Can you believe the Palestinians once made whiskey?

In May, JTA reported that "The Golan Heights Distillery is the first whiskey to be bottled and sold in Israel. "

Maybe - but there was a whiskey once made in Palestine:

Bozwin, which roughly translates to "Beauty of Zion" was a brand created in the late 1920s by Mendel Chaikin, a Russian immigrant who founded M. Chaikin & Company, a London-based wine and spirit merchant. The company purchased kosher wine, spirits, and liquers in bulk from what is now modern day Israel, and shipped them back to London for bottling and sale to a growing Jewish community in the East End of London.

Here's the label:

See how Israel is stealing the history of the proud Palestinians who lived there before 1948?

There is a scandal here, though, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Palestinian Jews happily made whiskey before Israel was reborn.

The scandal is that the Hebrew on the labels say that the product is kosher for Passover.

How can a whiskey be kosher for Passover?

This snippet from an ad in the Jewish Monthly of 1951 shows that Bozwin was still being made after 1948, and it still claimed that it was used on Passover.

I know that theoretically it can be made from corn, but even that would not be acceptable to British Jews for Passover in the 1920s and 1930s.

Now, there's a story that needs to be researched.

(h/t Rob)

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