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As Americans drink much less wine, kosher demand stays strong
(JTA) — OXNARD, California — On Friday nights, in Jewish homes around the world, a familiar ritual unfolds: a blessing over wine, poured into a cup and passed around the table.
That ritual, multiplied during Passover, may help explain why kosher wine is holding steady even as the broader wine industry struggles.
Across the United States and globally, wine consumption is declining. Baby boomers, long the industry’s most reliable customers, are aging out of peak drinking years. Younger consumers are drinking less alcohol overall and are more likely to reach for craft beer, spirits or ready-to-drink cocktails when they do. In California, wineries have begun laying off workers, cutting production and, in some cases, shutting down altogether.
But in the kosher wine market the downturn looks more like a slowdown.
Royal Wine, the largest distributor of kosher wine in the United States, is used to seeing year-over-year growth in the double digits, according to Jay Buchsbaum, a vice president at the New Jersey-based company.
“By that standard, we did not have a great year,” he said in an interview. “But we did have an increase, whereas the industry has declined by as much as 12% so we’re bucking the trend.”
At Herzog Wine Cellars in Oxnard, California, that resilience is apparent on the production floor.
In the weeks before Passover, the busiest season of the year for kosher wine, a forklift is moving pallets across the warehouse and bottling lines are running steadily, workers are preparing shipments destined for holiday tables.
“Passover for us is what October, November and December are for the rest of the industry,” said Herzog’s winemaker David Galzignato, describing a seasonal surge that mirrors the year-end rush in most wineries.
David Galzignato, an Italian Catholic, is director of winemaking and operations at Herzog Wine Cellars, a major kosher winery. (Asaf Elia-Shalev)
Herzog is the flagship American winery of Royal Wine, which is owned by the Herzog family, an Orthodox family originally from Slovakia that has been in the business for nine generations and today dominates the kosher wine market in the United States. The scale is unusual for kosher production: Bottles range from $13 table wines to $300 Napa Valley releases, sourced from top vineyards across California.
Galzignato, an Italian Catholic who joined the winery in 2021, was brought in with a specific mandate: to elevate the quality of kosher wine.
“They wanted me to take kosher wine quality … to the same level, or better, than the non-kosher quality,” he said.
But despite overseeing every step of production, Galzignato cannot physically move the wine he makes.
Under kosher law, from the moment grape juice is released until the wine is bottled, only Shabbat-observant Jews may handle it — a requirement that shapes everything from staffing to workflow.
“It just takes a little bit more planning,” he said.
Even with those constraints, the winery has continued investing in its operations in recent years, upgrading equipment at a cost of more than $2 million and expanding production capacity at a time when many wineries are scaling back.
“When there’s a downturn companies typically pull back on investments,” Galzignato said. “But here the commitment to presenting the best kosher wine remains 100%.”
A view of the one the many vineyards supplying Herzog Wine Cellars, the flagship winery of the Royal Wine, largest distributor of kosher wines in the United States. (Courtesy)
Stability amid the wider downturn is not limited to industry giants like Royal. At Covenant, a boutique kosher winery in Berkeley, California, the trend looks similar.
“We’re actually about 5% up this year,” said Jeff Morgan, the Covenant’s founding winemaker.
Covenant helped popularize high-end kosher wine in recent decades, but Morgan credits a much older force for the staying power of his product.
“The American interest in wine is in what I would call a correction phase,” he said, describing the broader downturn as the fading of a decades-long boom driven largely by baby boomers.
In his view, wine never became fully embedded in American life.
“Americans don’t have what we would call a wine culture,” he said. “We are a nation that follows fads.”
Jewish life, by contrast, has long been structured around wine — not as a lifestyle choice, but as a ritual obligation.
“We Jews have a culture of wine,” he said. “We are pretty much obliged to drink wine.”
Covenant’s founding winemaker, Jeff Morgan. (Courtesy)
That obligation creates a built-in baseline of demand that persists regardless of broader trends.
The same dynamic is visible to those who oversee kosher production.
“We have our regular Shabbos and our regular holidays and life cycle events,” said Rabbi Nahum Rabinowitz, a senior rabbinical coordinator at the Orthodox Union who has worked on wine for more than two decades. “Those activities continue as normal. … It hasn’t really changed that much.”
