on his history and biography is in order, we'll know what we're talking about, go ahead. So, rabbi Shigar, rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, before he was ever a rabbi, he was Shigar. He was in high school.

Yechiel Chovav:

A teacher called him that right.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

His friends called him that. They saw it on his tallit bag the acronym for his name. So he became Shigar. He was born in 1951 and passed away in 2007. Was a man of yeshivas. He learned in Karambayavna at a very young age. He was teaching at Yeshiva Hakotel. He was acting Rosh Shiva for a year when he was 32 in 1982-83. He was acting Rosh Hashiva for a year when he was 32 in 1982-83. He was a Rosh Beit Midrash in some other institutions, including the religious film school here in Yerushalayim.

Yechiel Chovav:

He also founded a yeshiva for like three years with Rav Steinzeltz and Rav Fruman. Yeah, Shefa.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah, but Shefa is the. It's a Steinzelt institution, yeah.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

And then he eventually founded, in 1996, yeshivat Siach, now Yeshivat Siach Yitzchak in the northern Afrat area. That 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

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

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Yes, in Yeshiva Itchery there's a couple of short biographies in front 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 cover of Living Time, the new book of translations, he's got his black hat on and I think that's a sweater. He wears a frock in some photos.

Yechiel Chovav:

I will say this is very inside baseball, but the way so it would look Haredi to someone who I guess doesn't think about this stuff way too much. But the way he has his shirt on is the Merik HaZaravwe.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Yeah, the white collar over the black suit is the Merik HaZaravwe. Yeah, so he. What he's most known for and this will eventually come around to how I got into him is his interest in general philosophy in general, Like he 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 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

It's a good question, great question. Part of the problem is that it doesn't have a really good definition. It's very rare to find someone who's going to say they believe in postmodernism or they're postmodernists. Postmodernism is mostly a bad word. People use. It's a name. People call other people they don't like Okay, but people roughly mean by it. This is somewhere in where Shigar is trying to get at. People mean nothing is true, there's no values or something like that. And Shigar 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 ask the questions of and he's a student of Cook what does the manifestation of this as 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

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

Itzik Stern:

I actually really appreciate the idea of finding some sort of construct for that, because I 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.

Itzik Stern:

I joined the army after Yeshiva I obviously was suddenly exposed to a much larger world and other world views and I started developing some views on my own. And I got a lot of heat from guys back in Yeshiva that said it's all post-modernism 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

But, like you said, 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 Yichiel is light years ahead of where I am on this but the question I have is when you're saying, when he's talking about things like atheism, that there's a hashkacha pratit, that people believe this way, Is that what you're saying?

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Something like that. So he's just to give a little background. That might help, I think, with some easier examples at this point. Go ahead From 100, 150 years ago, when you have Rav Kook.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Rav Adar Amir's called Kakoen 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, people 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 and people 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.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

And Rav Shigar 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. 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

Gotcha. That's much more clearly.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 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 so he says but there's a great value in them and that they're teaching the world monotheism. So like, these are ideas that are not what we believe in at all, but there has to be something positive coming from this ultimately.

S. Simon Jacob:

Otherwise, why would God allow it to happen?

Yechiel Chovav:

Basically, except that sometimes you need a bad example, Well, I would not categorize the Rambam as a fan of either of these religions, but it's just a different way of looking at things. I guess Got it. So, levi, how were you so? Like I said, in Israel, he's fairly well-known In English. 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 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 asked how did you get to him?

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

So I did my undergraduate degree at what's called Mikhlelet Yaakov Herzog. It's a religious teaching college attached to the Har Tzion Yeshiva, also known as Gush. So in my studies at Herzog I eventually took a course on Rav Shigar, 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's ever took seriously postmodernism, really dealt with it in a serious way, and 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.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

So, like you're telling me there's one rally, I'm interested. I gotta take a look. I'm gonna read an essay or two and something about his language and um 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 just grabbed me. It became almost everything. I studied for most of a decade. I started what turned out that when some of the people who mentioned him were his students and, like there were other students teaching at Herzog, I took their classes, I wrote my senior thesis on him and then it wrote my master's thesis on Rav Shigar as well, and while I was doing finishing my first degree and working on my second, I started translating his essay, 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 Shigar, and then he also initiated the translation project.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 seven years and three publishers. What next I want to ask, but I've just been wondering this Explain the fact that you said it took seven years and three publishers.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

So this is a mix of the way publishing works in general and then just the communication breakdowns that happened over time and the fact that this is a book of translations of essays that have copyright owned by the Rav Shigar's widow, Rabbi Nick Miriam, but also, has you know, have copyright owned by the Rav Shigar's widow, Rabbi Nick 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 Rav Shigar'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.

