Treasure Trove: A Century of Israeli Beer – Mi’Brador l’Dor

100 years ago, the Rosenberg Brothers were brewing “Max Brau” Palestinian beer in Acre.  This advertisement appeared in a 1926 edition of Palestine & Near East Economic Magazine- “A Fortnightly for Trade, Industry & Agriculture.”

The advertisement promotes the fact that the beer is made only from the “renowned El Kabri springs” which is located 12.5 kilometres northeast of Acre.   Ancient aqueducts (supplemented by two additional canals which were built in 1800 and 1814) supplied water from these springs to Acre.

“Max Brau” beer started the Palestinian beer industry although the idea of brewing beer in the Land of Israel started fermenting as early as 1922 when Nahum Tisch, the secretary of trade and industry of the Zionist Executive in the Land of Israel, advocated for the opening of a brewery in Gaza to encourage Jewish development there.  

In 1934, another company, Palestine Breweries, was founded by Gaston Dreyfus (a French banker-brewer) and James Rothschild (the son of Baron Edmund de Rotshchild who founded Israel’s wine industry).  Dreyfus was inspired to create the brewery after hearing a lecture by Chaim Weizmann in Paris on economic development in Palestine.  The company changed its name from Palestine Breweries to Nesher Brewery after Israel’s independence (nesher means eagle). 

In 1952, American brewery executive Louis Hertzberg led a group of investors who created a competitor, National Breweries, and built a brewery in Netanya.  The new brewery used equipment formerly owned by the Fidelio Brewery in New York which Hertzberg shipped to Israel together with 2,000,000 amber beer bottles.

In 1973 the Nesher and National breweries combined to form a company that controlled 90% of Israel’s beer market.  The merged company was acquired in 1976 by Torontonian Murray Goldman who in 1985 sold the company to Tempo Beer Industries.  Tempo is a public company listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Israel’s largest brewer and the country’s second largest beverage company.

It is estimated that there are up to 40 microbreweries in Israel today.  One of them is Alexander Brewery which was founded in 2008 in Emek Hefer (this whole area was purchased in 1927 by the Jewish National Fund through funds raised in Canada [https://thecjn.ca/arts-culture/treasure-trove-salutes-the-jewish-canadian-woman-who-made-the-first-remembrance-day-poppies/]).  Alexander brewed a pilsner which it called Max Brau in tribute to the original local brewery that operated in Palestine in the 1920s.

From Rosenberg to Alexander is a story of brewing from generation to generation (or as they used to say in Quebec, Mi’Brador l’dor).

Explanatory Note for Non Canadians-  Brador was an iconic brand of beer brewed by Canada’s Molson Breweries.  Brador was known for its high alcohol content of 6.2%.  It is no longer being made.  Brador is a contraction of the French words “brassee d’or” meaning “golden brew”.

For more treasures from the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow, which has appeared weekly in the Treasure Trove column in the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca) since February 2021, see https://herzlcollection.com/treasure-trove