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

Why am I leaving Reboot Shop? Marni Davis examines American Jews’ long and complicated relationship to alcohol during the years of national 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. Bringing to bear an extensive range of archival materials, Marni Davis offers a novel perspective on a previously unstudied area of American Jewish economic activity 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.     Details