PASSOVER EDITION
SECTION B PAGE 15
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Producing wine atop a tranquil mountain in a remote area of northern California is quite a way to make a living. For Benyamin Cantz, whose one-man operation in the hills of Santa Cruz produces kosher wine from organic grapes, it’s also a calling.
“This is my livelihood, but I don’t quite run it like a full-fledged business,” Cantz told JTA in a recent interview on his vineyard, Four Gates Winery.
“It could definitely be run more efficiently, but I don’t see the process like that. I just love making wine and the holy concept behind it, and I just want to share it with others.”
Four Gates is one of the smallest kosher wineries in the country, producing only 400 cases a year. It’s also one of the only ones in the world that grows its own grapes organically.

Business
Denver journalist Dyana Furmansky is working on her third book and has written many articles for The New York Times.
But the assignment that gives her the greatest gratification is the 58-word blurb she wrote for the purple-lidded canister of Foodman’s Matzolah, a maple and nut, matzah-based granola that is kosher for Passover.
Matzolah, which Furmansky calls “the Trail Mix of the Exodus,” won the Best New Passover Product for 2013 at the recent Kosherfest, the world’s largest kosher t...
Perri Klein has been named MazelTot coordinator at Rose Community Foundation. She will oversee MazelTot’s network of partner organizations and serve as a resource to help families connect to Jewish life and one another.
For the past three years, Klein served as MazelTot’s part-time family networker, connecting young families and expectant parents to local Jewish life.
Prior to joining MazelTot full-time, she was donor services coordinator at the Loup JCC, where she was responsible for mana...
NEW YORK — A pregnant Darfuri woman at a refugee camp in Chad, a Latino senior citizen living below the poverty line in the Bronx and an elderly Jewish immigrant from the former Soviet Union living in Boston.
They may not know it, but these individuals are all beneficiaries of programs run by Jewish organizations with public money.
If Congress can’t reach a deal to avoid the so-called sequester by March 1, many of these programs could be severely scaled back — or terminated.
“Both our...
For the 38th straight month, the overall index for the Mountain States region, an economic indicator for the three-state area of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, advanced above growth neutral 50.0.
The December index from a survey of supply managers continues to exceed the national index, which crawled only slightly above growth neutral for December.
Overall index
The overall index, or Business Conditions Index, which ranges between 0 and 100, fell to a still solid 54.4 from 55.9 in November.
An ...