A Testament to Kosher Winemaking with Ernie Weir

Wine is more than just a drink; it's a journey bottled within each glass. Today, we uncork the story of Ernie Weir, the founder of Hagafen Cellars, who has masterfully blended the art of winemaking with the nuances of Kosher tradition. His experiences stretch from the ritual Kiddush to pioneering an inclusive Napa Valley winery that invites connoisseurs and novices alike to savor the complexity of Kosher wine. As Ernie shares his narrative, it's not just about the vino but the dedication to craft, the celebration of cultural heritage, and the embrace of a diverse community of wine lovers.

Navigating the terroir of both Napa and Israel, Ernie offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a vineyard owner and winemaker, weaving a tale of resilience in the face of wildfires, pandemics, and the turbulence of working amidst conflict. In this conversation, we also unravel the intricacies of 'Mevushal' wine production, dispelling myths and revealing a market learning to appreciate this Kosher practice. From the controlled alchemy of aging to the shared bonds of the global wine community, join us for a toast to tradition, innovation, and the enduring spirit that pours from each bottle.

For more information :

Web Site:
https://www.hagafen.com/
Address:
Hagafen Cellars
 4160 Silverado Trail, Napa, CA 94558
Email:
Wine Club: wineclubs@hagafen.com
Shipping: shipping@hagafen.com
Distribution: ernie@hagafen.com
Other Inquiries: visit@hagafen.com
Phone: 
888-HAGAFEN (424-2336) or 707-252-0781
Fax: 707-252-4562

Chapters

• 0:09 Interview With California Kosher Wine Pioneer
• 11:39 Vineyard Owner's Wine Industry Experience
• 22:27 Kosher Wine Production and Politics

Transcript

S. Simon Jacob 0:09

Welcome to The Kosher Terroir. I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. Before we get started, I ask that, wherever you are, please take a moment and pray for the safety of our soldiers and the safe return of all of our hostages. The following episode of The Kosher Terroir is an interesting conversation with one of the founders of the California Coucher Wine Industry, ernie Weir, the extremely talented owner, agronomist, viticulturist and winemaker at the Hagafen cellars in Napa Valley, California. Ernie, conveniently for me, was visiting Israel on a mission to help Israeli wineries, specifically during this time of adversity when so many of their staff are away fighting in the armed forces. I caught up with him at the Flam winery in Eshtaol, next to Beth Shemesh, just before a visit with his old friend, Israel Flam, the Patriarch of the Flam winery family. Ernie is an incredibly humble and modest individual who agreed to be interviewed but really didn't want to lose track of the goal of his visit building bridges between our global Jewish community, helping us all through this period of challenge with prayers for the return of our hostages, safety of our soldiers and our ultimate striving for peace. Because he was in the midst of working and traveling, we didn't get a chance to taste his amazing Hagafen wines on the podcast, but I look forward to a future follow-up episode specifically addressing that.

S. Simon Jacob 1:58

If you're commuting in your car, please focus on the road and enjoy. If you're home, please choose a delicious kosher wine and sit back and listen in on this wine conversation with this legendary wine personality. Welcome to the Kosher Tewa. It's a pleasure. Thank you, it's a pleasure, nice to be here. I don't want to be chutzpendic enough to call you Ernie. You may. Okay, I know, but or is it better Don Ernesto?

S. Simon Jacob 2:29

Well, that's one of my names, I know. I've seen it's one of your brands too, mostly in Spanish. That's my name, yeah.

Ernie Weir 2:36

Spanish is the lingua franca, so to speak, of California, what I call mexifornia too.

S. Simon Jacob 2:41

Yes, yeah so it's a pleasure.

Ernie Weir 2:44

It's a pleasure.

S. Simon Jacob 2:46

Okay, can you give me a little bit of your origin story? I know you're, you know like, how did you start out? How did you get into wine at all?