Yechiel Chovav:

There's so much of it.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

And then, when that was decided, that wasn't the direction we were going to go in. We were working with uri, impressed, or it was wonderful. Uh, I think we, I think we almost signed a degree with them. We just were not quite there. And then the people from who are in charge of shigar's writings said, um, okay, so we're gonna do this as like a joint project. Now we're all in, uh, and we're gonna go with magid, uh, 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 like they should go together.

Yechiel Chovav:

Just the best way to do it which I think makes some sense it's also, I should say, I'm happy with them, because it's so easy for people to get.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Yeah, this is a new volume called Living Time Festival Discourses for the Present Age and that's two sentences that have like six people's handprints on them, but his collection of his drashot for all the chagim including. You know we call it here in Israel chagei yar yom hashoah, yom azikaron, yom atzmut, yom yershoayim, and as well as something in here for the three weeks.

Yechiel Chovav:

It was a really excellent like 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 haruta with over the phone for a while, has heard about or cigar from me and from one of his brothers-in-law. So now that this, when you heard this, exists, he went the next day and bought it and now I learn with him, uh, once a week amazing yeah, yeah, it's very, yes, it's awesome.

Yechiel Chovav:

But I want to put 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 Hanukkah one here. There is one volume, like I said, from Moad De'iyav, which would never exist in an American it's an 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 a Maccabeo for Hanukkah. Yep, and Yachiel came right back and posted, so I sent him a picture of this wine next to my wife's menorah. This is by Yaakov Oria, 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. Yep, this wine is called, actually, two wines. Well, right, it's a set. Sorry, it's a set but, it's okay.

Yechiel Chovav:

This wine is called in Hebrew Ol Me'ofed and in English Light from Darkness, which is perfect for Hanukkah. It's perfect for Hanukkah, it's absolutely perfect. It almost writes itself this is a Blonde Noir, meaning a white wine grapes this. If you want to go into the real details of Blonde Noir, I'm going to plug myself here and say Itzik and I used the Blonde Noir a few weeks ago on the Partial Wine Club podcast, for I believe the first episode that saw that was actually yeah, for Toldot. We did a few videos, first on Instagram and Facebook and then we did the podcast. I remember that.

Yechiel Chovav:

So Toldot we did the first podcast we did was a Blonde Noir, so I explained it a little there, but briefly, basically, the vast majority of black slash 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

So in a blonde and noir you're getting almost no color and it's pretty cool because you get flavors of they were associated with the red wine, but none of the heaviness, and Isaac pointed this out to me on the website. On Yakov's website, he says he really harvested it earlier, so it's going to be a lot more sharp and acidic than a classic red wine.

S. Simon Jacob:

So, chaim, Chaim Tovim Shalom.

Yechiel Chovav:

Baruch Atah Aranah Eloheinu.

S. Simon Jacob:

Malchol. I also love this wine. This wine is super lovely.

Yechiel Chovav:

I mean, the thing is like I couldn't fear being in the running for the biggest Yakovoria fan if your father-in-law didn't exist, because there's no topping Simon in the Yakovoria fan. If your father-in-law didn't exist, because there's no topping Simon in the Iacovoria fan club rankings. It's a lost cause, but it's so good.

S. Simon Jacob:

This is what year it's a 23. It's a 23.

Itzik Stern:

Super interesting because it has more of like somewhere between, I want to say like a very aged white or even an orange wine.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah.

Itzik Stern:

This is nothing like what you would get. It's not really a Blondinoir and it's not a rosé. 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 know France, spain, italy.

Yechiel Chovav:

What are the grape varieties?

Itzik Stern:

We have Grenache, we have Morved or Morvedre.

Yechiel Chovav:

We have.

Itzik Stern:

Grenache. We have Morved or Morvedre Cinçal and. Barbera, he went all over with this one.

Yechiel Chovav:

I really like this one.

S. Simon Jacob:

This has some skin contact.

Yechiel Chovav:

It has to from the process.

S. Simon Jacob:

So it's got some of the early beginnings of an orange, enough to make this white really interesting.

Itzik Stern:

It's like there's an amazing mouthfeel.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yes, the mouthfeel is so broad.

