Search -
Yankel's Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland
Yankel's Tavern Jews Liquor and Life in the Kingdom of Poland Author:Glenn Dynner The journey along any one of 19th-century Poland's mud-choked roads was relieved by a stop at a tavern, where one could feed oneself and one's horses, purchase necessities, exchange news, and get some sleep. The noblemen who owned the taverns preferred to lease them to Jews so the weary traveler was almost invariably received by an exotic Jewish... more » proprietor. In Yankel's Tavern, Glenn Dynner investigates the role of Jews in tavern-keeping in the Kingdom of Poland (the so-called Congress Kingdom established at the Congress of Vienna) between 1815 and the uprising of 1863-4 and its aftermath. Dynner provides an overview of Jewish tavern-keeping from a number of different perspectives: those of tourists, noblemen, peasants, social reformers, and of Jewish tavern-keepers themselves. He examines governmental and rabbinic attempts to restrict or eliminate Jewish tavern-keeping and shows how these led to a flourishing underground liquor trade based on a surprising degree of local Jewish-Christian collusion. The Polish noblemen who leased taverns to Jews were convinced of their sobriety. Examining rabbinic and Hasidic sources, Dynner seeks to discover how far this belief was borne out in practice. He also looks at the role of Jews and particularly Jewish inn-keepers in the Polish uprisings of 1830 and 1863. Two final chapters are devoted to the internal world of the Jewish tavern-keeper in the aftermath of peasant emancipation and to attempts by the government to shift to the Jews to more ''productive'' occupations. This work fills an important gap in our understanding of the social and economic development of this area between the Congress of Vienna and the ill-fated Polish uprising of 1863-4.« less