Prohibition—the catastrophically misguided national experiment with legally enforced temperance that began with the ratification of the 18th Amendment (commonly known as the Volstead Act) in October 1919 and ended with its repeal in December 1933—has been brought back to life brilliantly over the past two years by Boardwalk Empire. While its main protagonist is the corrupt Prohibition-era gentile treasurer of Atlantic City, Nucky Thompson (based on the historical crime boss, Enoch L. Johnson), numerous colorful Jewish characters, both historical and fictional, have played prominent roles in the series. Given the notoriety of Jewish bootleggers and gangsters during the Roaring Twenties, this should come as little surprise.

The baptismal murder of Agent Sebso, together with other scenes featuring Jews, illuminates important undercurrents to Prohibition that historians have not adequately explored. Among them are the disproportionate presence of Jews in the alcohol trade, bootlegging, and organized crime, as well as the major roles played by puritanical Protestantism, anti-immigration nativism, and blatant anti-Semitism in advancing and reinforcing America’s temperance laws. There were countless Prohibitionists who, like the fictional Van Alden, believed that for Prohibition to prevail, not only did the demon of alcohol need to be vanquished, but its Jewish manufacturers and purveyors needed to be purged as well.

The appearance, so soon after the conclusion of the second season of Boardwalk Empire, of Marni Davis’ new history, Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition, is just short of providential. This fascinating, academically sophisticated, and superbly written exposition of the intricate, often precarious, role that Jews played in every aspect of the American alcohol industry—from production in industrial stills to retail sale in bars and speakeasies across the land, and finally to bootlegging, a crime that created the fortunes of some of North America’s most prominent Jewish philanthropic families—turns out to be a wonderful historical companion to HBO’s most explosive series since The Sopranos and to the recent PBS airing of Ken Burns’ documentary Prohibition. More important, Jews and Booze is a major contribution to the economic history of the Jews in the United States. The book also offers an original and rich exposition of the social and political importance of alcohol—particularly the puritanical fear and loathing of it—in the development of anti-immigration and anti-Semitic sentiments in late 19th- and early 20th-century America.

While Sebso, the fictional Jewish FBI agent, is depicted in the series as half-hearted, inept, and ultimately corruptible, Davis’ study brings back to life the amazing career of the colorful, and incredibly successful, Jewish enforcer of the dry laws, agent Izzy Einstein, whose astonishing record—4,932 arrests in five years, with a 95 percent conviction rate—made him by far the most prolific agent of the Prohibition era. Described by Time magazine as a “fat little Austrian Jew,” Einstein, together with his partner Moe Smith, employed a large and comical array of contrivances—from blackface to drag—to enforce the law, all wonderfully culled by Davis from Einstein’s sensational autobiography, Prohibition Agent No. 1.

The narrative arc of Jews and Booze is astutely limited, beginning with the rapid rise of Jews in the American whiskey trade in the late 19th century to the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933. The establishment of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1874 serves Davis well as an opening point of reference in her exploration of the inherent tensions between the puritanically motivated advocates of a “dry” America and American Jews’ cultural values, political convictions, and economic interests. Davis competently, if at times too superficially, records the religious role played by wine in the practice of many of Judaism’s rituals, as well as the historical involvement of European Jews in wine production and the liquor trade going back almost a millennium, from medieval Franco-Germany to the late 19th-century Russian Empire. This deep historical Jewish involvement with alcohol combined with liberal modern Jewish political sensibilities, especially American Jews’ dual commitments to both religion-state separation and free-market enterprise, did not sit easily with the Prohibitionists’ deeply conservative agenda of Christianizing America. Davis makes it obvious why Jews—as a vulnerable immigrant group and religious minority, as adherents of a religion whose rituals require the use of wine, and as a community with a highly disproportionate representation in the alcohol trade—aligned themselves with the “wets” in their decades-long battle to keep alcohol legal and available.

The book’s first half focuses on the surprisingly prominent role played by Jewish immigrants to America in the production, wholesale distribution, and retail dispensation of alcohol, all across the land, from the industrial stills of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois to the barrooms of crowded, lower-class neighborhoods of America’s major cities, from Atlanta and Charleston to Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Newark’s Third Ward. Davis’ depiction of the numerous alcohol industrialists from among American Reform Judaism’s leading philanthropists during its initial period of development in the United States is particularly rich. That the fortunes made by Jewish whiskey distillers—particularly in Cincinnati, home to this day of the world Reform movement’s flagship rabbinical seminary, the Hebrew Union College of America—endowed some of the country’s most important institutions of Jewish higher learning, including the greatest Judaica research library in the Diaspora, is illustrative of how respectable the alcohol industry was before the agitations for temperance by evangelical Christian polemicists began to take root in the final decade of the 19th century.

