Jews and Booze (with author Marni Davis) February 27, 2012

As part of the DCJCC's Authors Out Loud series, historian Marni Davis discusses her recent book, Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition.

At the turn of the century, American Jews and prohibitionists viewed one another with growing suspicion. Jews believed that all Americans had the right to sell and consume alcohol, while prohibitionists insisted that alcohol commerce and consumption posed a threat to the nation’s morality and security. The two groups possessed incompatible visions of what it meant to be a productive and patriotic American--and in 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution made alcohol commerce illegal, Jews discovered that anti-Semitic sentiments had mixed with anti-alcohol ideology, threatening their reputation and their standing in American society.

REGISTER HERE: http://www.washingtondcjcc.org/authorsoutloud