By JLNJ Staff | March 05, 2021
2020 was quite a year in California: record heat and fires, COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders. For those in California’s $40-billion wine industry, it was a year like no other. The Jewish Link reached out to a number of California’s kosher winemakers and winery proprietors to learn about the challenges they faced and to find out how they fared.
“It was like we all had these signs on our backs that read, ‘Kick me and kick me again’,” explained Ernie Weir of Hagafen Cellars, California’s oldest kosher winery. “We had a triple whammy, with low rainfall and a very strong desiccating heatwave in the beginning of August that dehydrated grapes abnormally. Then we had the first wildfire and so much smoke that we didn’t see the sun for two or three days. Then we had the second fire, which led to more smoke and the non-harvest or provisional harvest of grapes.” And all of that is before considering the impact of COVID-19 on the
South Bay investor puts his stock in making organic kosher wine
Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.
Len Lehmann is a known name in pockets of the Peninsula and South Bay, both in the tech world, where for 30 years he was an entrepreneur and investor, and in the Jewish community as one of the founders of Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto. He also co-founded the Jewish learning experience Limmud Bay Area, and has been very involved with the rebuilding of his synagogue, Palo Alto’s Kol Emeth.
But the place Lehmann spends most of his time these days is on his property in Portola Valley, tending to several acres of vineyards.
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Editor’s Note:
On Saturday, December 27, 2008, after eight years of continuing rocket attacks on its territory by Islamic terrorist organizations, Israel launched a full-scale military operation against the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. Officially named Operation Cast Lead, it began with massive air-strikes against Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets, and continued with a ground incursion in which thousands of Israeli soldiers participated. After twenty-two days of fighting, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire, which became effective on January 18, 2009.
While the political and military achievements of the operation are contested, the damage it left in its wake is undisputed. Ten Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians were killed. Due to the asymmetry of forces, the Palestinian side sustained especially heavy casualties: According to Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip (whose credibility, it must be noted, is questionable), more than one thousand people were killed and