Davis culls from the sermons of America’s most distinguished Reform rabbis, such as Marcus Jastrow and Isaac Mayer Wise, in fashioning a compelling portrait of the regnant Jewish position in the increasingly heated political debates about alcohol regulation. The title of her chapter on Jewish attitudes to alcohol during the pre-Prohibition period, “Do As We Israelites Do” (a quotation from an essay by Rabbi Jastrow), succinctly captures that position, namely that alcohol ought to remain legal and widely available, while those who partake of it should practice moderation, as the Jews have done from time immemorial.

Continue reading: ‘Tank him up’

• The new Text/Context, which is published in a partnership between The Jewish Week and Nexbook Inc., has dropped. [Text/Context]

In a late article today, Mideast columnist Lee Smith profiles José María Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister who is now a major international actor in defending Israel. [Tablet Magazine]

• Noting that President Ahmadinejad is visiting Lebanon next month, influential columnist Aluf Benn has an idea: Kidnap him. [Haaretz]

• Arthur Penn, director of one of the most important films in American history, Bonnie and Clyde (to understand why, read this), died at 88. [NYT]

• They’re young. They’re in love. They’re Polish neo-Nazi skinheads who turned out to be Jewish and are now practicing Orthodox Jews. [JPost]

• Borat is please to explain how great and impressive Israeli coalition government function for benefit of mankind. [Haaretz]

• David Miliband, one-time foreign secretary and older brother of new Labour leader Ed, is backing away from high-profile politics in deference to his victorious sibling. [AP/NYT]

• Jewish Fiction.net. Bookmark it.

• Don Draper’s love interest on this season of Mad Men is (like in season one) a Jew. [LAT]

• Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon see their best hope for returning to the land not in a peace deal but in continued violence that eventually leads to Israel caving. [Christian Science Monitor]

• In 2000, as peace talks faltered, Yasser Arafat ordered Hamas to conduct terrorist attacks. [JPost]

• Jewish groups and U.S. museums are coming into conflict over art restitution claims, reports frequent Tablet Magazine contributor Robin Cembalest. [ARTnews]

• What is up with Jews not really drinking much alcohol? [Forward]

• There are more American Jews living in poverty than ever before. [Jewish Week]

• Why the rest of America is going kosher. [TNR’s The Book]

• A profile/interview of controversial Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. [The Independent]

Was Max an observant Jew like his writer cousin? “We do not have good information on ‘how Jewish’ Max was,” Lipner told me. “But his welcoming hundreds of thousands of people onto the farm strikes me as a rather extraordinary example of the Jewish value of hachnassat orchim—welcoming guests.” Max Said Yes! isn’t an explicitly Jewish book, and it doesn’t draw an overt parallel between Max’s behavior and that of our tent-opening forefather Abraham, but the authors believe the analogy’s there. Still, is it weird to have a book about Woodstock that doesn’t mention sex or drugs at all? Lipner and Yasgur told me they’d joked around with some couplets that were left on the cutting-room floor:

In land filled with alfalfa seed
They relished LSD and weed.
They lay down in the fields and went to bed
With people to whom they were not wed

Mm, not so much. Ultimately, the authors decided that parents could use the book as a jumping-off point to talk about sex and drugs with their kids—or not. So for those of us—Woodstock Generation, Gen X, and Millennials—who did inhale, the question remains: how do we talk about drugs with our kids?

Kiki Schaffer, a social worker and director of parenting, family and early childhood at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan, laughs: “This subject is to parents of teens what sleep is to parents of newborns.” In other words: it’s the biggie, the giant bong in the room. Schaffer’s strategy is to plant the seed (as it were) early. “I tell younger kids, ‘Think about what we put in our body,’” she says. “Would you put worms in there?’” Schaffer believes that early education about drugs and alcohol is about encouraging kids to think about choices and self-regulation, so that when they grow older, they’ll continue to question what they ingest. As they reach preteen and teen years, she says, “Parents can start saying, ‘There are a lot of things we once didn’t think were harmful but studies have since shown they were: cigarettes, medications women were given in pregnancy.” Like many experts, Schaffer is not a fan of “Just Say No” education. “I hate it,” she says. “It doesn’t engage the hearts and minds of children or empower them to make good decisions—real life is about learning to be a decision-maker.” Indeed, those of us who grew up with Reefer Madness-style education learned only to laugh at parental paranoia.

Julie Holland, an assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine and author of the forthcoming Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER (Bantam, October 2009), agrees that the “Just Say No” approach is misguided. For one thing, she says, recent studies indicate that marijuana isn’t a gateway drug—hysterically insisting to your kids that one toke is a fast track to Cobainville makes you look like an untrustworthy doofus. In 2008, 43 percent of 12th graders reported trying marijuana once or more—clearly they haven’t all become raving, heroin-shooting, paint-huffing street addicts. A better strategy, Holland says, is to stress the potential consequences of doing something illegal. “Many schools have random drug tests,” she says, “and if you test positive, you can’t do sports. If you’re a senior, you could lose your student loans.” Explaining how drugs affect developing brains is also vital, she continues. “Because the adolescent brain is still in a formulation stage—pathways are getting laid down, connections are being made—in a perfect world kids wouldn’t use any substances, including alcohol. But in the real world, statistics show that’s unlikely.”