Yechiel Chovav:

It's silky. Yeah, it's beautiful. I like the 22 a lot, the one that I sent you last year Simon. But I think the insulin's even better. I think it's even better myself I'm trying to remember. I don't remember what the blend was last year. I don't remember if it was the same one. I don't think so. I don't think it had. The blend was last year.

S. Simon Jacob:

I don't remember if it was the same one.

Yechiel Chovav:

I don't think so I don't think it had Barbera last year.

S. Simon Jacob:

And I don't think it also had the, what you call it, the Cinca. Yeah, Cinca. Let's see it's really.

Yechiel Chovav:

I mean, he's a crazy genius.

S. Simon Jacob:

It's got really silky mouthfeel. It's wonderful. It's got really silky mouthfeel, it's wonderful.

Itzik Stern:

It's funny, this is the second time we've used, like you said, the second time we've used a Blanc de Noir, 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 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 Echel mentioned in Toldot was the idea of a wine looking like one thing but in fact being something else Kol Kol Yaakov. It was a red grape that became a white wine. So I think it's cool that in this case we just went for the easy option.

S. Simon Jacob:

So it's interesting because one of Yaako's other wines is, um, uh, if I call that now, yeah, yeah, 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, fuck, I love it now and it's like what grip did he use?

Yechiel Chovav:

pretty as the moon. It's a great wine from experience. A little tip out there for the husband's 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 sin Cinca, sirène Morved, so clearly he's always tinkering.

S. Simon Jacob:

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 what he's tasting.

Yechiel Chovav:

That's what he does, that's what it is by SOB. Yeah, ragur.

S. Simon Jacob:

Well, so that's what SOB has been all along, initially, when we started going down the path with SOB.

Yechiel Chovav:

I feel like you should explain what SOB is to those who don't know.

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay, special Oreo blend. It has no other connotation besides that.

S. Simon Jacob:

Nope, no other acronym, yeah, no other acronym. The OU put a hashgag 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 Aurea 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 quote, winned that Yaakov would 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 Jakob. So we 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. 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 the range.

S. Simon Jacob:

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 he told him you know, okay, have you come up with what you want to do? And he promptly came back with five varietals that he was going to mix together. And he promptly came back with five 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

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 a blending session, in the house here, and it was absolutely off the deep end. It's a solid wine. It was the first time I've ever experienced, as we were putting pieces together of a wine, what complexity meant. Each varietal that we tasted tasted wonderful. And then, as you mix them we got things like complexity and really incredible things. The sum of the parts is nowhere close to what the whole ends up being, so it was very cool.

Yechiel Chovav:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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, yakov started saying okay, let's take the first one and the last one and put them together. And what do you think? And let's take three of them and put 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

So I've only had that wine with you. Yep, I added it here.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Itzik Stern:

So you continued being involved in all the vintages.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah, the team did. Avi Davidovich did a yeoman's job on it did Avi Davidovich 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 different countries. Other people stepped up to the plate. Richard Davidoff in England really coordinated the whole English side of it, which was pretty huge, and we had a whole group of people in America who bought into it as well. There's some great people in this business.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yeah. So I'm going to ask my next question to Levi, which I'm also going to answer my own question eventually on this specific one, this one. I gave him a heads up just so he could 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 the first introduction to Rav Shaggar, so what would you say are some of your favorite, either small tidbits from him or bigger ideas that he has that you find unique to him and especially meaningful to you?

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

That's a good question and I'm very glad that you gave me a couple days to prepare for it. I want to start with a broad idea that comes up in a bunch of different contexts for him and then 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 atzmi kechaser. Kabbalat atzmi self-acceptance Accepting myself kechaser as imperfect. And so kabbalat atzmi 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 if Hashem is in charge of history, then history looks the way it's supposed to look and 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 think you are failing and imperfect in some way, and there's a standard you should be living up to that. You are just not making it, then you are failing to see God in your own life and in your own existence. And Rav Shigar says no, 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 a failure, 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 Shigar'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, nothing is sort of knowable with certainty. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

There's a certain point in my life where I was, I would say, wracked by doubts. When I say wracked, there's this deep and uncomfortable emotional experience of doubt and at some point in learning Rav Shigar I realized, 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.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

