One of the essential elements of the Passover seder is the four cups of wine, traditionally drunk, Greco-Roman style, while reclining. Wine was an essential beverage in the ancient Mediterranean world, and one discussed extensively in the Talmud, which in at least one instance describes Italian wine as the very best kind. But it has long been thought that ancient wine wasn’t very good, at least not by modern standards. Dimitri Van Limbergen, together with Paulina Komar, recently completed a scientific study that challenges that assumption:

It is alleged that Roman winemakers had to mask their products’ flaws by adding spices, herbs, and other ingredients to the freshly pressed grape juice, which is known as must. However, our research has shown this may not have been the case: a recent study of earthenware vessels used in wine fermentation—both ancient and contemporary—has challenged traditional views on the taste and quality of Roman wine, some of which may even have rivalled the fine wines of today.

Many of the longstanding misconceptions surrounding Roman wine come from a lack of insight into one of the most characteristic features of Roman winemaking: fermentation in clay jars or dolia. Huge wine cellars filled with hundreds of these vessels have been found all over the Roman world, but until we began our study no one had looked closely at their role in ancient wine production.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”