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Yankel's Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland
Awarded Honorable Mention for the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award
In nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, the Jewish-run tavern was often the center of leisure, hospitality, business, and even religious festivities. This unusual situation came about because the nobles who owned taverns throughout the formerly Polish lands believed that only Jews were sober enough to run taverns profitably, a belief so ingrained as to endure even the rise of Hasidism's robust drinking culture. As liquor became the region's boom industry, Jewish tavernkeepers became integral to both local economies and local social life, presiding over Christian celebrations and dispensing advice, medical remedies and loans. Nevertheless, reformers and government officials, blaming Jewish tavernkeepers for epidemic peasant drunkenness, sought to drive Jews out of the liquor trade. Their efforts were particularly intense and sustained in the Kingdom of Poland, a semi-autonomous province of the Russian empire that was often treated as a laboratory for social and political change.
Historians have assumed that this spelled the end of the Polish Jewish liquor trade. However, newly discovered archival sources demonstrate that many nobles helped their Jewish tavernkeepers evade fees, bans and expulsions by installing Christians as fronts for their taverns. The result-a vast underground Jewish liquor trade-reflects an impressive level of local Polish-Jewish co-existence that contrasts with the more familiar story of anti-Semitism and violence. By tapping into sources that reveal the lives of everyday Jews and Christians in the Kingdom of Poland, Yankel's Tavern transforms our understanding of the region during the tumultuous period of Polish uprisings and Jewish mystical revival.
In nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, the Jewish-run tavern was often the center of leisure, hospitality, business, and even religious festivities. This unusual situation came about because the nobles who owned taverns throughout the formerly Polish lands believed that only Jews were sober enough to run taverns profitably, a belief so ingrained as to endure even the rise of Hasidism's robust drinking culture. As liquor became the region's boom industry, Jewish tavernkeepers became integral to both local economies and local social life, presiding over Christian celebrations and dispensing advice, medical remedies and loans. Nevertheless, reformers and government officials, blaming Jewish tavernkeepers for epidemic peasant drunkenness, sought to drive Jews out of the liquor trade. Their efforts were particularly intense and sustained in the Kingdom of Poland, a semi-autonomous province of the Russian empire that was often treated as a laboratory for social and political change.
Historians have assumed that this spelled the end of the Polish Jewish liquor trade. However, newly discovered archival sources demonstrate that many nobles helped their Jewish tavernkeepers evade fees, bans and expulsions by installing Christians as fronts for their taverns. The result-a vast underground Jewish liquor trade-reflects an impressive level of local Polish-Jewish co-existence that contrasts with the more familiar story of anti-Semitism and violence. By tapping into sources that reveal the lives of everyday Jews and Christians in the Kingdom of Poland, Yankel's Tavern transforms our understanding of the region during the tumultuous period of Polish uprisings and Jewish mystical revival.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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August 26, 2021
I enjoyed Glenn Dynner's brief but comprehensive study of Jewish tavern-leasing in Poland during the period of the Partitions of Poland (1772-1918). Dynner is an outstanding scholar and as usual, his work reflects research in a wealth of archival sources, both Jewish and Polish, and including government sources from the various levels of government that controlled Polish lands during the long nineteenth century.
My favorite sections were the early chapters, dissecting Jewish attitudes toward Polish drunkenness, Litvak attitudes toward Hasidic drunkenness, and conflicting attitudes of gentiles toward Jewish involvement in taverns--that they were abstemious+trustworthy, or abstemious+conniving, or that they were prone to drunkenness also. Dynner is careful not to draw overly large conclusions on the basis of these reputations.
I enjoyed the way in which this study attempts to use tavern-leasing as one point of entry to better understand Jewish and Polish economic and social relationships in rural areas. The way in which taverns could be site of rural inter-cultural connection (or not) is explored well. Most fascinating was the dynamic development of the liquor trade over the course of the nineteenth century, and the role that industrialization played in the distillery process, paving the way for more inexpensive and more alcoholic vodka. While Tzarist policies over time were meant to reduce Jewish activity in tavern-leasing, noble economic interests aligned with Jewish economic interests (and peasant social interests, too!) to keep taverns expanding during the early nineteenth century.
The chapters in this book each have their own focus, and later chapters about taverns during times of war were not particularly interesting to me. The chapter based on petitions of Rabbi Elijah Guttmacher worked off of interesting source material, but didn't draw noteworthy conclusions. All in all, I would have enjoyed for the book to focus more on the economic and social impacts of the increase of alcoholism over the course of the 1840s (tantalizingly mentioned in brief, but this seems super significant and under-studied!), more on the religious commitments of Jewish tavern-keepers (did their children tend to be more socially integrated with gentiles than the children of other professions? I wanted a clearer picture because that seems to be a potential major point), and more on the tavern as a gendered space for men (were women frequently present in Jewish taverns?
Were they only women of loose reputations? What about the tavern-keepers' families-was it awkward for them to inhabit very male spaces?), and what this potentially means.
My favorite sections were the early chapters, dissecting Jewish attitudes toward Polish drunkenness, Litvak attitudes toward Hasidic drunkenness, and conflicting attitudes of gentiles toward Jewish involvement in taverns--that they were abstemious+trustworthy, or abstemious+conniving, or that they were prone to drunkenness also. Dynner is careful not to draw overly large conclusions on the basis of these reputations.
I enjoyed the way in which this study attempts to use tavern-leasing as one point of entry to better understand Jewish and Polish economic and social relationships in rural areas. The way in which taverns could be site of rural inter-cultural connection (or not) is explored well. Most fascinating was the dynamic development of the liquor trade over the course of the nineteenth century, and the role that industrialization played in the distillery process, paving the way for more inexpensive and more alcoholic vodka. While Tzarist policies over time were meant to reduce Jewish activity in tavern-leasing, noble economic interests aligned with Jewish economic interests (and peasant social interests, too!) to keep taverns expanding during the early nineteenth century.
The chapters in this book each have their own focus, and later chapters about taverns during times of war were not particularly interesting to me. The chapter based on petitions of Rabbi Elijah Guttmacher worked off of interesting source material, but didn't draw noteworthy conclusions. All in all, I would have enjoyed for the book to focus more on the economic and social impacts of the increase of alcoholism over the course of the 1840s (tantalizingly mentioned in brief, but this seems super significant and under-studied!), more on the religious commitments of Jewish tavern-keepers (did their children tend to be more socially integrated with gentiles than the children of other professions? I wanted a clearer picture because that seems to be a potential major point), and more on the tavern as a gendered space for men (were women frequently present in Jewish taverns?
Were they only women of loose reputations? What about the tavern-keepers' families-was it awkward for them to inhabit very male spaces?), and what this potentially means.
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