Jews and Booze : Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition

Finalist, 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature from the Jewish Book Council Traces American Jews' complicated relationship to alcohol through the years leading up to and after prohibition From kosher wine to their ties to the liquor trade in Europe, Jews have a longstanding historical relationship with alcohol. But once prohibition hit America, American Jews were forced to choose between abandoning their historical connection to alcohol and remaining outside the American mainstream. In Jews and Booze , Marni Davis examines American Jews' long and complicated relationship to alcohol during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the years of the national prohibition movement's rise and fall. Bringing to bear an extensive range of archival materials, Davis offers a novel perspective on a previously unstudied area of American Jewish economic activity—the making and selling of liquor, wine, and beer—and reveals that alcohol commerce played a crucial role in Jewish immigrant acculturation and the growth of Jewish communities in the United States. But prohibition's triumph cast a pall on American Jews' history in the alcohol trade, forcing them to revise, clarify, and defend their communal and civic identities, both to their fellow Americans and to themselves. "At the turn of the century, American Jews and prohibitionists viewed one another with growing suspicion. Jews believed that all Americans had the right to sell and consume alcohol, while prohibitionists insisted that alcohol commerce and consumption posed a threat to the nation's morality and security. The two groups possessed incompatible visions of what it meant to be a productive and patriotic Americanoand in 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution made alcohol commerce illegal, Jews discovered that anti-Semitic sentiments had mixed with anti-alcohol ideology, threatening their reputation and their standing in American society. Though their connection to alcohol had once been a subject of communal pride, prohibition compelled Jews to choose between abandoning this historical and cultural connection and remaining outside the American mainstream. In Jews and Booze, Marni Davis examines American Jews' long and complicated relationship to alcohol during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the years of the national prohibition movement's rise and fall. Bringing to bear an extensive range of archival materials, Davis offers a novel perspective on a previously unstudied area of American Jewish economic activityothe making and selling of liquor, wine, and beero and reveals that alcohol commerce played a crucial role in Jewish immigrant acculturation and the growth of Jewish communities in the United States. But prohibition's triumph cast a pall on American Jews' history in the alcohol trade, forcing them to revise, clarify, and defend their communal and civic identities, both to their fellow Americans and to themselves"--Provided by publisher Setting up shop: Jews becoming Americans in the nineteenth-century alcohol trade Do as we Israelites do: American Jews and the gilded-age temperance movement Kosher wine and Jewish saloons: new Jewish immigrants enter the American alcohol trade An "unscrupulous Jewish type of mind": Jewish alcohol entrepreneurs and their critics Rabbis and other bootleggers: Jews as prohibition-era alcohol entrepreneurs The law of the land is the law: Jews respond to the Volstead Act. Examines the relationship between alcohol and the Jewish community throughout the nineteenth century and the period of Prohibition, describing the role of Jews in the liquor industry and the relationship between the anti-alcohol movement and anti-Semitism In this work, Marni Davis examines American Jews' long and complicated relationship to alcohol during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the years of the national prohibition movement's rise and fall.