Holland stresses that parents should be as concerned about legal drugs (cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription drugs) as about street drugs. Unlike the kids at Woodstock, kids today rarely experiment with acid. Today, the big drug of choice is “pharmies.”

“Excuse me?” I say, like the old fart I am.

“‘Pharmies’ are what kids today call prescription drugs,” Holland explains. “So keep track of what’s in your medicine cabinet—especially all you neurotic Jews taking benzodiazepines [Xanax, Valium] so you can sleep.” Other modern-kid faves include narcotic pain killers (Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycontin), ADHD drugs (some kids resell them as weight-loss aids), steroids, and the cough suppressant dextromethorphan (which the kids call “Robo”). Not to harsh your mellow or anything.

So, my fellow post-Woodstockians, what should we do? There are terrific online models of nuanced, non-scare-tactic-y speeches to give to teenagers. With my own kids (now seven and four), my inclination is to wait until they start asking questions. But I also don’t want to end up in the same situation as my mom, when she tried to give me the sex-ed talk long after that particular train had left the station. So in a couple of years, I think I’ll sit Josie down and say, “You may start having kids offering you drugs to feel good—pills, things to drink, things to sniff, and things to smoke. My hope is that you’ll talk to me about it. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s safe. You don’t know who got what where. And if you ever get in a situation where you feel unsafe or out of control, know that you can call me or text me and I will help you or get you, no questions asked and no punishment given.”

And what if Josie or Maxie ask about Mommy’s drug history? Well, I’ll tell the truth. (And no, I’m not telling you.) And we’ll continue to share a regular sip of Shabbat wine. One recent study found that kids who drank with their parents were less prone to binge drinking. Thus in the spirit of Woodstock, I offer my own conclusion:

Your kids’ addiction you will head off
If you think of Max, and share a quaff.
Treat your kids like sensate beings.
And they’ll grow into responsible teens.

Or so I hope.

The summer before my junior year in college, I got a job bartending at a restaurant in Boston. As I was about to leave for my first day at work, my father pulled me aside and gave me a piece of advice. “Look, you’re gonna be behind that bar all day, and you’re gonna be tempted to take a little sip here and a sip there.” He paused, giving me a dead-eyed look meant to underscore just what a ludicrous path this would lead me down. Then he shook his head. “You leave that for the goyim.”

As if he had to tell me. Why would a good Jewish boy be remotely interested in alcoholism? My parents have a liquor cabinet, but I’m reasonably sure that they have the same bottle of vodka in it today that they did when they built the house in 1970; it’s a happy coincidence for them that some liquor gets better as it ages. A few years ago I was invited to a college friend’s house for Rosh Hashanah, and I was worried about what to bring. My gentile then-girlfriend (now wife) said to me, “How about a nice bottle of Scotch?” I looked at her with utter disbelief. “You don’t bring Scotch to Jews,” I said, as if she’d suggested I bring porn to a priest’s house.

Perhaps it’s a generalization, one of those things that you assume is self-evident the world over just because it applied to the people you grew up with—kind of like how I still believe only trashy people eat Peter Pan or Jif peanut butter. But it was ingrained in me that Jews just don’t get involved in the craziness that is addiction. My parents’ generation experienced anti-Semitic bias in a way that has never touched my life, and they were told (by their parents’ generation, even more scarred by anti-Semitism) that Jews always had to be operating at 100 percent in order to succeed. Clouding one’s brain with liquor or drugs was a luxury a Jew could not afford.

So it was a bit of a disconnect for me when I tuned into VH1’s Celebrity Rehab halfway-house spin-off, Sober House, last week to see ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler stumbling around in a heroin haze. Having relapsed, he struggled to put on his pants, then slipped into jerky seizures as he staggered about the house, failing in his attempts to get doorknobs to work. It was a disturbing scene, and yet in the middle of it I suddenly thought, “Adler? Wait…that sounds Jewish.” A simple web search confirmed it—and I was suddenly less saddened by his inevitable downslide (he had seemed so dedicated to sobriety after Celebrity Rehab!) than I was amazed that a Jew was doing heroin. What next, Jews playing jai alai? For a brief, shameful moment—one that quickly faded as I watched Adler nod off while checking his email—I was . . . dare I say, proud.

Such is the inevitable decline of ambitions at the end of the assimilation timeline. First we’re pleased that our brethren can be accepted as doctors and lawyers. Then it’s, “Hey, we’re making strides in show biz!” and “We’ve got a major league baseball player!” And then, as the honorable professions become commonplace and modern-day Jews take their status in America for granted, we slide into the high-school nerd fantasy. Screw the sensible success—we want people to think we’re cool. Downward-spiraling rock stars! Why should we leave that to the goyim?