Ernie Weir 2:54

Where were you? I was not connected to wine at all, other than on the table on the Kiddush Bore, Peri Hagafen. So that was always my family role, even though I'm the youngest. That was my family role to make Kiddush. And you know, I think, if I think about it deep enough, I was probably inspired by that. I don't know what the name Hagafen that came from, that, of course but I think I was inspired by the fact that we have something so special, we do something so special with wine, that I thought, well, what can I, how can I contribute? And so I think I got to that sort of point of view. Cool, I'm not from a religious background. We were in American terms, we were what we call conservative right.

S. Simon Jacob 3:46

M esorti

Ernie Weir 3:47

Mesorti, though the previous generation was a religious and we honored and we acknowledged, but we didn't keep strictly a kosher in the house. But we had a good feeling for it and I think when I went got to the wine business I was looking for my place. So I think I wanted to find my place and also I knew in business it's very handy to have a niche. Very helpful evidence.

S. Simon Jacob 4:18

It's incredibly true, incredibly true. Please go ahead, have your tea. I don't want you to.

Ernie Weir 4:25

Yeah, yeah.

S. Simon Jacob 4:26

For my time. You know it's interesting. It's interesting you said that you had that comfort with Judaism enough that you wanted to make a kosher winery. It's funny to me only because it's not really funny. There's some incredible winemakers who over the years, have gotten turned off by religious Jews and have now, you know, like they absolutely won't make kosher wine. And it's sad, especially in Israel, that you've got some incredible winemakers who won't make their wines kosher because they've had a bad experience in their lives. So we have different issues.

Ernie Weir 5:14

And that issue that you just described, I believe, is a particularly Israeli issue and that's not necessarily part of the American experience. In the American experience we live as a small minority. We either look to identify or some look to run away from the identity. But let's say we look to identify and we don't carry the same intense feeling pro or con, I believe about kashrut. It is a lifestyle and you either adopt it or don't, whereas here it has become a political statement as much as a lifestyle decision. So I was very careful and even to this day I'm very careful.

Ernie Weir 5:58

If you ask me, I almost never describe our winery as a kosher winery. I describe our winery as a Napa Valley winery whose wines are also kosher. So that works in English to say it that way. It works less in Hebrew to say that. But I'm trying to navigate that approach and that line so that everyone feels comfortable Jew and non-Jew, yeah, Religious Jew, secular Jew that everyone can find a place there. That's what I've tried and I think pretty much we've succeeded, because we, if you came to the winery, you'd see that people, all kinds of people- come to us.

S. Simon Jacob 6:33

It's fantastic, it's absolutely I I'm very much for it. I love it.

Ernie Weir 6:40

It's easier to do. Let's say that in America than it is in Israel.

S. Simon Jacob 6:43

Yeah, ah yes, it also depends on your attitude. It also depends on your attitude. If you're an attitude is trying to be inclusive of people, then it's different than an attitude that's looking for. Why are they picking on me or what have you?

Ernie Weir 7:02

but that. But I'm not. But you're right, inclusivity is is not necessarily a motto, but is, yeah, part of our reason to be the tent. Make the tent bigger a hundred percent more people in the tent.

S. Simon Jacob 7:12

A hundred percent, okay, yeah, that the app that the the pie can grow. You don't. You're not because you're doing one thing You're not taking a share of my part of the pie right, we have enough anxiety about being afraid of our neighbors that let's try if we can too. Congratulations. The 20 2023 was your 50th harvest, which is I.

Ernie Weir 7:36

Didn't even dream that I would do such a thing. It's huge and it's, but it was. You know, it was fun and I figured I realized it at the beginning of the harvest and I went on and said, well, this is, this is, this is cool.

S. Simon Jacob 7:48

Yeah, this is nice. It's unbelievable. I really it's an incredible accomplishment. I was a young kid.

Ernie Weir 7:54

Yeah, I didn't have much to lose. I Changed my life after I spent a year in Israel. It changed my life. I went back to California. I knew that I was going to move somewhere in Northern California. I decided on Napa. I returned to school so I could learn the craft. I had no base, no formal education in even science I had studied, I had a degree in sociology and I Went to the local college and eventually I got a job nice job in a developing winery we can talk about that too. And then I convinced them, or asked them could I go to back to university? They said yes for sure. So I went back to Davis. I have a degree in from Davis. Wow, and there I then I continued.

