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

Like so many other monographs that treat of immigrant history, Jews and Booze (a great, great title) focuses on the process, pace, promise, and perils of assimilation and acculturation, of becoming American without abandoning Judaism. The strength of this book is the path the author clears through this this well-plowed ground.

Marni Davis focuses her attention on those Jews who worked in the alcohol industry, as manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. Many who took up the trade in the New World, she tells us, had learned and practiced it in the Old, as winemakers and saloon keepers. In cities and towns large and small across the nation, newly immigrated Jews not only made a living in the alcohol trades, but also established for themselves, their families, and the Jews who worked for them a respected place within the business community. As Davis writes, "For Jews who hoped to be accepted as citizens of their cities and towns and to be incorporated into national life more largely, Jewish whiskeymen were among the vanguard, helping to forge a path towards admission into American society" (33).

Unfortunately, almost ironically, the alcohol industry, though prosperous and growing through the nineteenth century, was under attack by a small but active group of temperance activists. The Jews in the trade protested against any and all attempts at prohibition, not only because it threatened their livelihoods, but because they believed restrictions on commerce in and consumption of alcohol were profoundly un-American. The most dangerous elements of the temperance movement, they feared, were its evangelical fervor, its identification with an outspoken, activist faction of the Christian community, and its clearly stated aim to deploy temperance as a step towards "Christianizing" American life.

The tension between Jews inside and outside the liquor trade and the temperance movement took many forms. Jews were targeted in the south for selling liquor to "Negroes" who, it was claimed, were genetically incapable of tolerating it. When Prohibition became the law of the land, the criticism of Jews in the trade took a new and decided nasty turn. Jews were singled out, not entirely incorrectly, for the major role they played as bootleggers, as gangsters, as un-American opponents of law and order. The position of the Jewish community was further complicated and compromised by the special dispensation given Jews in Section 6 of the Volstead Act to make, sell, and drink "sacramental wine for religious purposes." This dispensation "emerged early in the Prohibition era as a massive breach through which . . . illegal alcohol flowed. The fact that Jewish alcohol production, purveyance, and consumption was actually built into federal Prohibition law had a profound effect on Jewish attitudes toward Prohibition, and on prohibitionists' attitudes toward Jews" (141).

Jews and Booze is an important book for many reasons. It opens up a somewhat neglected area of research, Jewish entrepreneurs and small businessmen; it interrogates and compares the relationship of Jews to the alcohol industry in eastern Europe as well as in the United States; it focuses attention on Jewish businessmen in small towns and cities; and it is written in such a manner that it should appeal to general readers beyond the academic community.

If I have a quibble with the author, it is that she too often makes too much of too little. Davis is correct to draw our attention to the anti-Semitic tracts, pamphlets, and articles that blamed the Jewish "liquor power," "whiskey trusts," and bootleggers for their crimes against humanity and the nation, but she may be overstating the prevalence and overall significance of such attacks. Still, this is a minor quibble about a book that is as enjoyable to read as it is informative.