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The ‘Grand Cru Jew’ pours fine wine at Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant in the West Village
(New York Jewish Week) — Imagine an Upper West Side seder like any other: adults praying, haggadahs dappled with brisket juice, matzah ball soup a little too salty. Only that’s not a Manischewitz bottle on the table. That’s a magnum of Cru Beaujolais.
For this type of epicurean refinement, it helps to have someone in your family like Dean Fuerth, better known to his Instagram followers as the “Grand Cru Jew.” Though his nickname, derived from the highest designation for Burgundy wines, conjures up images of a “Seinfeld”-ian C-plot, Fuerth, 35, is a serious sommelier with extensive training in French fine dining. Since 2017, he has served as the beverage director for the Sushi Nakazawa empire, helming one of the most robust rare sake lists in the city, if not the world.
Fuerth’s handle comes from his time working as a young wine trainee at the Manhattan restaurant Bouley, where a senior sommelier set up challenges to sell unconventional bottles. One night, Fuerth ended up overselling his goal by about $4,000. “Oui, Grand Cru Jew,” Fuerth says the sommelier enthused — and the nickname stuck.
“It comes up in public,” Fuerth said of his moniker, with pride. “Especially in the wine community.”
Fuerth describes his family as falling into the “liberal Jew category” from the Upper West Side, attending synagogue on the High Holidays. “I have a very strong sense of family identity, personal identity,” he told the New York Jewish Week.
Fuerth was not predestined to become a sommelier — his family hardly consists of wine snobs. Via a phone interview, he tells the story of his aunt, who, at a seder in 2009, opened a bottle of Cupcake Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon. The following year, Fuerth noticed she was pouring the same vintage — she had re-corked last year’s bottle. Fuerth could only laugh.
“I’m now the culinary director for the family,” said Fuerth, half-joking.
In a family of lawyers, pursuing a fine dining career was unheard of; what’s more, sommelier isn’t a traditional Jewish profession. As wine writer Alice Feiring said last year: “It’s hard to tell your parents ‘I’m not going to medical school or law school, I’m going to be a wine waiter.’”
In the mid-aughts, Fuerth was pursuing a degree in film at Hunter College, but he dropped out after a year to become a production assistant on shows like “Law and Order” and “30 Rock.” To pay his bills, he took a job as a barback and busboy at the Upper West Side restaurant Bella Blu, a job he readily admits — with typical service industry candor — he wasn’t particularly good at. But he was able to handle bottles, a skill that gave him some currency in the wine world.
In 2010, he was off to a higher-paying gig as a server at Bar Boulud, the Burgundy wine bar at Lincoln Center run by celebrity chef Daniel Boulud. Under the auspices of the beverage director Michael Madrigale, Fuerth opened new bottles every night, giving him a crash course in the catalog of French wines. Fuerth still has an encyclopedic knowledge of this time: He recounts the exact bottle — a 1999 Cornas August Clape from the Rhone Valley — that kickstarted his ambitions.
“I was having my mind blown by how complex and deep and soulful wine can be,” he said. “Having a curiosity and a passion opened up this whole world.”
That understanding of terroir, how microclimates can impart flavor, intoxicated him. He closed out his film industry chapter for good and embarked upon what he called “French military” fine dining training. The culture privileges conformity over creativity — but Fuerth didn’t conform.
“Dean had that pirate mentality,” said Madrigale. “He’s like a New Yorker, straight up. When he gets it in his mind he wants to do something, he does it.”
Madrigale remembers a time when Fuerth, as a server, had sold enough wine to entitle him to a free meal at the upscale restaurant. He chose the decadent duck confit. “He was going to sit down and eat in the dining room, while other people are waiting for him to serve them,” Madrigale said, still astounded by Fuerth’s chutzpah. “I think even Daniel [Boulud] said, ‘Well he’s doing really well, let him do it.”’
Madrigale became a mentor to Fuerth, who began his formal wine training and accompanied Madrigale on a trip to Bordeaux. After Bar Boulud, Fuerth traversed through a Zagat list of the city’s Michelin-starred French fine dining outposts as a self-described wine “mercenary.” He landed one of his first sommelier gigs in 2014 at Bouley, the now-closed French joint from Chef David Bouley in Tribeca. His first beverage director gig came the following year at Betony, in Midtown.
“I was able to open up some of the craziest, most expensive bottles,” he said of his time at Bouley. “And I got my butt kicked.”
He arrived at Sushi Nakazawa first as a fan-boy diner. Nakazawa opened in the West Village in 2013 as a 10-seat omakase spot that was immediately lauded as one of the best Japanese restaurants in the city. Pete Wells, in his initial 4-star review for the New York Times, heralded Daisuke Nakazawa’s cookery: “The moment-to-moment joys of eating one mouthful of sushi after another can merge into a blur of fish bliss.”
He approached them for a job, and in 2017, became their beverage director. Fuerth was thrown into a new role: sake expert. “It’s a completely different animal,” Fuerth said of the rice alcohol; his French wine training proved non-transferrable.