S. Simon Jacob 8:35

So where were you originally? Los Angeles, los Angeles, so you were in LA. You're in LA. My parents were holocaust immigrants.

Ernie Weir 8:41

Okay, and they met in New York. They from Central Europe, czechoslovakia, in Germany, and they Spent their first years in New York and then they moved to California, to the Golden Medina in California, yeah, and then we grew up in LA.

S. Simon Jacob 8:56

Did you have any mentors or teachers along that path that were really special to you?

Ernie Weir 9:04

Well, I think I had some mentors that were I didn't have, they weren't personal to me, yeah, but I am very grateful to people like Robert Mondavi.

S. Simon Jacob 9:14

I was gonna ask you in that my father had a personal relationship with him.

S. Simon Jacob 9:17

Oh, as well insurance world because of the well, the insurance world was interesting because the insurance company that we did a lot of work for Ended up becoming like kind of a bank to all of the vineyards that were Upcoming, so it was a source of capital for them to establish and Develop. So because of that my father became very good friends with a number of winemakers. He's kind of the one who instilled in me a love of wine and and when I grew up I was in a house full of wine, even though I didn't ever drink anything but kosher wine. So that's why you, haggathen, became so important to me. We were the bridge. Because you were the bridge, you were the first real bridge to get to a reasonable quality kosher wine. Israel's Carmel production in 1976, I mean 1976 and 78 were also bridges into some vision of quality kosher wines, which were really cool, that's true.

Ernie Weir 10:27

Yeah. So Mundavi was my non-personal mentor, but we realized I, many of us realized that he was such a trailblazer Right that he opened up the sea for us to follow through and gave us the confidence and the ability to dream about how we could do that too. When Mondavi started, let's say there was the top 10 wineries, or top six or eight or ten. Let's say yeah, and then I got a job. As I made reference to earlier, I worked for Domain Chandon, which was in the next 10 tier, and that lasted for a long time and certainly there I had a wonderful experience and learned a lot about all the aspects, all the fields that are important and part and parcel of operating a winery. My specialty at the time was viticulture and, most specifically, nursery management grapevine nursery management and then from there I went on to other things. But it was like a think tank for a lot of us, because a lot of us did eventually graduate from that experience and go on to start our own wineries.

Ernie Weir 11:33

So it's interesting that Just like the employees of Mondavi many went on also.

Vineyard Owner's Wine Industry Experience

S. Simon Jacob 11:37

Right. So that's interesting to me because one of the questions I had for you was it's unusual to find a person who's the owner, vineyard manager and one maker. And you came in through the vine culture.

Ernie Weir 11:53

Pretty much that was my entry, and then the natural development. From there is winemaking, and then the business sense. I also, of course, work in, had a pretty good feel for business because that's where it came from family. I learned about business at the dinner table, you know what we exchange at the dinner table oftentimes that you hear your father and mother talking about you absorb those things. What did your father do? He was not in the wine business at all. He was in the automobile break rebuilding business in Los Angeles.

Ernie Weir 12:27

A little factory and he had all Hispanic employees. He had a partner who spoke Spanish. My father didn't speak Spanish. He had one employee this is just that side story One employee who had been in the US Army stationed in Germany. And here's this guy, this Mexican man who's working for my father speaks Spanish and English and he and I were talking in German. I was amazed.

S. Simon Jacob 12:53

You know, you meet people like them in your life that are just unbelievable.

Ernie Weir 12:59

So he knew what my father had gone through. He understood that.

S. Simon Jacob 13:02

Tell me a little bit about why you're in Israel now, because that's really interesting to me.

Ernie Weir 13:10

I know a lot of people here in the industry. I've been in and out of Israel many times. I've lived here for short periods of time and I have met many of the people as wine makers or vineyard managers and for a time I have consulted here periodically from time to time over the course of this 50 year experience. So I know these people and I reached out to some of them immediately when I heard about the war.