Dovid Riven, who runs KosherWine.com, the largest retailer in the United States selling only kosher wines, said he expects to bring in about as much this year as he did last year.
“There’s definitely sluggishness … but not to the extent that the non-kosher industry is seeing,” he said. Instead of abandoning wine, many customers are adjusting what they buy — opting for less expensive bottles or cutting back on collecting.
Still, he said, the ritual role of wine sets a floor under demand. “Nobody’s going to sit down for their seder and smoke four joints,” he said. “You’re going to need four cups.”
The goal of the industry should be to adapt with lighter, more accessible wines and new marketing strategies aimed at younger drinkers, said Ernie Weir, co-owner of Napa Valley’s Hagafen Cellars, which was established in 1979.
“We’re not unaffected by the general trends so we must deal with them,” he said.
Wine grapes ripen on the vine, almost ready for harvest. (Courtesy of Herzog Wine Cellars)
The kosher wine business may have been spared some of the worst of the downturn in part because its consumers are still catching up to trends that reshaped the broader market years ago.
For decades, kosher wine in the United States remained associated with sweet, low-end bottles even as the general market moved toward dry, higher-quality wines. That left room for growth as consumers began trading up.
Buchsbaum argued that the kosher wine business has been spared some of the worst of the downturn in part because its consumers are “behind the general consumer” — a lag that, in this case, has worked to the market’s advantage.
For decades kosher drinkers trailed broader trends, remaining associated with sweet wines long after the general market had shifted toward dry, higher-quality bottles.
“In the past, an Orthodox or kosher-observant person would only drink a bottle of wine at the table Friday night,” Buchsbaum said. “Now he’s got two or three bottles at the table Friday night. Wow. He could have one or two during the week with his other meals. That consumer specifically has grown.”
At the same time another kind of kosher wine consumer has faded: the less observant American Jew who did not keep strictly kosher day to day but still bought kosher wine, hired kosher caterers and maintained certain communal norms around holidays and life-cycle events.
Buchsbaum described a mid-20th-century American Jewish landscape in which nearly every community had kosher butchers and caterers because even many non-Orthodox families expected bar mitzvahs, weddings and other celebrations to be kosher. That world, he said, has sharply contracted.
The result is a smaller but more engaged core market — one that is spending more per household even as casual participation declines.
“The current kosher consumer … has picked up a lot of that slack,” Buchsbaum said.
The shift in who buys kosher wine reflects a broader change in American Jewish life. As assimilation and disaffiliation have transformed the community, more observant populations have taken on a larger role.
Another broader trend is generating optimism among industry insiders: the growing demand for kosher wine outside the Jewish community.
Perhaps the best example is Royal’s Bartenura label, which is the best-selling premium Moscato, a sweet, aromatic white wine, in the United States, selling nearly 10 million bottles a year. Buchsbaum estimates that as little as 15% of Bartenura buyers are Jewish, with the blue-bottled wine developing a particular fan base among Black consumers.
Buchsbaum also said Royal has increasingly found customers in Christian Zionists who are drawn to Israeli wines for religious and cultural reasons. In states like Texas, he said, that audience has become a meaningful and growing segment of the market.
Royal sells to Total Wine, one of the largest wine chains in the country, which has expanded its Israeli wine offerings and actively promotes them to a broad, largely non-Jewish customer base.
“They have a tremendous Israeli wine section,” Buchsbaum said, noting that stores feature maps of Israel’s wine regions and host tastings to introduce the category to new consumers.
It also helps that Israeli producers have been earning high scores and international awards, competing alongside established wine regions in Europe and California. That recognition has helped shift perceptions of kosher wine from a religious product to a quality-driven one.
“They’ve been making wine for over 5,000 years, and they just got recognized for being good at it,” said Josh Greenstein, executive vice president of the Israeli Wine Producers Association.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post As Americans drink much less wine, kosher demand stays strong appeared first on The Forward.
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AIPAC couldn’t stop Michigan’s El-Sayed in the primary. Now it’s trying again.
