In 2020, the sale of alcoholic beverages at bars and restaurants, normally a crucial part of producers’ revenue, cratered because of the coronavirus—and kosher wine was no exception. Yet kosher wineries have for the most part survived. Joshua London explains how:

Of course, wine—like most agricultural products—is largely a multiyear, long-term endeavor, allowing for a certain resiliency to temporary shocks. As Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz, senior rabbinic coordinator and wine expert for the Orthodox Union, put it: “The wine industry requires long-term planning, and projection—and some would say, given the uncertainties natural to agriculture, and the often fickle nature of consumer tastes, it’s more like guesswork or betting—but regardless it requires some longer-term thinking. So, while everything was disrupted in 2020, kosher wine production and sales did not stop.”

Losing out [during the spring of 2020] were smaller or newer brands, the sorts of wines that usually require a bit of effort, storytelling, and substantive engagement with the customer, often aided by in-store tastings. Premium brands stagnated completely. Then “by mid-summer,” [the owner of a New Jersey kosher wine shop] noted, “folks finally began shifting back to something closer to what we were used to” in their consumer buying practices, including a return to sales of premium-priced wines.

In Israel, meanwhile, there has been a major shift in the way wine is consumed:

[According to] Adam S. Montefiore, an Israeli wine-industry consultant and prolific wine writer, . . . “Israelis have learned to drink at home, to have wine as part of their home routine—understanding that it’s OK to drink wine at home and share it with their family. That’s a big change. Probably the single most positive trend, and one that is likely to stay.”

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.