Rabbinic Comments on Passover Ritual
Among Jewish people in Bible times, social and religious customs mandated never serving unmixed wine, especially if it was fermented. The Talmud (a Jewish work that describes the traditions of Judaism from about 200 BC to AD 200) discusses in several tractates the mixture of water and wine (e.g. Shabbath 77a; Pesahim 1086). Some Jewish rabbis insisted that unless fermented wine was mixed with three parts of water, it could not be blessed and would…