A Toast Across Time
Continued from page 16
tery-based brewing and perhaps even agriculture as we normally understand it.
As societies across the region became more complex, so did their drinking traditions.
Beer became central to life in Mesopotamia and Egypt, while wine was cultivated and traded throughout the Levant and the Mediterranean. These beverages were not consumed simply for pleasure. They carried nutritional, economic, social and religious significance.
Wine was poured as a libation to the gods. Beer was distributed to workers and shared at
communal gatherings. Elaborate banquets reinforced relationships and social standing. Alcohol accompanied celebrations, mourning and encounters between the human and the divine. Then, as now, what people drank and how they drank it could tell
Model depicting beer brewing, one of the types of models placed in ancient Egyptian tombs to provide sustenance for the deceased.
you something about who they were.
A guided walk through the museum during the festival brought this history to life. An Egyptian wall painting from around 1500 B. C. E. depicts women at a banquet smelling lotus flowers, capturing an evening of fragrance, beauty and intoxication across the millennia. Elsewhere, an ancient drinking vessel decorated with Medusa offered a more playful warning: If you reached the bottom of the cup and found yourself staring into Medusa’ s face, perhaps you had already had enough.
Returning to the festival garden after encountering those objects made the contemporary tastings feel different. The gins carried notes of local herbs and botanicals. Arak offered its unmistakable rush of anise. Fruitbased spirits balanced sweetness with warmth, while whiskey introduced smoke, grain and wood. At the cocktail bar, familiar ingredients were combined in unexpected ways, giving traditions rooted in this region a distinctly modern form.
The drinks were not attempts to recreate ancient recipes. Modern distillation came much later than the fermented beverages of antiquity, and today’ s producers work with techniques their predecessors could never have imagined. Still, the underlying instinct felt familiar: to take what grows nearby, transform it through knowledge and patience, and share the result with others.
“ At the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, we tell the story of this land’ s ancient roots – its trade, its craftsmanship, its everyday life going back thousands of years,” said Risa Levitt, the museum’ s director.“ Tozeret
The Charlotte Jewish News- November 2026- Page 25
Mixing cocktails during the Made in Israel Festival.
Ha’ aretz‘ Made in Israel’ brings that story into the present. These distillers are working the same soil, using techniques passed down and refined over generations, to create something distinctly of this place.”
For Levitt, hosting the festival was not separate from the museum’ s purpose but an extension of it.“ Hosting the festival here isn’ t a departure from our mission,” she said.“ It’ s a continuation of it.”
That continuation may be the most compelling meaning of“ Made in Israel.” It is not simply a label of origin. It describes an ongoing conversation between land, memory and invention.
Israel is often presented to the world through politics, conflict and crisis. Those realities should not be ignored, but they are not the entirety of the Israeli story. Israel is also a place of artists, farmers, chefs, historians and craftspeople. Namely, people drawing on their surroundings and inherited traditions to create something new.
For one evening in Jerusalem, that larger story could be encountered through flavors and aromas. A sip of gin did not transport us literally to an ancient banquet, nor did a glass of whiskey reproduce the drinks of the first brewers. But each offered a small reminder that innovation rarely begins from nothing.
WE CANNOT CHANGE THE HORRORS OF THE PAST. BUT WE CAN ENSURE FUTURE GENERATIONS LEARN FROM THEM.
STORYTELLING IS RESISTANCE.
Preserve Memory. Educate Against Hate. Elevate Lived Experience.
What You Can Do
Help us bring the voices of those who endured antisemitism into classrooms today.
To learn more about Voices Against Hate, scan the QR code or visit voicesagainsthate. org.