Noah's Wine vs. Pharaoh's Beer: The Barroom Brawl and Culture War That Shaped Jewish History

Science and Torah are often thought of as adversaries, but honest, respectful encounters between them can often enrich both disciplines and help us to better understand and appreciate Torah. We'll examine sources ranging from the Torah, Talmud, medieval Torah commentators, and archaeological findings to learn about the conflict between the beer-drinking agricultural cultures of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and the wine-drinking pastoral Israelites that climaxes with the Exodus. We'll also see

* Why some archaeologists think that civilization began as a way to get a beer,

* Why it matters that Joseph's Pharaoh drank wine, but Moses's Pharaoh did not,

* The politics of wine vs. beer among Joseph's cellmates, and

* The ancient origins of traditional Jewish ambivalence about alcohol and present-day drinking customs such as toasting and the Jewish preference for wine at formal and religious occasions.

If time permits, we'll also examine some of the many symbolic meanings of wine, including the preference for red wine over white and the complex implications of the Biblical metaphor "blood of grapes."

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Jon Greenberg received his bachelor’s degree with honors in biology from Brown University and his Master’s and Doctorate in agronomy from Cornell University. He has also studied with Rabbi Chaim Brovender at Israel’s Yeshivat Hamivtar and conducted research on corn, alfalfa, and soybeans at Cornell, the US Department of Agriculture, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Cancer Research. Since 1989, he has been a science teacher and educational consultant. Dr. Greenberg was Senior Editor of science textbooks at Prentice Hall Publishing Co. Previously on the faculty of Yeshivas Ohr Yosef, the School of Education at Indiana University, and the University of Phoenix, he taught at the Heschel School in New York from 2008 to 2024. In 2021, he published Fruits of Freedom, a Passover Hagadah with a commentary from the perspective of the history of Jewish food and agriculture. He is a frequent speaker at synagogues, schools, and botanical gardens. Dr. Greenberg can be contacted at jon@torahflora.org.

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