AIPAC’s super PAC has re-entered Michigan’s closely watched U.S. Senate race less than a month before the general election, spending nearly $100,000 on mailers attacking Abdul El-Sayed, despite earlier concerns by allies of his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, that it would boost the Democratic nominee.
The spending of $94,620 by United Democracy Project (UDP) on direct mailers was disclosed in a Friday campaign finance filing. It comes after Rogers publicly welcomed AIPAC’s support during a televised debate last week, reversing the position initially taken by people close to his campaign who worried the pro-Israel group’s involvement could hurt his chances.
A spokesperson for the group told Jewish Insider that the mailers target 130,000 identified Jewish voters in the swing state. It focuses on El-Sayed’s response to an attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield earlier this year. El-Sayed drew criticism for saying “hurt people hurt people” when discussing the attacker, whose brother was reportedly a Hezbollah commander killed in an airstrike on Lebanon. El-Sayed later apologized, saying he had been trying to provide broader context for the attack.
UDP spent more than $30 million trying to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary this summer and in support of Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost by about one percentage point.
Following the primary, allies of the Republican nominee reportedly asked AIPAC not to run ads to boost him, fearing that the group’s involvement would give El-Sayed the same political foil that helped him overcome its massive spending in the primary. Axios reported that AIPAC officials didn’t take that rejection easily.
But Rogers appeared to change course last Thursday when asked whether he’d welcome AIPAC’s support.
“Anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country because he’s so close to the people who are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, again, I’ll take all of that help,” Rogers said at Thursday’s televised debate. El-Sayed interrupted to say he had condemned terrorism.
A new super PAC, Together for Michigan, aired an ad during the debate featuring Taylor Weintraub, whose child attends the Temple Israel preschool that was attacked in March.
Rogers went further on Friday at a campaign event with Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, accusing El-Sayed of being “so anti-Jewish” that a single mailer had upset him. Rogers said he welcomed help from Jewish supporters seeking to defeat his opponent. Kennedy also attacked El-Sayed, saying AIPAC would not be involved in the race if the Democrat did not “sleep in a Bin Laden jersey.”
El-Sayed, an Israel critic who has made opposition to AIPAC a central part of his campaign, responded by accusing Rogers of desperation. “You know Mike Rogers is in trouble when he begs AIPAC to start spending against me,” he wrote on X.
Some Jewish Democrats are publicly supporting Rogers, saying El-Sayed has failed to assuage concerns in his outreach to Jewish voters and in campaign appearances in recent months. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate.
Recent polls show El-Sayed with a narrow lead in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. Recent elections in Michigan have been decided by narrow margins. Trump won the swing state in 2024 by about 80,000 votes, while Democratic incumbent Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers in the Senate race that year by fewer than 20,000 votes. Four years earlier, Joe Biden won Michigan by about 2.8 percentage points.
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In Israel’s election, Netanyahu faces a reckoning over Oct. 7 failure
With barely two weeks remaining before Israel’s Oct. 27 election, the country has been consumed by an extraordinary confrontation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior former aides over what he knew before the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, what he did with that knowledge and whether his office subsequently sought to rewrite the historical record.
The immediate catalyst was a bombshell television interview in recent days with Maj. Gen. (res.) Avi Gil, Netanyahu’s former military secretary, who served alongside him before and during the attack that killed approximately 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Gil had remained largely silent for three years, expecting to present his evidence to a state commission of inquiry. But with Netanyahu blocking such an inquiry, amid transparent scheming to deflect blame, Gil decided to speak publicly.
What he described went considerably beyond the failures of intelligence and military preparedness that have already been extensively documented. Gil accused Netanyahu’s office of attempting to falsify an official record from the morning of the attack. He challenged the prime minister’s account of early warnings he received. He confirmed that Netanyahu rejected recommendations for preventive military operations against Hamas. And he described how political considerations influenced decisions over hostage negotiations, potentially prolonging the captivity of people who could have been brought home earlier – and alive.
His testimony is particularly consequential because it directly challenges a 55-page document Netanyahu released in February, presenting his version of the events preceding Oct. 7. Submitted to Israel’s state comptroller, the document portrayed Netanyahu as having repeatedly advocated tougher action against Hamas while security officials underestimated the threat. It has become central to his defense against accusations that his longstanding policy of containing Hamas helped create the conditions for the catastrophe.