How did the Grand Cru Jew fare? “It was a steep and harsh learning curve,” he admits. Fuerth began looking for low acid, richer grapes like Condrieu to compare with sake.
Buying sakes also proved opaque. The echelon of sake producers Fuerth was working with required a certain level of trust among buyers due to their microscopic scale. Take, for example, Dassai’s “Beyond the Beyond” Junmai Daiginjō. A known producer of high-end sake, Dassai started a contest in 2019 among Japanese farmers cultivating the very specific Yamada-Nishiki grain. After machine analysis and DNA testing, the company chose to buy just one plot of land for this sake. They made 23 bottles and sent just four to America. Nakazawa is selling their bottle for $19,000.
“Sake should be consumed at the right environment, at the right temperature and tell the story of what makes it special,” he said.
Fuerth has certaintly caught up: Just last week, World of Fine Wine selected Sushi Nakazawa as the best sake list in North America.
Now six years in, Fuerth’s conception of wine pairings has evolved, too. He matches high-ticket Burgundy and Champagne with new age bottles from places like Hungary and Quebec, all with a Japanese palate in mind. He has overseen Nakazawa’s expansion to Washington, D.C., as well as a pop-up in Aspen, Colorado, and will be continuing onto a new location in Los Angeles.
It’s not unusual for diners at Nakazawa to spend four figures on a bottle. Is it mind-blowing to regularly sell bottles the price of a used car? “I’m a little numb to it at this point,” Fuerth said.
It’s all a far cry from the Cupcake wine Fuerth’s aunt served at the seder years ago (although Fuerth admits to drinking Manischewitz at synagogue).
The day after our conversation, Fuerth was set to depart New York for Bordeaux, as part of a trip organized by a wine distributor to some of the most storied, cloistered chateaus of the region. There they would open decades-old bottles that had never left the vineyard.
“It never gets old,” Fuerth said. “I feel like a kid again.”
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The post The ‘Grand Cru Jew’ pours fine wine at Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant in the West Village appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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G7 Statement Will Not Mention ICC Warrant for Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a memorial ceremony for those murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and those who fell in the “Iron Sword” war, at the Knesset, the Parliament, in Jerusalem, Oct. 28, 2024. Photo: DEBBIE HILL/Pool via REUTERS
A joint statement of Group of Seven foreign ministers is set to avoid mentioning the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite an effort by the Italian hosts to find a common position on it.
Italy, which currently chairs the G7, said on Monday it wanted to try to forge a common position about the ICC arrest warrant at a two-day meeting it hosted in the spa town of Fiuggi and which ended on Tuesday.
A draft of the final statement due to emerge from the discussions, reviewed by Reuters, did not directly name the ICC and its decisions.
“In exercising its right to defend itself, Israel must fully comply with its obligations under international law in all circumstances, including International Humanitarian Law,” it said.
“We reiterate our commitment to International Humanitarian Law and will comply with our respective obligations,” the statement added, stressing “that there can be no equivalence between the terrorist group Hamas and the State of Israel.”
Last week, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence chief Yoav Gallant, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move was strongly criticized by the United States but other states including Britain and Italy did not rule out that they could make an arrest if Netanyahu visited their countries.
Israel condemned the ICC decision as shameful and absurd. The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which launched the Gaza war with its invasion of and massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, praised it as a step towards justice.
The post G7 Statement Will Not Mention ICC Warrant for Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel’s Chief Rabbinate Promises More of the Same Flawed Policies After Election
Header of an instruction from Israel’s Chief Rabbinate for how to observe Shabbat during the war with Hamas. (Photo: Screenshot)
While the world’s attention has been focused on the American election, there has been a far less publicized, but still significant, election in Israel for the Chief Rabbinate.
After months of wrangling, the election was finally decided, with left and right fighting about egalitarianism, and who should sit on the electoral committee.
I have always been a rebel and disliked authority and power — particularly when it is associated with religion, from which I expect a higher level of ethics and morality than elsewhere.
And yet, I am constantly disappointed. When people achieve authority, they tend to make decisions based on preserving their power, rather than the moral criteria. That is why religion and politics are two very different areas of human activity that really ought to be kept apart.
Sadly, they rarely are.
Israel’s Chief Rabbinate controls important levers of income and authority — from marriage and divorce, to conversions and kashrut. It also provides extremely well paid and plentiful easy jobs for Orthodox boys (less so for the girls), and like all bureaucracies, is very bureaucratic.
This is fertile ground for corruption, and indeed unpopularity. Yet there are some wonderful, honest, devoted and impressive rabbis serving in Israel’s rabbinate today.
The tensions that we have witnessed in Israel between ethnic groups, the right and the left, secular and the religious, the Supreme Court and its critics, and the different voices within them, illustrate the near impossibility of reconciliation and compromise.
Caught between conflicting interests comes the Chief Rabbinate, whose courts run parallel with secular courts. It’s a government agency of great power and reach that is unpopular with many sectors of Jewish life in Israel today, for good reason.