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 that Hashem is transcendent and beyond our understanding, then it makes sense that you would never be able to reach certain knowledge about Hashem, because that's just that wouldn't make it. It wouldn't be knowledge of Hashem if it was final and certain, and then as human beings, we're not, you know, capable of that sort of thing. And so the ability to come to accept myself as a, you know, person who cares deeply about truth, is seeking truth and never going to find it in a final and certain way, is something that I took from Rav Shigar. It's really important to me to this day.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 historic, the hashgacha history side of it, where for me, specifically, it's with Pesach. I actually recently sent Levi I had this list that I compiled from all the different places where he said, from a few different perspectives, about how a lot of times when changes happen in society and some post-scheme will just sort of get boggled down, about dealing with like, is this good, is this bad? Rav Shigar is saying, like see the side of Ashgaha in this, like these changes are happening because these are changes God 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 in. But 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 Destler book, but he is always asking questions of himself. I feel like he has a quote in one of his forums where he basically says this is from Naal Echbel Agish, which is like a collection of essays they put out after he passed away where he says when you're entering, 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, that's a lower form of understanding, etc. But he also holds this for the post game where he and like in his uh perusha on the kote marhan, he talks about how, like psak has to have mercy in it. If you don't think you're going to benefit your congregants by giving them the Pesach, then maybe don't give it. It's just this. I wonder this a lot because he could come off as a little depressive at times, but 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 real. I don't ever leave sad when I'm reading his firm. It's always just a. I really feel like it's a 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

And I'll just finish on by saying that my relative I'm studying this with I actually should say this verbatim what he said but he tried to read one of the Hanukkah chapters before. We learned it together. We started learning it together because he never. There's a lot of Kabbalah, a lot of Hasidic, a lot of philosophy and he had never learned any of this. But he said he sent me a message.

Yechiel Chovav:

He goes I've never not understood something and enjoyed it so much at the same time and 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 and 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 sense. It's like it is a labor, but I personally find it to be a labor of love to go through his stuff. I don't know how did you feel the first time you read it.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

I think I managed to start with some pieces that were more direct 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 Hageem, 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'll say an idea in part in one place and more in another place Baruch Hashem.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

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 Shigar, and it also is very powerful, but not philosophically complex.

Yechiel Chovav:

Which one is it?

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

The one of Rav Elazar ben Dordaya. Hakol Toloi Beez. Hakol Elazar ben Dordaya it all depends on me in the English translation, which is about recognizing your own ability to take charge of your life and do tshuva. 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.

Itzik Stern:

Yes, do you see yourself? I mean, you mentioned, there are 25, approximately 25 books.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Is this your full-time gig? I mean, do you see yourself doing more and more of these books? No, no, I I would love for there to be more translations. Um, I don't see myself, uh, putting out another collection of them, um, in part because, uh, I probably did some of the translations after I had a kid or two, but most of it was done, uh, when I didn't have kids yet. So it's just a matter of time and, like I just was 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 Shigar right now at Rishiv Aroraita, trying to write up some of it. We'll see how that goes.

Yechiel Chovav:

I mean I wonder how much of this they will translate. But also I feel like I'm saying because you got a little from all the Chagim ones, so anyone people can. There's more than one for every Chag. So people can have just this, say, for at least three years, because you could 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 Hebrew ones as well. Also I'm pointing this out just because Levi and I have spoken about this before the Hebrew Rosh, hagar, sfarim are beautiful.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Yeah, it's go ahead. I didn't know Sfarim could look like this, like the Hanukkah one.

Yechiel Chovav:

In particular it's all just to the people in the room.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

My Hanukkah copy is like fully falling apart. I think it's one of the first books I got from him and again I didn't know how far I could look at it. It's just beautiful. They put art on the cover but they're also around the art. They're all just in bright colors like these.

Yechiel Chovav:

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. Every Chag I'd bring the Rav Shigar Sefer. I had it with me in shul and they're always like it's ridiculous. You have all this stuff and all my shelves are just different shades of brown and blue, like you said. So it looks nice on the shelf regardless of anything else.

S. Simon Jacob:

You know. So I have not studied Rav Shigar. I just haven't up to now. But A lot of the things that you're saying resonate really incredibly with me, because as I was studying Yitzchayim which is a Kabbalistic Sefer that was very challenging to go through, and I was learning with the Rav in English and Hebrew, rav Yaakov Shepard 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, it went straight over my head and what have you.