Gil, who attended the relevant meetings and recorded his experiences in 16 notebooks, described the published document as a profoundly incomplete and misleading account, containing lies and half-truths. It failed to reflect even half of what he witnessed.
A separate investigation published Friday by Yedioth Ahronoth, comparing Netanyahu’s account with original records of security deliberations, reported significant omissions and distortions, including instances in which Netanyahu allegedly rejected proposals to target Hamas leaders that his February document presented as initiatives of his own.
Most explosive was Gil’s account of an alleged attempt by Netanyahu’s then-chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, to change the official time of a telephone conversation on Oct. 7 from 6:40 a.m. to 6:29 a.m. Moving the time backward could create the impression that Netanyahu had been issuing instructions from the first moments of the assault. Gil said a stenographer told him she had been instructed to alter the record, prompting him to notify the attorney general.
Nitzan Alon, another retired general who headed the government’s hostage release operation, and took part in negotiations throughout much of the war, also told reporters that “it was possible to end the war a year earlier” and save the lives of numerous hostages who eventually died in captivity.
Another remarkable confrontation involves Ronen Bar, the former head of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, whom Netanyahu has repeatedly blamed for the failures of Oct. 7. In late September, Bar announced plans to sue Netanyahu for defamation, accusing him of conducting a campaign of false allegations about his conduct before the massacre. Bar said he had warned Netanyahu about a looming security disaster and demanded disclosure of the original records of security meetings, communications and warnings, including the prime minister’s contacts with foreign officials.
Those demands have acquired additional significance amid reports that senior officials from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates warned Netanyahu about Hamas preparations shortly before the attack. Netanyahu categorically denies receiving such warnings and has threatened legal action over the reporting.
Gil’s revelations arrived alongside another striking intervention from a former Netanyahu confidant. Yoav Horowitz, , once Netanyahu’s chief of staff and director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, told Kan’s Reshet Bet radio last week that he had gradually come to understand that Netanyahu’s decisions were driven primarily by considerations of personal political survival rather than the national interest.
Now a senior aide to leading opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot, Horowitz attributed that transformation to the corrosive effects of prolonged power, observing that “too much time in power corrupts,” and framed the approaching election as being about saving the country.
Horowitz now heads the team preparing its first 100 days in government. His criticism therefore comes from a former trusted aide who has become an active political opponent, adding another dimension to the dispute over Netanyahu’s leadership.
The question of political survival also figured prominently in Gil’s account of the hostage negotiations. Asked whether coalition pressures had influenced decisions that delayed agreements to free hostages, Gil said some hostages could have returned earlier and that political calculations had played a role in the decisions that kept them in captivity.
Netanyahu has rejected Gil’s allegations, and his Likud party has characterized the latest revelations as politically motivated propaganda. Netanyahu and his supporters maintain that senior security officials failed to recognize the imminent danger.
The country is still struggling to establish a common factual account of its most traumatic day in decades, while the officials who participated in the crucial decisions offer sharply conflicting versions of what happened. Meanwhile, the families of those killed on Oct. 7, survivors of the massacre and former hostages continue demanding answers about the decisions that shaped their lives.
The public appetite for an inquiry into the disaster is overwhelming. A September 2025 survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 74 percent of Israelis supported establishing a state commission of inquiry, including 68 percent of Jewish respondents identifying with the political right. A subsequent survey conducted in February 2026 found that 92 percent of Israelis considered it important to investigate the events.
The absence of such an inquiry has left journalists, former officials, politicians and bereaved families conducting an increasingly contentious public investigation of their own. Documents appear selectively, witnesses offer competing recollections, and allegations that might otherwise be tested through sworn testimony and access to classified evidence become weapons in an election campaign. With spiraling suspicions being leveled at Netanyahu, the election will take place amid unresolved questions – and a rage that grows more toxic by the day.