Candidates for the Chief Rabbinate who are not approved of by the Haredi world stand little chance of getting elected. As a result, some Chief Rabbis have been convicted of crimes, and others were suspected of crimes. And the only criterion seems to be getting enough Haredi votes.
In the early years of the state, most of the state rabbis were committed to the cause of a Jewish State, even if they wouldn’t necessarily call themselves Zionists politically. The Chief Rabbinates performed very well given the constraints. Over time, the institution, like most others in Israel, was slowly infected by a bureaucracy of entitlement, laziness, and incompetence.
At first, the Haredi community simply ignored the Chief Rabbinate. Their religious and sometimes charismatic leaders and authorities were not elected or appointed. They emerged as natural leaders. They had their own standards and attitudes towards Israeli life. But then the Haredi community increased, and it saw opportunities.
The salaries of community and local rabbis were very attractive, and you didn’t have to have a secular education. Increasingly the Haredi world entered the rabbinate and over time, have come to dominate it, so that the moderates have largely been undercut.
This year, the Sephardi candidate got through easily in a predetermined election that saw yet another member of the Yosef dynasty intent on keeping it in one family. The Ashkenazi Lau family also tried to maintain their grip on the position, but could not gather enough support. The Ashkenazi election came down to two candidates. Eventually Rabbi Kalman Ber from Netanya was elected by 77-58. He defeated the more open and impressive Rabbi Micha Halevi of Petach Tikvah, who had support from the Religious Zionists.
Both rabbis have good reputations and claimed to be moderates. At the induction ceremony, they spoke of embracing all sectors of Israeli life, to support IDF soldiers, visit army camps, and comfort the families of kidnapped Israelis. Rabbi Yosef concluded in English with a Trumpian declaration that resonated with the audience: “We will make the Chief Rabbinate great again!” Chief Rabbi Ber echoed this commitment to unity, expressing the vision rooted in Rabbi Kook. “My greatest mission is to bring about unity among all parts of the people,” he said.
I have heard this before from Chief Rabbis across the world. Music to my ears. But given human nature, they rarely live up to their campaign promises. In Israel, as the winning candidates were elected thanks to Haredi votes, I cannot see any change in matters of law or the culture of the rabbinate. Any hope for a new era will once again be brushed under the carpet. And nothing will change. The only saving grace is that Chief Rabbis are only elected for 10 years. I pray I am proven wrong.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
The post Israel’s Chief Rabbinate Promises More of the Same Flawed Policies After Election first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Revealed: Palestinian Authority Shows That Hamas Steals Money From Gaza Civilians
Palestinians gather to receive aid, including food supplies provided by World Food Program (WFP), outside a United Nations distribution center, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, Aug. 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
How ironic is it that while the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided last week to blame Israel for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is placing the blame on Hamas.
A reporter from official PA TV stationed in the Gaza Strip reported that Hamas steals 28% of Gazans’ salaries, as well as other money transfers:
Official PA TV host: “There are other crimes that are being committed against the civilians [in Gaza]. They are being financially extorted through [Hamas’] deduction of part of their money.
In other words, every employee, whether he is a PA employee, a state employee, or works for any other source, or someone who even wants to receive a transfer from his relatives abroad — they must pay a heavy sum…” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Nov. 13, 2024]
Later in the story, a PA reporter revealed that the sum was 28% of employees’ salaries:
Official PA TV reporter in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza: “There is no trade in cash. The cash is worn out in the central and southern areas [of the Gaza Strip], and even in the north.
The [only] ones who have cash are certain groups. If you want to receive your salary in cash of more or less good quality, they [Hamas] deduct part of your salary. The deducted sum is 28%. They deduct more than a quarter of the salary.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Nov. 13, 2024]
An editorial by the official PA daily also criticized Hamas for continuously stealing the humanitarian aid that Israel is letting in for the benefit of Gazan civilians:
The aid that is arriving there [in the northern Gaza Strip] after many hardships … is exclusively controlled by the Hamas militias and others, until it arrives in the greedy free market of commerce that craves forbidden profit. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 10, 2024]
The editorial pointed out that the survival of the Gazan civilians is no longer connected to “surviving the missiles of the Israeli fighter jets,” but is simply a struggle of “seeking a loaf of bread at a sane price”:
The suffering of our people in the northern Gaza Strip is no longer the suffering of surviving the missiles of the Israeli fighter jets and drones and is not the suffering of seeking refuge, rather it is the suffering of seeking a loaf of bread at a sane price, and a cigarette at the cost of 1 [Israeli] shekel. [emphasis added]
Throughout the 2023 Gaza war, Palestinian Media Watch has exposed Hamas’ unscrupulous theft of international aid meant for Gazan civilians, turning the humanitarian efforts into terror support to sustain its war against Israel.
The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
The post Revealed: Palestinian Authority Shows That Hamas Steals Money From Gaza Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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