Another five or ten minutes and we would have been out the door and on our way to Jerusalem, and then it would have been too late to let us know. But the house phone rang, and it was friend Ezra. Of course we’re still home; otherwise we couldn’t answer the phone. A terrorist attack at Kikar Yahalom? And the bus schedule is all messed up because of police activity? The loop that I am out of, Ezra is definitely in it. He might even be the loop itself! The incident he was telling me about happened outside the local Burgers Bar maybe a half an hour before he called. But Ezra heard about it and, knowing of our plans, called lickety-split to let us know. OK, Barbara, said I, let’s activate plan B. Someone might be thinking out loud, Before you write about plan B, out of idle curiosity, what was the original plan A? Fair enough.

After a few year hiatus caused by COVID and a general lack of interest on our part as explained below, Barbara and I were going back to the Wine Festival held every August on the grounds of the Israel Museum. Barbara had the idea of inviting Ron and Esther to join us, neither of us making the connection that the festival coincided with our and their Aliyaversary. Esther remembered that the four of us (actually, the six of us, counting our Natania and their Sarah) were on the same NBN flight on Tu b’Av sixteen years ago. Plan A was for the two of us to head into Jerusalem in the afternoon, grab a bite to eat, spend some time wandering around the museum, and meet up with our friends, who would be driving in at 6:30, whereupon the four of us would collect our festival wine glasses and fill them with whatever was on offer inside. Since we don’t know what will be with the buses, let’s just stay here and go in with them, I suggested, that will save us a lot of aggravation. (Which is one of my main activities these days, an all-out effort to prevent ‘a lot of aggravation.’) And that, my loyal readers, was Plan B, which is what happened.

(Aliyaversary.  You too can have one. All you have to do is leave your humdrum existence wherever you are in the Exile and join us over here for all the fun, fun, fun. Then once a year you get to celebrate your moment of madness….)

Years and years ago, we started going to the Wine Festival. It was something to look forward to after the ‘three weeks,’ the ‘nine days,’ and Tisha B’av itself, the least enjoyable, most depressing day of the year. We could hang out with friends, our glasses held aloft with a splash of wine inside. We could sit and look out at the Jerusalem skyline, which we never had imagined would be part of our life’s journey. But after doing this for a few years, the festival began to lose its luster. Maybe it was a sense of deja vue all over again. As our palates became more sophisticated, and our knowledge of local wines became more extensive, it began to dawn on us that most of the exhibitors were not offering what we would call ‘the good stuff’, and there was less and less to learn about what the various wineries had to offer. To make matters worse, the entry fee skyrocketed from 70 to 120 NIS. A wine lover I am, a freier I am not. But still, it’s a night out on the town, a way to relax; so let’s do it.

We’ve done this before, many times. You have to show your tickets for the festival when you enter. Fred and Barbara, being troglodytes, had ours printed out. Ron, being a modern man, had theirs on his phone. You are free to guess which couple had less trouble getting through the turnstile.  (Old farts of the world, unite!) And then, up the stairs to where they are giving out the wine glasses, sort of a requirement for the evening’s activity. I used to get excited as I got closer and closer to the venue, as in, I’m going to have a good time. Now, it’s like walking into Supersol. I need to do this, I will enjoy the benefits, but I will not get super-excited about the experience. Plus, as far as I was concerned, I was there on official business, as part of the local Rosé Procurement and Enjoyment committee. My job is to locate and purchase whatever wines are available here, but are not in the northern boonies where The Levines live. (Barbara Levine is in charge of tasting and evaluating.)

So, while most of the happy folks duly assembled – including the three people with me – were free to wander around and sample whatever they felt like, I was going methodically from booth to booth, seeing which wineries were offering rosés (which would be available to purchase at the store set up to get you on the way out). Once I espied what looked like a rosé, I sidled up to the booth in question and waited my turn to ask the pertinent question. What year is the rosé? For those of you who are not seasoned wine aficionados, this kind of wine – not red and not white – is especially delicate, meaning it lasts as long as a teen-age summer romance. If you’re eye-balling a bottle in the summer of 2023, then the magic number of the vintage is 2022, and not one digit less.

One of the disappointments in recent wine festivals is that the men and women working the booths seem less knowledgeable than in the past. I wasn’t trying to stump anybody. Since you have the bottle, just look at the label and read off the year. It’s gotta be there somewhere. Don’t tell me it’s made from Grenache and Mourvèdre grapes. That’s not what I asked.

There is, however, something else to take into consideration. As many of my devoted readers know, 2022 was a shmittah year here in The Land. Therefore, many wineries rested on their laurels and produced no wine. Many of those that did produce relied on heter mechirah, a very controversial loophole. Only one young lady thought to mention that heter mechirah applied, although she had some trouble spitting out the words.

Just as there was a division of the house between the troglodytes and the modern man, there was a similar lack of unity about the suitability of  wines produced in the shmittah year.. Me, I’m a lover of loopholes. You find a halachic way to make my life easier? I’m in. Ron, on the other hand, is out. He chooses to side with the staggering number of rabbinic authorities who are less than impressed with this solution. While I was focused on this one vintage, our friend was in search of anything but. That’s how life is this side of Heaven.

There were a few things that I noticed were missing. Usually at these events there’s water available, both to rinse out your wine glass and cleanse your palate – have a swallow or two to get the taste of the last ten sips off your tongue. Nope. But that’s just being cheap. Worse than that, this year there was almost no place to sit – if you don’t count squatting on the steps leading down to the lower level. Think about it: if you’re at an event, and they make you stand all the time you’re there, what does that tell you?

Well yes, it was time to go. Thanks to our friends, we arrived home with our bottles of rosé much earlier than if we were bussing it. And that’s no small matter.

I don’t want to give the impression that this event was a total bust. Au contraire, mes amis. They keep running this event, and people, mostly casual wine-drinkers, keep showing up. So why should they do anything different? Will we return next year, like the annual flocks of birds? Too early to tell. But I just wish…

(Some of my sternest critics have suggested that my posts tend to be too long. So I’m going to give you an intermission before plunging on. After all, that’s what they’re doing at some of the theaters showing ‘Oppenheimer,’ which is three hours long. At least I don’t make you wade through commercials.)