Ernie Weir 13:34

The war started I was still in the harvest time. I couldn't do much except support from America, and there it's mostly talking and writing checks, donating. So I felt like I wanted to do something a little bit deeper than that and I could. So I exposed myself or I offered myself to people. And here I am. I've been here for a few weeks and I've been to already half a dozen wineries where I've listened and where I've tried to listen, to allow people to express themselves, because Israelis have a lot to say now at this time and with which I relate and feel, and I've also wanted to offer some help, if I can. So to this date it's mostly been discussions and marketing discussions and things like that. But I'm also here now in Emakai'ila to prune grapevines this week at three locations. It's a symbolic thing, but it's important for me to in some way give my time. It's good to have your hands in them.

Ernie Weir 14:35

It's very good, and someone already called me the, and I'll translate the American cavalry.

S. Simon Jacob 14:41

I'll come to support. So I'm also supposed to be pruning grapevines as I go tomorrow, tomorrow and the day after, so we'll see what happens. Nice, please, god, I also get my hands wet in it.

Ernie Weir 14:55

Well, when I heard there was a shortage of labor here Due to what had happened, I said well, okay, then I can do something. So I have more offers than I can fulfill. I put myself into the IPEVO list.

S. Simon Jacob 15:10

And.

Ernie Weir 15:10

I got a lot of offers, okay, a lot of suggestions.

S. Simon Jacob 15:14

What have you found while you're here? You know you've had a lot of discussions. I guess, as a feeling of, at least from my perspective, there's a connection because of the adversity. You went through a lot of adversity over the last few years Between COVID and between the fires and everything else that was going on in Napa, and you found your way through it Creatively in some places Creatively. I saw the champagne that you produced, even during the year where you really produced nothing else. So the focus was always on quality and that's what got you through that period of time.

Ernie Weir 15:56

We all realized let's say in the most devastating fire in 2017 and 2020. We all realized it's not in our individual nor collective best interest to put out any wine which doesn't meet the quality standards of Napa or Sonoma. We realized that right away and so, because we're in a big industry there and we can, if we have to sell our wine in bulk to some place in the Central Valley that can blend it away. It was not pleasant, we didn't. We lost money, but we survived. We came back.

S. Simon Jacob 16:30

So I think that adversity that you went through might have energized you for looking at Israel and saying, hey, what can I do to help these guys through this adversity?

Ernie Weir 16:46

That's certainly true. It's important, while you're suffering in the short term, to try to take a longer term view also. So I think that's what we've tried. And yes, in Napa we usually have it pretty good, both in wine, grape ripeness, wine quality, wine sales. But we took a lot of knocks in the last eight years, 10 years, something like that. But each time we bounced back and the grape finds are it's a beautiful plant. We know that. It's a fantastic plant. It's very resilient, so you can kill it, but it's hard to kill it. I have one story about a grape find that's surrounding a house. So we had a little guest house that burned. We rebuilt it. Since three years ago it's been rebuilt. There was a hundred year old grape find there. They were all burned to the ground. They all came back. Wow, they all came back and then now it forms a beautiful hedge around that house Wow.

S. Simon Jacob 17:42

Yeah, what's your history in Israel? You said a number of times that you've got a pretty significant history in Israel over time. I can't, besides your wife being a child.

Ernie Weir 17:52

I arrived here in 1973, after I graduated. It was my first degree to study well let's say, to be in touch with Israel.

Ernie Weir 18:04

And I also went to Ulpan and studied Hebrew, so that was in Kibbutz Ramat Yohunan in 1973. I had studied about the Kibbutz intellectually prior to that in university, and I wanted to see what this is all about. And so from that day on, and I had studied Hebrew also in university UCLA as it's funny to say but as a foreign language, and I found an instant connection. I knew that in my own family some had left Europe, some never left Europe, but the ones who did leave Europe, some turned left and some turned right in direction sense, in political sense, and so I knew that we were connected. I just had to find that connection.

