AUTO REPAIR
Travel
Services:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Tune ups
Brakes
Ignition system repairs
Shock and struts
Oil changes .
Mufflers and exhaust systems
Electrical diagnostics
and repairs
• Computerized diagnostics
with dealership data
• Carburetors
• Front end suspension
• Clutch & transmission repair
and replacement
• Towing available
• Air conditioning and
heating repairs
Israel Museum
Salutes Beer, Wine
CAR TECH
6 9
5 O
Serving Walled Lake since 1987 • ASE Certified
2287 WEST MAPLE, COMMERCE TOWNSHIP • LOCATED BETWEEN WELCH AND MAPLE
40%-15% OFF
SUMMER SALE
To
meet
new
people,
I always:
Visit
ERIC SILVER
Israel Correspondent
Call
Jerusalem
JN Online
my mother
www.detroitjewishnews.com
T
he Greeks and Romans
popularized wine and beer,
but the peoples of the
ancient Middle East were
tippling off the grape and the grain
long before Plato's sym-
posium or Caligula's
imperial orgies.
"Drink and Be
Merry," a celebration of
booze in ancient times,
which opened in June at
the Israel Museum in
Jerusalem, traces the
first known wine culti-
vation to the sixth mil-
lennium B.C.E. in
northern Iran and the earliest beer to
the fourth millennium in Egypt and
Mesopotamia (today's Iraq). Both
were consumed in the Holy Land by
the third millennium.
Wine was always more expensive
to produce. It was reserved initially
for cultic purposes, but soon found
its way into the banqueting cham-
ber. The cheaper beer was dismissed
as the beverage of barbarians. An
erotic, 4,000-year-old terra - cotta
plaque from Mesopotamia shows a
naked woman sipping beer through
a straw while a man is slyly
approaching her from behind.
The ancients began by adding
wine to water (to decontaminate it)
and finished by adding water to wine
(so that they didn't get drunk too
quicldy). A letter, written in brownish
ink on a pottery shard
dating from the seventh
century B.C.E.,
instructs Eliashiv, the
Judaean commander of
the Arad fortress in
southern Israel, to sup-
ply his Greek mercenar-
ies with flour, oil and
wine.
The Israel Museum
exhibition's curator,
Michal Dayagi-Mendels, explains that
the oil and flour were for making
bread; the wine was for purifying
brackish water. To prove her point,
she displays a collection of 10th cen-
tury B.C.E. hip flasks, with built-in
spoons for measuring the dosage.
King Herod, the first century B.C.E.
tyrant who built the Temple in
Jerusalem for his Jewish subjects and a
winter palace at Masada overlooking
King H erod
was a
wine s nob.
ASK ABOUT OUR
Preventive
Maintenance Program
130A WEST MAPLE
IN THE ALLEY
DOWNTOWN BIRMINGHAM
248.258.5454
MARK KELLER • PROPRIETOR
8/6
1999
124 Detroit Jewish News
• 24 Hour Emergency Service
• 30 Vehicles • Radio Dispatch
• Quality Installation
viii
:I
f fr iashd (248)335-4555
Cam •
MIK INDOOR
CONTINUED ON PAGE 126