{"id":190,"date":"2009-08-03T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html"},"modified":"2009-08-03T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-03T10:00:00","slug":"why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Manischewitz Wine Is a Blasphemy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently someone &#8212; it might have been of one of our older kids &#8212; asked me why Jews both inaugurate the Sabbath over a cup of a wine (at <i>Kiddush<\/i>) and bid it farewell similarly, over a cup of wine (<i>Havdalah<\/i>). I found an answer over Shabbat in Rav Hirsch&#8217;s commentary on the Torah, in his explanation of the Fourth Commandment as recorded in Exodus. In the order of Biblical symbols, a cup alludes to our fate as meted out to us by God. Look here for <a href=\"http:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/cgi\/k\/kjv\/kjv-idx?type=simple&amp;format=Long&amp;q1=cup&amp;restrict=Old+Testament&amp;size=First+100\">a list of verses from the KJV version<\/a>&nbsp;of the Hebrew Bible that use the word &#8220;cup&#8221;; you&#8217;ll see what I mean.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div>The medieval hymn&nbsp;<i>Adon Olam<\/i>&nbsp;describes God, the &#8220;Lord of the Universe,&#8221; as &#8220;my cup, my portion when I cry.&#8221; The essential point of the Sabbath is to acknowledge God as the guiding force behind creation and history. We receive our &#8220;cup&#8221; from Him. Hence the appropriateness of celebrating the Sabbath by lifting and receiving our cup, filled with beautiful wine. Per Jewish custom, there is a whole choreography to this.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>We hope our portion from God will be as good, as gently intoxicating, as good wine. What an insult, really a blasphemy, to use sickly sweet grape juice or&nbsp;Manischewitz as some Jews do! Maimonides rules, in fact, that&nbsp;<i>Kiddush<\/i>&nbsp;may not be said over sugared or cooked &#8212; i.e., grossly inferior &#8212; wine (<i>Hilchot Shabbat<\/i>&nbsp;29:14).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently someone &#8212; it might have been of one of our older kids &#8212; asked me why Jews both inaugurate the Sabbath over a cup of a wine (at Kiddush) and bid it farewell similarly, over a cup of wine (Havdalah). I found an answer over Shabbat in Rav Hirsch&#8217;s commentary on the Torah, in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-observance"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Manischewitz Wine Is a Blasphemy - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Manischewitz Wine Is a Blasphemy - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently someone &#8212; it might have been of one of our older kids &#8212; asked me why Jews both inaugurate the Sabbath over a cup of a wine (at Kiddush) and bid it farewell similarly, over a cup of wine (Havdalah). I found an answer over Shabbat in Rav Hirsch&#8217;s commentary on the Torah, in&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-03T10:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why Manischewitz Wine Is a Blasphemy - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why Manischewitz Wine Is a Blasphemy - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"Recently someone &#8212; it might have been of one of our older kids &#8212; asked me why Jews both inaugurate the Sabbath over a cup of a wine (at Kiddush) and bid it farewell similarly, over a cup of wine (Havdalah). I found an answer over Shabbat in Rav Hirsch&#8217;s commentary on the Torah, in&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html","og_site_name":"Kingdom of Priests","article_published_time":"2009-08-03T10:00:00+00:00","author":"David Klinghoffer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html","name":"Why Manischewitz Wine Is a Blasphemy - Kingdom of Priests","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-08-03T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-08-03T10:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/why-manischewitz-is-a-blasphemy.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why Manischewitz Wine Is a Blasphemy"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/","name":"Kingdom of Priests","description":"David Klinghoffer","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454","name":"David Klinghoffer","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","caption":"David Klinghoffer"},"description":"David Klinghoffer is an author and senior fellow in the Religious, Liberty & Public Life program at the Discovery Institute. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}