A plan to create a market in this country for Palestine wines was proposed by Maurice Levin, president of the Hearn department store, at a luncheon Thursday attended by rabbis, Jewish civic leaders and Jewish journalists.
The merchant announced that he has undertaken the importation for his store of the famous Carmel wines in an effort to revive an industry which could do much to bring economic security to the thousands who are looking to the Holy Land as a place of opportunity.
A share of each sale of Palestine wine will go to the Jewish National Fund, Levin said, to help that organization to carry on its rehabilitation work in Palestine. Levin recently pledged an annual contribution for the duration of his life to aid the Jews in Palestine.
“This does not mean that Palestine wines will or should supplant our American wines,” asserted Levin, “but because of their unusual flavor and delicacy they can and should enjoy a definite place in the homes not only of our Jewish people, but of all the people in the United States who have traveled to the Holy Land and who have learned to enjoy the fine qualities of Palestinian wines, and, of those people who before prohibition, favored the wines of Palestine.”
The merchant urged his hearers to lend their efforts to the revival of a successful industry started in 1881 by Baron Edmund de Rothschild, but which was in need of stimulus now because of the political situation in Europe which had closed the markets of many countries including Russia, Poland and Germany, and because prohibition had previously closed the doors of America, once a great market for these wines.
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