S. Simon Jacob:

But after a couple of days, two or three 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 is really worth it.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Yeah, I've definitely had those moments with Rev Chagar, both in terms of specific pieces but also 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 mitzvot, and in a couple of the essays, one for Pesach and Shavuot and one 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

I hope this doesn't come off as too sacrilegious, but part of why I love studying wine and working on wine so much. I mean, I taught much more boring things than wine before this and I just started. Well, 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

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.

Yechiel Chovav:

So you've got to be an incredible winemaker to consistently reproduce what your goal is 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 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 wine? I'm like, oh, it's not for me. And they say, oh, I had an amazing wine for them. I'm like, I'm very happy for you. And they'll say and then they'll say I'm like shkoyev In 2016, everyone made good wine because, basically, god made good wine in 2016, because the weather was perfect. I mean, we've talked about this a few times. It's like if a winery didn't make good wine in 2016, then we have a much bigger issue. But, like you said, it's not consistent.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Itzik Stern:

Yeah.

Yechiel Chovav:

Except that they're not perfect. Nobody is. That's why I so I spoke about this with with Asaf. I was mentioned. I spoke to him about the 2018 current yeah, and he said what, even though 2018 is considered a very good year, um, you just had the Sam sofa on. It's like the biggest 2018 Chassid I know, and but Asaf told me that, like, actually, the 2018 Carignan wasn't the perfect harvest. He said, like it was just the winemaking they had to. Like I would not have expected that. I would have. I assumed that just because 2018 was so great, I'm not going to say, obviously, you know, it's never an easy job, but I was surprised to hear him, to hear him say that, because I think that's a borderline perfect wine, the 2018. So we need to hear from Levi. I hope he prepared something for Hanukkah. We're going to open one more wine, yep, to make it still wine.

S. Simon Jacob:

How are we going to keep the feel of the Hanukkah? Is this a great pun on Hanukkah? This wine.

Yechiel Chovav:

So sort of this is partially. There's 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, hold on a second.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yechiel Chovav:

I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah. So I've spoken about this wine with you. Levi Itzik's never had this. You're in for it.

Yechiel Chovav:

So this is a wine made at Agour, where I work now, by the previous winemaker, shuki Agour. A gorgeous, only blends, especially now with the yellow winemaker that we have now. It was a real genius. We, the rosé is four varietals, but everything else is at least six or seven. So I did a tasting this past week, at a store actually, and people asked me what's in the wine? I'm like we don't have time. There's a lot of people in line. You like it? Great, um, but every once in twice there were just single barrels that were so good that shook. He decided to bottle them as they are. If this ever happens again, it wouldn't shock me if agor did this again. But this is not standard. We do all blends the wine.

Yechiel Chovav:

This is a 2015. It's a cabernet, lady. 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, onypa Ponton, which means a sea as dark as wine. So we're playing with the darkness theme again. So that's my connection to Hanukkah Also, it's a name in Greek, so that's my connection to Hanukkah. Levi, you know where the quote was from.

Yechiel Chovav:

So, where's the quote from back of the bottle? Here it says, as Achilles said at the funeral of his friend Patroklos 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. He's, yes, but he's also like all our wines at Agur 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

They had a wall full of these for sale and I thought, okay, that was the last wall, yeah. And I thought for was the last wall yeah.

S. Simon Jacob:

And I thought for sure, you know this will be available. So I took I think two or three 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

So I feel like this is appropriate. This might need a Durand, though what you think it needs a Durand.

S. Simon Jacob:

Nine years.

Itzik Stern:

No.

S. Simon Jacob:

Let's just look, I have a Durand. I have a Durand Nine years. No, let's just look, I have a Durant. I have a Durant really close by.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

That looks pretty clean, yeah it looks fine. For all the listeners who don't know what that is A Durant, yeah, a.

S. Simon Jacob:

Durant 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 and a normal corkscrew in the middle of it. So when you turn it, 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. Do you want me to do it?

Itzik Stern:

I'm having some technical difficulties here. Okay.

Yechiel Chovav:

I just showed Levi a picture online here we go yeah, it's coming up. I'm actually optimistic based on how high the wine is in the cork.

S. Simon Jacob:

I'm telling you that the wine when I drank it, it wasn't that long ago, no, it was great, it was absolutely fantastic. I drank it, it wasn't that long ago.

Yechiel Chovav:

No, it was great, it was absolutely fantastic. I had it with you not so long ago when we did the Karka tasting Crazy. Yes, I'll take some of that. So this is also my last bottle of this. So I figured I promised Simon a while back that I would open this with him. So this figure felt as good an opportunity as any.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Well, thank you very much.