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Archaeologists uncover a 300-meter section of ancient aqueduct in Jerusalem
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a 300-meter (984-foot) section of Jerusalem’s ancient Lower Aqueduct, providing another window into how engineers about 2,000 years ago ensured that the city would have an adequate supply of water for residents and pilgrims.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) began the dig three months ago in advance of the planned construction of a new neighborhood in East Jerusalem, at the city’s edge. Such “salvage excavations” are often carried out prior to major construction projects in Israel to ensure that any ruins discovered at the site can be mapped and protected even if they aren’t excavated at the time.
Believed to have been built in the Hasmonean period in the second and first centuries B.C.E., this engineering system carried spring water from the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank, through Solomon’s Pools south of Bethlehem, to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It remained in intermittent use until the early 20th century.
Although parts of the aqueduct have been uncovered in previous excavations, this is the first time such a large section will be made permanently accessible to the public, Benyamin Storchan, an IAA archaeologist and the excavation’s co-director, told the Jewish Telegraphic Authority.
Based on earlier discoveries and a wide range of research, archaeologists had strongly suspected where the newly uncovered section was located.
“We were able to work with municipal urban planners to ensure that the shape of the new neighborhood will be determined not only by its natural topography, but based on the antiquities found there,” Storchan said.
The aqueduct, the discovery of which was made public on Sunday, will be preserved as a promenade/archaeological park at the entrance to the future neighborhood by the IAA and Israel Land Authority.
Bringing Water to Jerusalem
Before the aqueduct was built, the landlocked city of Jerusalem relied on the Gihon Spring and rainfall runoff for its entire water supply, Storchan said. Under Hasmonean rule, Jerusalem’s population grew and the need for water increased. That was especially true during Jewish festival times, when pilgrims doubled or even tripled the population.
The solution involved transporting water from springs in the Gush Etzion region, a hilly area more than 800 meters above sea level. Spring water had to be channeled to collection areas, and then toward Solomon’s Pools, an extensive water-storage complex built south of Bethlehem. From there, two major aqueducts, the Lower Aqueduct and the Upper Aqueduct, carried water toward Jerusalem – a distance of more than 20 kilometers (12 miles).
The Lower Aqueduct, which appears to predate the Upper Aqueduct, “is an engineering marvel,” Amit Re’em, the IAA’s Jerusalem district archaeologist, said in a press statement. “Even today, with all our modern technology, building such a system would require extensive planning and effort. The thought that, about 2,000 years ago, they managed to bring water to Jerusalem this way is astonishing.”
Its route had to follow the contours of the rugged topography while maintaining a gentle gradient for the water to flow by gravity alone, without mechanical pumps. Along most of its route, the water dropped just one meter in elevation per kilometer.
“The newly exposed section reveals the various stages in the history of the water system,” the IAA said. “Initially, the water flowed in a built, plastered channel. Then, about 500 years ago, during the Ottoman period, ceramic pipes were installed within the original channel, the outer face of the aqueduct wall was plastered and small stones were pressed into the plaster while still wet.”
Used for about 2,000 Years
One of the aqueduct’s most remarkable characteristics was its longevity. Believed to be constructed during the Hasmonean period, it was repaired and reused through successive eras, including the Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods.
The fact that various kingdoms and rulers decided to repair and not replace the water system “is one of the most fascinating parts,” Storchan said of the waterway. Rather than repurposing an older structure for a different use, successive rulers retained the aqueduct’s original purpose.”, “here we see a single installation being reused again and again for its original function.”
The aqueduct was used until about a century ago, when modern water infrastructure, including electric pumping stations, proved more efficient. Its long history of repairs, however, complicates archaeological dating, Storchan said. Those who repaired it over the millennia added plaster, repaired collapsed sections and modified the channel, sometimes obscuring evidence of the original construction.
Utilizing modern technology
Still, the latest excavation gives researchers an opportunity to reexamine longstanding questions with advances in scientific dating methods.
“Today, technology is more advanced than it was then. We’re working with all kinds of specialists to pinpoint the dating of the original construction,” Storchan said.
One such method is optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), which can estimate when mineral grains in sediment were last exposed to sunlight. Combined with the analysis of mortar, plaster and archaeological layers, the technique may help narrow the dates associated with different stages of the system’s development.
For Storchan and his colleagues, every new insight is a cause for celebration.
“Our job as archaeologists,” he said, “is to fill in another piece of the puzzle.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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