It's been a busy week

I realize I haven't posted anything in a week - between full days and being tired at night, I haven't had much of a chance. I will try to catch up in a couple of postings. Monday was a day off for me. Yossi picked me up Sunday night so we could get an early start on Monday. We started the day with a drive to Binyamina, to do some final clean up of a house Yossi and Dina are renting to a new tenant. We started early, around 9, and only needed to work for about an hour and a half, mostly outdoor clean up stuff. Since we were in the greater Zichron Ya'akov neighborhood, we decided to check out some of the local wineries.

We started by hanging out with Barak and Hila at Somek, a small home-based winery making about 12000 bottles a year. We tasted a few things in the barrel and a very nice chardonnay, a carignan and a blend. They were lovely to spend time with and some very nice wines. Then we walked around the corner (literally) to the Smadar winery, which is also a B&B and met Motti Shapiro. We tasted a blend (called En toot, a local spring where he grows his grapes) and a Cabernet. Motti makes about 6000 bottles a year and hopes his daughter, who has recently returned to Israel from studying viticulture will continue the work of the winery.

We had lunch at a dairy restaurant on the main street of Zichron, Nili, and headed just north of Yokne'am (about a half hour away) to the Tulip winery at Kfar Tikvah. Tulip which will be kosher as of this year's vintage, is sort of a mitzvah winery. It's located in a village that houses adults with mental and physical challenges, and Tulip employs some of these adults as workers in their winery. In fact, over the last 5 years, these workers have been the impediment to Tulip receiving kashrut supervision, but the issues have now been resolved. We tasted a delicious white blend, a Cabernet and a blend - are are terrific and I look forward to offering them at future tastings.

We were on the road by 4 and back in Jerusalem by 6 - since we'd had a nice lunch we actually had coffee and dessert at a new place on Emek Refayim, Ben Ami - it was very nice, if only the service had been a bit more attentive.

Tuesday was a day of meetings (and some laundry) in the morning, and lunch with Danny and Rabbi Jonathan Porath at Angelica, a very nice, very high end restaurant in downtown, on Shatz street. It was very nice. After lunch I ran a couple of errands in town, came home to shower and then went back into town for the Mitzvah Heroes dinner at the Village Green.

We had nice attendance at the dinner, we were able to give updates of Mitzvah Heroes Fund's work and hear updates from some of our Mitzvah heroes. It was a terrific evening, very energizing. Bradley Cohen and his wife, who were leaving in the morning for India managed to join us and it was special to have them spending that time with us.

Wednesday we went to S'derot with USY group 8 - we worked with Afikim BaNegev helping them move a youth center from a rented house to a more permanent home near their offices. It was a lot of hot, hard work, the USYers were amazing (it was a small group of 22) and we learned about life in a desert development town in the shadow of Gaza. When we got back, I introduced Scott Littky to Rachmo, a long established, family owned restaurant in downtown on Yoel Solomon - great, comfort food at amazing prices - it was very satisfying.

More soon