S. Simon Jacob:

You know what? Let's get it cleared some air first.

Yechiel Chovav:

But it's fine yeah.

S. Simon Jacob:

Oh yeah, it just needs to. You need to swirl it a little bit. This is a 2015? Mm-hmm, Okay.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yes, that's the last time they it. I believe he made one in 2008. I haven't seen any pictures of it, but 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 two barrels the ALP 2015. I think the 2008 was one barrel.

S. Simon Jacob:

Baruch atah Adonai Elohim Malcholam HaTovah HaMeitiv Amen.

Itzik Stern:

So that bracha can just be made again and again, hypothetically, you know people, people will tell you no, okay, Ashkenazim will tell you no, some rabbis will tell you no, but the truth is that you're supposed to say how many brachot today?

S. Simon Jacob:

A hundred, 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

This is a classic case of saying I'm telling you, I made these Because, Simon, you did not know.

S. Simon Jacob:

And this is a bottle I have longed for for a while, so this is crazy.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 is going to appreciate this. I have a trick up my sleeve.

S. Simon Jacob:

Normally I surprise you, but it's.

Yechiel Chovav:

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, it's very good.

S. Simon Jacob:

It's definitely not dead.

Yechiel Chovav:

I'm also happy I opened it though. Yeah, it's time. We're a few also happy. I opened it though. Yeah, it's time. We're a few weeks away from it being 10 years. I originally was going to wait for the first of us in 2025 to say oh, it's 10 years, but then I was like this is a better.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

And now it's for Hanukkah.

Yechiel Chovav:

And now it's for.

Itzik Stern:

Hanukkah. It's not really going to be 10 years.

Yechiel Chovav:

Don't need to know that I'm shocked by the tan, what no?

Itzik Stern:

just saying I'm shocked by how tannic it still is.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yeah, no, it's alive.

Itzik Stern:

Yeah, although it's not the classic Israeli Cabernet, I think just because it's older.

Yechiel Chovav:

That's probably why I like it.

Itzik Stern:

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

Yechiel Chovav:

I mean, the whole point of aging is the fruit 100%.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yechiel Chovav:

So I'm actually glad you said that, because it's given me the opportunity to say something I'm very passionate about, which is that we need to put an end to using natural corks. Shuki, this is a natural cork, this one that Shuki used. You know this, simon, but other people here don't know this. At Agor, we do experiments on corks as well. Not every wine, but at least three of the six wines we make. We bottle with at least four to six different types of corks and we open them every few months to see the impact. None of it's natural cork.

Yechiel Chovav:

For those who don't know, natural cork is literally just a piece of cork tree bark, whereas you have a technical cork, which I'm showing, which is basically they clean the cork from all possible funguses and diseases and then the question is is it macro pieces or micro? The DM is the classic one that people use for micro, which is like really small pieces, and 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. 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 fives too. They do 1, 3, 5, 10, 30. And then in those there's also subcategories.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 the whole point is that it avoids that issue. Which issue is that? First of all, cork taint. When people say the wine is corked, it's a specific sort of fungus.

Itzik Stern:

You said the technical one is using pieces of real cork.

Yechiel Chovav:

But it's cleaned. It's cleaned before it's cleaned from all the possible funguses.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

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

Yechiel Chovav:

It's cool to look up. It's very romantic when you think about it.

S. Simon Jacob:

If you visit Vitkin, he has a chunk of tree bark with the corks punched out of the tree bark. Not as far as going to Portugal I wouldn't say that Portugal.

Yechiel Chovav:

It's much easier to get to, but I I mean I've had some expensive wines that we bought that if it had a different cork it would. This is why my wife says that all the winemakers need to go to the EL school of corks, which is not a thing that exists, it's just having a conversation wine. We see with the old types of cork that it's like I said, there's a little bit of funk that comes off of it yeah, no, I think it'll.

Itzik Stern:

I think it'll it's already settled down 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?

Yechiel Chovav:

no, it's just. I mean, this is natural.

Itzik Stern:

I hear what you're saying Because knowing you, I would think it would also be an environmental thing.

Yechiel Chovav:

But technical corks are wood. It isn't like a synthetic cork.

Itzik Stern:

That's what I'm saying. I was surprised that the alternative to this was that.

Yechiel Chovav:

I feel like it works the best for my experience, especially if I'm spending a lot of money on wine. Actually, this past Shabbat I opened two wines that I spent a not small amount of money on and both of them were corked. One wasn't corked, 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 wine that the 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, you were there too.

