American History

Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition by Marni Davis

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By Marni Davis

On the flip of the century, American Jews and prohibitionists seen each other with becoming suspicion. Jews believed that every one american citizens had the suitable to promote and eat alcohol, whereas prohibitionists insisted that alcohol trade and intake posed a hazard to the nation’s morality and defense. the 2 teams possessed incompatible visions of what it intended to be a effective and patriotic American—and in 1920, while the Eighteenth modification to the structure made alcohol trade unlawful, Jews chanced on that anti-Semitic sentiments had combined with anti-alcohol ideology, threatening their popularity and their status in American society.

In Jews and Booze, Marni Davis examines American Jews’ lengthy and complex dating to alcohol through the past due 19th and early 20th centuries, the years of the nationwide prohibition movement’s upward push and fall. Bringing to undergo an in depth variety of archival fabrics, Davis deals a singular viewpoint on a formerly unstudied quarter of yankee Jewish fiscal activity—the making and promoting of liquor, wine, and beer—and finds that alcohol trade performed a vital position in Jewish immigrant acculturation and the expansion of Jewish groups within the usa. yet prohibition’s triumph solid a pall on American Jews’ historical past within the alcohol exchange, forcing them to revise, make clear, and shield their communal and civic identities, either to their fellow american citizens and to themselves.

"Thoughtful, instructive and sometimes insightful."—New York occasions e-book overview

“There are adequate attention-grabbing anecdotes, evidence and figures within the captivating historical past to make the reader thirsty for an additional round.”—Times Literary complement

"An very good publication. Davis crafted a posh and complicated narrative, weaving a number of subject matters jointly into an argumentative arc that demonstrates the complicated relationships among prohibition and the advance of those generations in American Jewish life."—Journal of yankee background

"... a provocative research of Jews' advanced courting to alcohol and Prohibition in American history."
-Publishers Weekly,

"In her debut, Davis means that anti-Semitism and Prohibition have been parallel expressions of political disquiet through the flip of the final century...A attention-grabbing, nuanced social history."
-Kirkus,

“A pioneering examine of Jews and the yankee alternate in alcohol from entrepreneurial nineteenth century immigrants via twentieth century battles over prohibition. vigorous, well-researched, and complete, this may lengthy stand because the definitive research of Jews, booze, and evolving American taboos.”
-Jonathan D. Sarna,author of yank Judaism: A History

“Imaginatively conceived, fiercely researched, fantastically written, Jews and Booze is welcome information certainly. a really gifted and promising historian has proven how a contentious slice of the yank Jewish prior can stay very important to today's readers—and has made a specific clash among Protestant moralism and ethnic conduct her own.”
-Stephen J. Whitfield,author of looking for American Jewish Culture

“In this groundbreaking examine, Davis deftly blends social and cultural heritage to discover the real function American Jews performed within the liquor exchange, and the hostilities they elicited. In getting better this approximately forgotten prior, Jews and Booze offers a prism wherein to view the problems of Americanization.” -Tony Michels,author of a fireplace of their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York

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Extra resources for Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition (Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History)

Sample text

Jews in the liquor trade were thus positioned both to help their fellow Jews (since they had access to more capital) and to strengthen the Jewish entrepreneurial presence in mainstream business circles. For some, success in the alcohol business gave them the means to respond to social anti-Semitism. A few years after a hotelier denied the banker Joseph Seligman a room at the exclusive Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York, and an owner of another elite resort on Coney Island announced that he would exclude Jews from his hotel as well—anti-Semitic incidents that unnerved acculturated Jews all over the country—the distiller Charles Fleischmann purchased sixty acres of land in Griffin’s Corners, several counties to the south of Saratoga.

40 The presence of a few Jewish whiskeymen in a city could have a profound effect on the occupational choices of other local Jews. Isaac Wolfe Bernheim entered the whiskey trade in this fashion, by finding opportunity with Bloom and Loeb. 41 The surest line to a job, in any field, was through family ties. Once established, an entrepreneur often hired a relative to work alongside him in the business. These employees might later open their own concerns, not only with their former boss’s blessing but with his assistance as well.

Wise took great pride in Dreyfus’s status as the “king of the Anaheim winemakers,” extolling Dreyfus’s contributions to the industry in general and to the nation’s Jewish population in particular. The successful promotion of domestically produced wines, kosher or otherwise, “is mostly due to the firm of B. , of our country,” Wise proclaimed in 1882. This industry was “one of our greatest interests,” he wrote, although he was not likely to be enthusiastic about a California kosher wine industry facilitating increased observation of Jewish law.

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