The festive holiday Purim begins tonight. It’s a time of celebration, crazy costumes, and… drink.
Wine — kosher wine — forms part of many Jewish ceremonies and rituals, including Shabbat and holiday dinners, the Passover Seder, and Havdalah ceremonies….
To make sure wine was kosher, Jews for centuries (millennia!) have been active both in producing wine and in the wine trade. Jews also produced and sold hard liquor, both as distillers and tavern keepers.
In previous Purim posts, we took a look at the Jewish wine and liquor trade — also in relation to Jewish built heritage. We are reposting them here.
Click here for our Purim 2019 post.
We took a broad view, quoting from historic sources (including a letter dated January 1208, in which the medieval Pope Innocent III described Jewish winemakers) and focusing on several examples.
These included Dov Ber Birkenthal, a wine merchant and Jewish community leader in Bolechow (today Bolekhiv, Ukraine) who lived from 1723 to 1805 and was also known simply as Ber of Bolechow. He left a fascinating memoir detailing his trips to the wine-producing Tokaj region of today’s northeast Hungary, where you can still find kosher wine and spirits.
We also focused on the Haberfeld family, who founded a big commercial distillery in 1804 in Oswiecim — the town where the Nazis built the Auschwitz death camp a century and a half later.
Before the Holocaust Oswiecim had a majority Jewish population, and the Haberfelds were the town’s wealthiest Jewish family; they had a huge factory and lived in a huge mansion, which fell into ruin after WW2 and was demolished in 2003.
Click here for our Purim 2022 post.
We focused specifically on Ber of Bolechow and his story.
In particular we described his relationship with the Jewish community in the Hungarian wine-producing village of Tarcal, where the 18th century synagogue (where he probably prayed) and two Jewish cemeteries still stand.
In his memoir, written shortly before his death, he described how he sought out and drove hard bargains on wine (both kosher and non-kosher), and he detailed the perils of the road — everything from complicated currency exchanges and customs duties, to drunken wagon drivers, icy, unfordable rivers, double-dealing business partners, flea-ridden inns, and even occasional attacks by roving bandits.
We also revisited his grave, in the Jewish cemetery in Bolekhiv — it includes the prominent image of a Bear, illustrating his name, Ber.