Yechiel Chovav:

All three of you had it the harvest wine that we make. 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 Seyfried, 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 there. Yeah, I know.

Yechiel Chovav:

I think you both are happy with it.

S. Simon Jacob:

Very happy.

Yechiel Chovav:

Yeah, so it's a wine that's meant to be consumed within a week.

Itzik Stern:

So the cork that we used for that for a wine that's meant to be consumed in a week- I had in 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 you, 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.

Itzik Stern:

So the shower thoughts are quite monumental. And I'm in the shower thinking to myself. You know, they say one in seven 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 a lot of the theoretical knowledge but 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, suddenly it 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 she was like you got to hear this, thought I just had. He was like, yeah, obviously.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah, no, there's still but then I told you jokes on me. 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 you know it could do all sorts of things to it.

Yechiel Chovav:

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, but they should be able to take it back. I want to take a picture and send it to them.

S. Simon Jacob:

No, they'll take it back because the wineries will do that.

Yechiel Chovav:

It was also a 22.

S. Simon Jacob:

It wasn't even that like whatever, so it's definitely a problem with a cork.

Yechiel Chovav:

I will say this is meant to. There's a very like jewish podcast. I got even more jewish because we're just doing petty grievances, you know. Um, 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 was us. We're already with wine, but you're going to give us a nice uh, so and uh. I'll just say on the partial wine podcast, which is the crossover episode with, we start with pairing a wine with the partial we.

Yechiel Chovav:

If there's any especially interesting, well to me, and it's like interesting either winemaking details or like there's been a few wineries so far that actually I know nothing about that it's like knows better than me, so he gave us some background about them. If there's any technical winemaking stuff that I could say for my last year working in winemaking, I share that as well. And then we try to 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 and a Parsha if the connection is too loose. So as this is a crossover episode, we have to end it with a Torah. So, levi, the floor is all yours.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Okay. So you asked me to repair a piece of Shigar's Chanukah Torah and I today was, you know, thumbing through my copy of L'Hair T'Pachim Eptachim away something like that his book of Hanukkah 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.

Yechiel Chovav:

I just want to say I agree with you. I think the Hanukkah Sefer is.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Studies in Hasidut. There's studies in the Halachot of Mishnah Torah, like the details of Rambam's legal rulings about miracles and so much stuff. It's incredible things. I ended up deciding on one essay it's also in Living Time, the translations and I want to walk through the series of ideas that will actually end up nicely connecting to this last wine, the wine about the wine, dark sea.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

So this is an essay where he's exploring a teaching from the Baha Tanya, the author of the Tanya, rav Shner Zalman of Liadi, the first Rebbe of Chabad. It's about the meaning of the mitzvot in the teachings of the Baha Tanya. And he starts with he says the Hasidic likes to start from the Pesukim. There's one Pesuk that says to start from the Pesukim, that there's one Pesuk that says ner mitzvah v'torah, or that a mitzvah is a candle and a Torah is light. On the other hand, there's another Pesuk that says ner Hashem nishmat hadam, that the candle of God is a person's soul. And I said, dude, would I really 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.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

But the Balatanya Rabbi Shigar puts that, 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 God, but that there's a revelation that comes from higher than that, that there is God is just beyond meaning. Meaning is a human category in some ways and the mitzvot 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, in the sphere, at the level of Keter, which is beyond Chochmah, the divine will, that is beyond the divine wisdom, and that the appropriate response from 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. Just how it works. You have moments where you're connected and moments where you're not.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

But what Shigar is pointing out and what the Hasidut is pointing out is, in fact, there is a way of thinking about Hashem that makes you realize that actually the moments of darkness, 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 shape my life in a way that puts me into contact and puts me into relationship and moves my life in the way it should be going, so sort of a tangential relationship to the holiday of Hanukkah in general. But it's about that image of the candles. I'll connect it to another piece he has in there where he talks about the difference between the Hanukkah candles and the Shabbat candles, a famous halakhic discussion about what has greater priority the Hanukkah candles or Shabbat candles, if you could only afford one of them. But Rav Shigar points out, 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.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

The Hanukkah 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 Kodesh Ham. These candles are holy, but Ein Lanu Rishut, l'hishdam Eshpem, we can't use them. The sense of Kedushah as something that is not always about the light and illumination it gives 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?

Yechiel Chovav:

For Hanukkah.

