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In the beginning was the word — and the word was whisky
The Whiskey Bible: A Complete Guide to the World’s Greatest Spirit
By Noah Rothbaum
Workman, 640pp, $40
Ask an American to picture the origin of whisky and they will probably conjure up a bearded man in overalls emerging from the Appalachian woods, clutching a jug of moonshine with three Xs on the side.
Noah Rothbaum, the author of The Whiskey Bible, has a name for that cliché: the “Uncle Jesse theory” of whisky history, after the chaotic moonshiner on The Dukes of Hazzard. It’s also, he argues, almost completely wrong.
“For one thing, moonshine only exists because of tax law,” he told me when we spoke about the book. “You don’t get bootleg without a government to evade.”
Real American whisky — the kind that fills warehouses and balance sheets and, until 1933, doctors’ prescription pads — was an immigrant industry, built in cities and river towns and railroad hubs. It grew when America stopped being a rum-drinking colony and became a rye-drinking republic.
Before 1776, the young colonies distilled molasses from Caribbean sugar into rum. After independence, that molasses was politically tainted — too bound up with the British Empire and its trade routes. American farmers had land and grain, not sugar cane. So they turned to whisky.
Then a tiny insect changed everything. When phylloxera destroyed vineyards across Europe in the 19th century, wine and brandy became scarce. Doctors who’d been happily prescribing cognac as a cure-all suddenly needed alternatives. Medical journals in Britain began recommending whisky as a respectable substitute. Demand soared. As Rothbaum writes in his Bible, phylloxera “transformed whiskey from a farm product to an international best seller.”
“Right at the moment when whisky is taking off, you also have this massive wave of Jewish immigration to America,” Rothbaum told me. “And they bring with them exactly the skill set the new industry needs.”
A Jewish story
What’s a nice Jewish boy doing writing a Bible? Or writing about booze at all? There’s nothing actually sacrilegious about the title of The Whiskey Bible in a series whose expert guides include The Wine Bible and The Beer Bible. More transgressive, perhaps, is how close it hews to a kind of competition — Jim Murray’s best-selling, canonical, annual tasting guide, the Whisky Bible. But having a Jewish critic in the top tier of American whisky coverage is actually deeply appropriate.
Indeed when I asked Rothbaum, the spirits editor at Men’s Journal, about it, he was enthusiastic about a personal historical connection to the industry: “Looking back, part of my family ran a restaurant in Warsaw and others in the Ukraine ran a boardinghouse so my conjecture is, maybe it had a distillery or at least, you know, in my looking back romanticizing the past, perhaps they were making some kind of booze there, too.”
But even if his conjecture has no basis in family reality, his story is no outlier. Rothbaum’s Whiskey Bible is a readable introduction and encyclopedic guide to the “world’s greatest spirit” that has its own tag at the Forward. The “Bible” is also a highly engaging guide to a surprisingly broad swath of history and science from George Washington (“America’s first celebrity distiller”) to bovine digestion – bourbon has to be made in a certain way to ensure that its leftovers can be used in feed lots for cows. As Rothbaum recently told a crowd at the 92Y, “everything through the lens of whisky is more fascinating.”
It’s a coffee table book, definitely released to be part of the holiday gift market. But, unlike much of that tranche, it’s a reference book that you — or your giftee — will actually enjoy referring to for years to come. It doesn’t taste test each distillery’s expressions (for that you need Murray) but it has all the background you could need. Want to know about Japanese whisky, there’s a section on that. Want to know whether whisky should be spelled with an “e” or not, there’s a very sensible section on that (spoiler: it doesn’t matter, but you should stick to one). Want to know about how Metallica’s Blackened whisky uses sonic waves in its maturation process — there’s a section on that too.
Part of the broader story — which Rothbaum stressed during his visit to the 92Y — is that Jews have been central in the American whisky story. Looking at POLIN: Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Poland you can see how Jews were disproportionately represented in the hospitality trade. That’s because in the Pale of Settlement, Jews were often barred from owning land, so they gravitated to the things they were allowed to touch: money, grain and booze.
