A Toast to Silence: Forging an Orthodox Jewish Politics in Prohibition-Era America

• In Event: Jews and American Politics

Abstract

Beginning in the nineteenth century, Protestant evangelicals sought to promote their vision of America as a unified Protestant polity, a “Christian civilization” governed by the standards of evangelical morality. To this end, they agitated vigorously for legislation promoting temperance and observance of the Christian Sabbath, two areas that, apart from their religious implications, offered the promise of social reforms holding mainstream appeal. As the forces of industrialization and urbanization marched inexorably forward into the twentieth century, their twin assault on small-town, middle-class American Protestant life became a cause for concern among evangelicals and mainstream Protestants, who preached a new “social gospel” aimed at combating the evils perpetrated by a distinct group of wrongdoers: saloon keepers and their patrons, Sunday-Sabbath violators, and capitalist exploiters of American labor. With passage of the Volstead Act in 1920, the Protestant push for national Prohibition became a popular reality. Taking advantage of a limited exemption for ritual wine prescribed under the Act, a significant number of rabbis—many identified as Orthodox—flouted the law by procuring additional allotments of wine for sale to unauthorized persons, reaping large profits in return. Though the actual number of American Jews charged with violating Prohibition was small, the involvement of identifiable Jews in commercial crimes provided fodder to nativist anti-Semites, who, along with the national press, succeeded in making Prohibition enforcement a particularly “Jewish problem.” While the Reform and Conservative movements issued responsa permitting “unfermented wine” for ritual use, negating the need for exemption, the Orthodox remained silent, choosing neither affirmation nor denial despite halakhic justifications for both. Contrary to the regnant scholarship, which attributes this silence to pecuniary motives, this paper locates the Orthodox “response” within a distinctly political frame. Calibrating their silence with the strident voices of Sabbatarians and organized labor, the Orthodox crafted a uniquely American solution to a set of internal religious concerns. Reading the historical record within the context of legislation, public policy, and principles of constitutional law, my paper demonstrates the impact of American law and politics on shaping Jewish values.

Author

• Tania Tulcin, Bernard Revel Graduate School/Yeshiva University