S. Simon Jacob:

So wait a second. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait I'm not going to let you off that easy. So how does that equate to a sea as dark as wine?

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

So the vision.

Itzik Stern:

I was seeing.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

I had a thing with this and I think about when I read this Devar Torah from Rav Shugart. He starts with the classic image of sort of his other forms of chassidut and he has in mind the me'ashi loach, the tzadok, about the ner mitzvah burning within the ner Hashem, nishmat ha-dam, 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, being an evident Hashem. But for the Baba Tanya and for R sugar, I mean, he says actually the ideal form, since you are in fact closest, because when you don't feel it burning within you and you choose to do it anyways, he associates the Chabad term it's kaffir, it's like you with you compel yourself you for stuff.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

But he also uses the term I think meant sort of familiar kabbalat ol machod shemaim, 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 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 darkness feel your intense word to put for that but an absence of light that enables you to make that creative choice Cool, very interesting.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 it isn't the first say for that Koran 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 the Hebrew version. This is a footnote. I actually thought they took it out of the English one because it wasn't a footnote, but they just put it so important they put it into the big text, which is 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. Simon, your son-in-law is a very impressive person, I know. So, yeah, seven, your son-in-law is a very impressive person. Um, I know, but so, um, a lot of times when you, by the way, it's my daughter who oh, so they're both very, very impressive, to be honest.

Yechiel Chovav:

They are. I met a fair amount of your children. I don't know, I've spoken to your wife, but they're all it's. For those who don't know the Jacob family, it's very much, highly, highly recommended, but it's. This is just a footnote, but 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 ultimate dollar values, which connects to what we spoke about earlier. But he says a lot that 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 the relationship between men and women, and he goes you could be sort of dishonest and say that 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, 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?

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

He says don't come up with an idea of what you think is a good thing, that you have good value in context of this, 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.

S. Simon Jacob:

They're preconceived, so I have in this same way your subjective perspective, especially in today's world or in the timed of marriage, rather than a perspective of marriage that is limited to the general population's attitude as to what marriage is today.

Yechiel Chovav:

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 halakh, that you need not attempt to rationalize halakh. You need not attempt to rationalize itself and attempt to dishonestly defend halacha from criticism stemming from the value structure of Western culture. Instead, when we approach the halacha, we should present the virtuous 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. Okay, like I said before earlier, what's the ultimate goal of what we're doing? It's like fine, this doesn't necessarily match the flavor of the day. If it does or doesn't, it doesn't really matter. But like you want to follow halakha, you want to follow Judaism.

Yechiel Chovav:

What is this? What positive value is this bringing? He actually has a similar thing in the Pesach Trashos, 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 Hanukkah. A lot of times there's a discussion about external thought, philosophy, etc. But I feel like Rav Shagah, 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 the positive thing this is bringing to the world and the positive way of life we can get from this.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Yeah, I'll just jump on a little bit that way.

Yechiel Chovav:

Good, because I wanted you to finish this.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

Yeah, I'll just jump on a little bit that way Because I wanted you to finish this.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

I think one thing I really like about Shigar if I'm being meaningful is that part of what he talks about in Variety of the Islamic Contrast show is that, like you said we talked about, he's very interested in 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.

Rabbi Levi Morrow:

He's in fact, like you know, the Rambam example we looked at before of someone who has a 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 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. Turning back to Hanukkah, he connects that to the Pach Hashem, 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, with the Kohen Gadol? There's some spiritual marker on your life that makes it a life of breeds of covenant.

Yechiel Chovav:

Chanukah Sameach everybody.

Itzik Stern:

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.

Itzik Stern:

And I feel like now it's usually in the Parsha Wine Club, it's Yachiel's job to sort of, at the end say you know, el Chaim, and may we all merit you know 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 the safe return of all of our hostages and, of course, the safety of the soldiers.

Yechiel Chovav:

You in particular, Elitzek.

Itzik Stern:

I'm going back to reserves in Gaza for two and a half months, starting January 1st, which is on Hanukkah. I'll be out March 11th, so if anybody here is coming to Israel anytime then and want to meet up, I have to wait until then, but I would love to see you all L'chaim, l'chaim, please, safety.

S. Simon Jacob:

We look forward to seeing you in March.

S. Simon Jacob:

Sounds good, please. God L'chaim tovim shalom, amen. This is Simon Jacob, again your host of today's episode of the Kosher Terroir. 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. 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 Terwa, please check out our many past episodes.

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