A Rich brew
Subtitle: how cafés created modern Jewish culture
By: Shachar M. Pinsker
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 371
ISBN-13: 9781479827893
Subjects: Social aspects; Social life and customs; Intellectual life; Jews; Coffeehouses
Description: "Unlike the synagogue, the house of study, the community center, or the Jewish deli, the café 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 cafés were owned by Jews, why Jews became their most devoted habitués, and how cafés acquired associations with Jewishness. Examining the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity, Shachar M. Pinsker argues that cafés anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafés 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 cafés. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the café, 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"--front flap.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: A note on transliteration and translation; title: Introduction: The Silk Road of modern Jewish creativity; title: Odessa: Jewish sages, Luftmenshen, gangsters, and the Odessit in the café; title: Warsaw: between Kotik's Café and the Ziemiańska; title: Vienna: the "Matzo Island" and the functioning myths of the Viennese café; title: Berlin: from the Gelehrtes Kaffeehaus to the Romanisches Café; title: New York City: kibitzing in the cafés of the New World; title: Tel Aviv-Jaffa: the "First Hebrew City" or a city of many cafés?; title: Conclusion: Closing time.