A Rich Brew: How Cafs Created Modern Jewish Culture

Finalist 2018 National Jewish Book Award for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience presented by the Jewish Book Council A fascinating glimpse into the world of the coffeehouse and its role in shaping modern Jewish culture. Unlike the synagogue the house of study the community center or the Jewish deli the caf is rarely considered a Jewish space. Yet coffeehouses profoundly influenced the creation of modern Jewish culture from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. With roots stemming from the Ottoman Empire the coffeehouse and its drinks gained increasing popularity in Europe. The “otherness ” and the mix of the national and transnational characteristics of the coffeehouse perhaps explains why many of these cafs were owned by Jews why Jews became their most devoted habitus and how cafs acquired associations with Jewishness. Examining the convergence of cafs their urban milieu and Jewish creativity Shachar M. Pinsker argues that cafs anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafs that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization from Odessa Warsaw Vienna and Berlin to New York City and Tel Aviv. A Rich Brew explores the Jewish culture created in these social spaces drawing on a vivid collection of newspaper articles memoirs archival documents photographs caricatures and artwork as well as stories novels and poems in many languages set in cafs. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the caf nourished and sent out into the world by way of print politics literature art and theater. What was experienced and created in the space of the coffeehouse touched thousands who read saw and imbibed a modern culture that redefined what it meant to be a Jew in the world.