Community Magazine June 2019

18 Community Magazine On one of my trips to Israel, I decided to take a tour of the numerous wineries in the country’s northern region. Israeli wines have been regularly winning international awards, competing with the finest wines from France and other countries, and I was interested in learning about this fabulously successful industry. My tour guide himself was a wine producer. I was intrigued by the fact that he brought me around to the various other wineries in the region – who were all, of course, in competition with him. When I asked him about this, he said, to my astonishment, “None of the wineries can produce enough wine to meet the demand. Everything they produce is sold immediately. There is a huge market for this wine. And so there’s no competition.” I proceeded to ask what the secret was. Why are Israeli wines so good? My guide explained that everything about the conditions in the region are perfectly suited for growing grapes. The climate, the ground, the temperatures, the humidity – everything about the area is tailor-made for the production of wine. “In fact,” he said, “you’d have to be an expert to produce anything less than perfect wine here.” I present this exchange as an introduction to the story of the spies, whichwe read in the Torah thismonth – and, in truth, as an introduction to the summer vacation period, which begins this month. Albeit inconspicuously, Israeli grapes seem to be a big part of the tragic story of the spies, who were sent to assess the Land of Israel and expected to bring back an exciting report about the great quality of the land. Unfortunately, they did just the opposite – telling the people that the land was uninhabitable and that the native population was too powerful to defeat. Grapes are mentioned early on in this story, when Moshe instructed the spies to collect samples of the land’s fruit. He told them, “ Vehithazaktem ulkahtem miperi ha’aretz – You shall be strong and take from the fruit of the land.” The Torah immediately interjects: “ vehayamim yemeh bikkureh anavim – and the days were the days of the first ripened grapes” (Bamidbar 13:20). On the simple level, the Torah here is explaining to us why Moshe needed to urge the spies to be “strong.” As the grape harvest was underway, the spies would be putting themselves at risk as foreign visitors taking some fruit while Words of Rabbi Eli J. Mansour “The story of the spies, which is read each year just before summer vacation, serves as the perfect introduction to what is so often the most dangerous time of year.” לעילוי נשמתם של משה בן עליזה, יצחק הלל בן עליזה, והנרייט לאה בת עליזה, דוד בן גילה, רבקה בת גילה, יהושע בן גילה, משה בן גילה, שרה בת גילה, יעקב בן גילה, ואליאנה בת גילה. ולרפואה שלמה ליוסף בן אהובה מסעודה, שילת אהובה בת עליזה, ודניאל בן עליזה. The Grapes of Summer