S. Simon Jacob 18:49

And then I made that connection.

Ernie Weir 18:53

It's going to bring tears to my eyes because we are connected. We got separated but we are connected, and now the only problem is getting here Is the distance between here and there Right Right. So I've been here many times with my family, with my children. I've lived twice in Caesarea for a long, extended period of time where I put my children in school. They loved it, but they missed their friends in.

Ernie Weir 19:17

California back and forth, back and forth. And, as you said, my wife is Israeli too, and so I have lots of her relatives live here.

S. Simon Jacob 19:26

Have you noticed any similarities or differences between the wine growing here and Napa?

Ernie Weir 19:34

I know it's technical, but I don't know if it's specific, certainly there are a lot of similarities. The bridge between Israel and Napa or Israel and Davis. The source of is a very strong connection. And so in a strange way I think so, in a strange way the information comes from Europe, comes to California, comes to Israel, Not always, but that is a common route.

S. Simon Jacob 20:06

And so you said Europe, you're talking about France, italy.

Ernie Weir 20:09

Yeah, france, italy, spain, germany, ok, and so, yeah, so I've been connected to the University of Davis, quite connected to certain departments, and for a time I helped bring plant material from Davis to Israel, to a strong connection. And a lot of the people, of course, who are in this industry.

S. Simon Jacob 20:31

wine makers studies in Davis, not all of them, but many, but many, but many. Yeah, many of the ones that I've interviewed and spoken to, but many.

Ernie Weir 20:39

And so the many who come. I don't know them all, but I know many of them because they wandered to Napa, Napa's only an hour from Davis.

S. Simon Jacob 20:44

Louis Pasco is another one, for sure, for sure. Yeah, Margalit, and.

Ernie Weir 20:49

Schatzberg. Yeah, all these guys, and many of them, became my friends and associated Very cool.

S. Simon Jacob 20:55

So now I've got some very specific questions about your winemaking.

Ernie Weir 20:59

Yeah.

S. Simon Jacob 21:00

Which is unusual for me because I haven't seen it in many places. As an example, you seem to have very long barrel aging compared to what people normally do here, things like 32 months in a barrel, and normally people here I'm not talking about California, because I don't know California well try to strive for 12 to 24 months maximum, and is there a reason for that?

Ernie Weir 21:32

I believe that the aging profile that I use is more typical in California, in Napa and Sonoma, than it is here. Here I see that people do their shortened aging periods, but I think the system that I use is more typical also of what happens in the fine regions in Europe, right Tuscany or Bordeaux or so on and so forth. So I think barrels are expensive and aging wine is expensive. The cost of money, the interest you lose for another year is expensive.

S. Simon Jacob 22:06

But very often.

Ernie Weir 22:07

If it's justified by the quality of the wine and the wine can command a higher price then it pays for itself.

Kosher Wine Production and Politics

S. Simon Jacob 22:12

So it's an economic equation to me Very often I've heard from people that oak aging barrel aging for long periods of time, is to cover mistakes, not to really. I don't think so.

Ernie Weir 22:28

OK, If you've got a mistake you don't want to Right it's not going to cover it up and you don't want to deal with the mistake as quickly as you can.

S. Simon Jacob 22:36

So is it because of the oxygenation that you're getting? The micro-oxygenation of the?

Ernie Weir 22:43

It's that slow metered oxidation of the wine in a controlled atmosphere, controlled humidity and temperature, and the absorption of the oak component, which adds to the complexity of the wine.

S. Simon Jacob 23:01

OK, you're open my eyes to something, really Open my eyes to something, so thank you. Thank you, no, but it could be overdone.

Ernie Weir 23:10

Yes, but you have this whole system in Europe, which is defined as a reserve system in many places, which is in America and I don't believe here reserve has any meaning any regulated meaning.

S. Simon Jacob 23:20

But in Europe it does mean something, and usually it means another year or two of aging. Ok yeah, mavuchal.