“You see it over and over,” Rothbaum told the 92Y audience. ”Because of antisemitism in Europe, Jews were pushed into roles like collecting taxes, running inns, and overseeing alcohol production for the local noble. When they get to America, suddenly that work is not only useful — it’s welcome.”
In America, Jews were often merchants who later set up a distillery to supply their distribution network. Alternatively, existing distillers needed a liquor expert to scale up their business and Jews were cheap and ready to bring over European know-how. That first pattern repeats: A young man arrives, peddles wares from a pack, graduates to a general store, then to wholesaling and, eventually, to owning or running a distillery. Whichever way they were pushed, the Jews comprised such a major part of American whisky production that by the early 20th century, many of the biggest liquor companies in the country were owned or run by Jews.
Rothbaum rattles off the names the way other people recite old team lineups or film casts:
- The Bernheim brothers, who built one of the largest distilleries in America in the 1800s and launched the I.W. Harper brand — which is still on shelves today.
- The Shapira family in Kentucky, peddlers turned five-and-dime proprietors turned co-founders of Heaven Hill after Prohibition, makers of Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, and Rittenhouse Rye among others.
- The Rosens and Rosenstiels, running Schenley (long absorbed by Diageo the corporate drinks giant) by a few different names.
- The Bronfmans who ran the Seagram’s empire until they didn’t.
- The Goldring family, still at the helm of Sazerac, owners of Buffalo Trace.
“In all these little towns in Kentucky and the Midwest, Jews are a tiny percentage of the population,” Rothbaum says. “But a huge percentage of the booze business.”
Jews become so identified with alcohol that some of the most antisemitic, anti-immigrant figures of the early 20th century seized on Prohibition as a way to drive them out. Henry Ford and his allies, Rothbaum notes, didn’t just hate liquor; they hated the people who made it.
“That’s how famous Jews were for making alcohol,” he told me. “The people who didn’t like Jews tried to shut down alcohol to drive them away.”
And yet, when people lift their glasses today, almost no one thinks of whisky as a Jewish story.
The rule, not the exception
If Jews were so central to the industry, how did they vanish from its mythology? Part of the answer lies right on the label (another topic that Rothbaum wrote about in The Art of American Whiskey: A Visual History of the Nation’s Most Storied Spirit, Through 100 Iconic Labels).
“Somebody like Bernheim, in the late 1800s, can’t put ‘Bernheim’ on a bottle and expect it to sell,” Rothbaum explains. “So you get I.W. Harper instead — something that sounds safely Anglo.” Almost no one knew then or even knows now that I.W. comes from the initials of the founder Isaac Wolfe Bernheim.
For reasons of marketing and survival, Jewish distillers and owners hid behind WASPy brand identities. Despite its name, Old Fitzgerald is not the legacy of a charming Irishman but of Jewish distiller Solomon S.C. Herbst. The name “Old Fitzgerald,” Rothbaum argues, is practically a caricature of Irish respectability — a Gentile mask on a Jewish business.
After Prohibition, when all booze acquired a gangster sheen, there were even more incentives for upwardly mobile Jews to downplay the connection. Any Jewish involvement in illicit liquor trading was attributed to the useful religious exemption for kiddush wine.
So the Jewish role was sanded off both ends: Jews soft-pedaled their attachment to liquor; the whisky world packaged itself with mythologies of Scottish workmen, Irish storytellers, and, in America, the Uncle Jesse myth — that shirtless guy in the Appalachian holler. “When I first started writing about whisky, I knew about a couple of big Jewish names — the Shapiros, Louis Rosenstiel,” Rothbaum says. ”What I didn’t realize was that they weren’t the exceptions. They were the rule.”
I myself had bumped into the deep connection between Jews and whisky in North America when I noticed in 2010 that Glenmorangie was getting an Orthodox Union hecksher to prove it was kosher and set out to investigate. I went all the way to the Highlands the following spring to write about kosher scotch. Rothbaum told me that the key to that whole story was Glenmorangies ambassador David Blackmore and a whisky tasting a scant few miles from the Forward offices:
He’s Scottish, his wife is Jewish and from New Jersey. And Blackmore was doing a whisky tasting in Borough Park. It was a Friday afternoon, and all these Orthodox Jews were buying a ton of whisky. He was like, “does this go on every Friday?”