Ernie Weir 23:31

I know you'd get to that.

S. Simon Jacob 23:33

OK, because I think that you're one of the few ones that wine makers that embraced it early on. I know it's because of the market in the United States, but it's also you make a very quality wine. So what's your read on it?

Ernie Weir 24:01

Well, I won't give you all the secrets. Ok, no, all right, yes, indeed, you know whoever. However, we can go back and discuss that too, but it was decided that in America, wine needed to be movushal in order to be served in a public setting.

Ernie Weir 24:18

However, that was determined, and there's maybe politics involved in that too, and so on and so forth. I realized that if I'm going to be taken seriously in the United States, I need to figure out if I can do that. I didn't do that for the first 12 years maybe, or something like that. I didn't do that. I was fearful. I started to do it a little bit to see what would happen, how I could do it, what the techniques needed to be, and I realized eventually that I could do that in a non-harmful way.

Ernie Weir 24:55

That was very important to me too, because the quality was my number one, kashmir was not number two, but it had to be— it had to be— yeah, it couldn't— it had to be— that quality. It couldn't impair the quality. Once I realized that I could do that and the biggest leap, I think, was that I could do that on white wine, and then the big leap was when I could achieve that on red wine, also because you said slightly different timing when you do the process to red wine Once I realized that the technology existed and, with careful monitoring of the system, it could be done and not have deleterious effect, I was sold on it. Some people say why don't you do non-mevushal? I think I'd be very confusing to the consumer if some of my wine was non-mevushal and some of it is mevushal. I stayed with it.

Ernie Weir 25:44

Then now I have my own equipment and we do it very nicely and very efficiently. We've all learned. There's always discussion about it because it's a peculiarity, thank you or it's thought to be a peculiarity of producing wine that's kosher. But when you dig a little deeper into the industry, you realize that there are other wineries in the world that also heat treat their wine.

S. Simon Jacob 26:07

They're actually, especially now it's becoming more and more.

Ernie Weir 26:10

It's not necessarily to the same regime same temperature and time that we do, but it can be done and it can be done successfully by other people. It's to me it's become almost a non-issue, but I know there are those who still want to discuss it and who still want to berate those wines. Okay, if that's where you're at, that's fine. But I don't believe that's part of Certainly not part of my reality.

Ernie Weir 26:40

I don't think I'm changing my wine in any negative way, and if I go a little deeper I might be changing it in a positive way, but that's not what the intent is, so we're probably not going to discuss that further. No, well, I, it's funny. The intent is to change our wine so that it would not be attracted to others, and to the idol worshipers particularly and that's a difficult story to tell to the general population, Right? I?

S. Simon Jacob 27:10

agree.

Ernie Weir 27:11

It's not the most pleasant thing to say, but if you do that tactfully and then if we just ignore it completely, that's even easier for people and those who want Mavushal, it's there.

S. Simon Jacob 27:24

You know it's funny. I've found, at least in my experience, that the Mavushal wines actually last better. I don't know if they're aging better or non-aging better, whether the Mavushal process by some wineries freezes the wine at a certain place, but then the wines seem to last for ages.

Ernie Weir 27:56

There are quite a few successes, but there are quite a few non-successes, and I'm of the belief that I see mostly wine that was not of high quality to begin with, that is Mavushalized, so to speak, sent to America, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, that's not good. Well, that's not good because the wine wasn't initially so good either. All right, so can we make life more complicated?

S. Simon Jacob 28:30

Yes, I agree. I agree with you.

Ernie Weir 28:36

And that it's not generally required here or not followed here.

S. Simon Jacob 28:39

No, they're actually, you know what? The Rabbanut is moving in slowly but surely here in order to get people to use Mavushal wines In certain instances, in public instances, yes, yeah, even though the population here is overwhelmingly Jewish, among events.

Ernie Weir 29:02

You don't know who's pouring the wine. You know how I got you from. Michael K. Yes, I love him. A beautiful man, he was our Mashiach Kashut. For many years he lived in Berkeley and he was connected to Chabad there. So the OU said fine, he's fine, and he came to us and he would stay with us. We had a little apartment upstairs. He would stay and he was fine. We all got along so well together, miguelito. It became more and then he went out on his own and now he makes his own wine.

S. Simon Jacob 29:34

We call it Special K because it has a coat on it, Correct? I'm sort of his mentor. Anything else that I haven't mentioned, especially about your Israel connection or about Israel.

Ernie Weir 29:48

There's things there that you might read that might help you. Our website might help you also. I love it.

S. Simon Jacob 29:54

I love the videos about pruning. Okay, we tried to do those things.

Ernie Weir 29:59

We have had this strong relationship with the White House for many many years, very cool. Long years and not so strong during the Trump years, but strong with all the other presidents.

S. Simon Jacob 30:10

How did that come about originally I?

Ernie Weir 30:13

created the connection. The connection fell in my lap. It's so long ago, but I know it had to do with the advisor to Governor Reagan in Sacramento who was sort of in charge of well, amongst other things, he was in charge of wine for the governor of Governor's Mansion in California and then he went on to become in the same role for the White House, for when Reagan came to the White House, Because Reagan changed the nature of the White House, because Carter was known as more of a tea toddler, and then Reagan came in and it became the Hollywoodization of the White House, the Tov-ul-Ra, but anyway. So our wine started there with a visit from Minachem Begin to Reagan in 1980.

Ernie Weir 30:59

And it just continued For decades. It continued More than 30 occasions and of course then we had a lot of occasions which were in the pursuit of peace, because the process was progressing until it stopped. So there were lots of times when Israeli dignitaries were coming to the White House and so we had a good track record, Some nice pictures of and Saters Obama had Saters in the White House because they had so many Jewish advisors, and so all these things led to, you know, and we're not supposed to be heavily promoting it, and we have to have the helicopter or the festivity on the pictures and menus in our winery and shimono peres, pras, masu and a good connection.

S. Simon Jacob 31:43

Good stuff, yeah. So how much longer are you here in Israel now?

Ernie Weir 31:50

Another 10 days, something like that.

S. Simon Jacob 31:54

So really good luck with everything, thank you.

Ernie Weir 31:57

Thank you.

S. Simon Jacob 31:58

Thank you for being on the kosher tehrwah but, more importantly, thank you for coming to Israel, especially during this time when we're being abandoned by so many people, and it's good to see real people who are coming in and trying to contribute, especially with their own knowledge. And I want to tell you it's not just me personally.

Ernie Weir 32:22

I represent a lot of people. People we don't even know, but that represents a lot, there's a lot of support. It's just we're in a horrible predicament and so when I observe the predicament and I also observe the rise of anti-Semitism, I say that's enough, we've got to do something, which is why you know, do you know this?

S. Simon Jacob 32:43

Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

Ernie Weir 32:47

So that's like a new initiative by Robert Kraft the owner of the New England Patriots. And you know it's easy too. He says that's enough, We'd stand up against hate, Right. I think that's what they call it.

S. Simon Jacob 33:04

That was the Super Bowl commercial. One of the Super Bowl commercials that was to stand up against hate as well. Correct, so it was.

Ernie Weir 33:11

You watch the Super.

S. Simon Jacob 33:11

Bowl? I don't. I'm not a sports person.

Ernie Weir 33:13

I didn't either, because it was in the middle of the night, but I saw the commercial. Oh, the commercial.

S. Simon Jacob 33:18

I'm not a I watch the commercials.

Ernie Weir 33:21

Yeah, the Super Bowl commercials, that's the big deal.

S. Simon Jacob 33:24

Okay, this is Simon Jacob, again your host of today's episode of the Kosher Terwah. I have a personal request no matter where you are or where you live, please take a moment to pray for our soldier safety and the safe and rapid return of our hostages. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of the Kosher Terwah. It was exciting and informative for me as well. Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released. If you're new to the Kosher Terwah, please check out our many past episodes.