When the answer was a resounding “Yes!” Blackmore asked himself what would help his brand stand out and the result was kosher certification on flagship single malts that — because they are made of barley, water and yeast only — do not even need one.
There are now scores of whiskies across the continents that have heckshers on them, whether from OU, Star-K, or local boards. One rabbi in Kentucky even branched out from his day job heckshering bourbon to bottle his own.
Part of Rothbaum’s mission in The Whiskey Bible is to separate real history from romantic marketing slop. Even the famous spelling debate — “whisky” versus “whiskey” — turns out to be newer and messier than most enthusiasts think.
“If you look back at government documents from the early 1900s, you see all kinds of spellings,” he told me. “Brands in Scotland and America both use ‘whisky’ and ‘whiskey’ more or less interchangeably. A lot of what we treat as sacred rules were invented in the last 25 years.”
Even our contemporary practice of reverently sipping neat brown liquor is historically unusual. Scotch conquered America as a highball: Scotch and soda.
“It’s funny,” Rothbaum says. “The entire Scotch industry in the U.S. is built on whisky and seltzer. And 120 years later, people will tell you it’s somehow sacrilegious to add soda.”
Although the marketers and the hipster artisans want to sell you the ritual or the expensive specialty products, the most important ingredient to set your whisky glass straight is information. Beyond that it is just a case of trying different expressions — and there are some great $30 bottles — working out what you like, and how you like to drink it.
From language, to history, to science, to the way we approach the many varieties of the drink itself, Rothbaum’s Bible is no-nonsense, helpful, and engaging — the perfect accompaniment to a nice glass of Scotch.
The post In the beginning was the word — and the word was whisky appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Blue Wave’: Israel Expands Diplomatic, Security Ties Across Latin America Amid Shifting Regional Politics
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
A new wave of diplomacy in Latin America has seen several governments adopt a friendlier, more supportive stance toward Israel, deepening bilateral ties that Jerusalem is now leveraging on the global stage while signaling a potential shift in regional political alignments.
In a new interview with Israel’s Channel 12, Amir Ofek, deputy director for Latin America at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained that the country is undergoing a major shift in its diplomatic engagement across the region, marked by a series of significant developments.
“There have been shifts in countries that were once our allies, and we have faced periods under very critical and challenging governments,” Ofek said. “We respond quickly to these changes, stay in close contact, and we are now beginning to make real progress.”
In a significant regional breakthrough, Israel and Bolivia formally restored diplomatic relations late last year, ending a two-year rupture sparked by the war in Gaza and reopening channels of official dialogue between the two countries.
In December, Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo also announced that the country will lift visa requirements for Israeli travelers, a move that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised as helping to “strengthen the human bridge between our peoples.”
Chile and Honduras are also leading the way among other Latin American nations making a striking turn toward Israel
Last year, Chile elected far-right President José Antonio Kast, who promised to reshape the country’s foreign policy toward the Jewish state, overturning the stance of a previously hostile administration.
This year, Honduras also chose a far-right candidate, President Nasry Asfura, who expressed hopes for a “new era” in bilateral relations and stronger ties with Jerusalem.
“The shift in Honduras is part of a broader regional trend: a ‘blue wave’ across Latin American countries that embrace freedom and democracy and align closely with US policy in the region,” Nadav Goren, Israel’s ambassador to Honduras, told Channel 12. “We are in a very optimistic period for Latin America.”
With the official launch of the Isaac Accords by Argentina’s President Javier Milei last year, Israel has been working to expand its diplomatic and security ties across the region, in an effort designed to promote government cooperation and fight antisemitism and terrorism.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords, a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, this new initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
“Israel offers globally recognized expertise that meets the needs of many countries, covering areas such as agricultural technology, water management, food security, cybersecurity, and innovation. Partners understand that Israel can help propel them forward, even in the context of internal security,” Ofek said.
The first phase of the Isaac Accords will focus on Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica, where potential projects in technology, security, and economic development are already taking shape as this framework seeks to deepen cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
The Isaac Accords will also aim to encourage partner countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem, formally recognize Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding anti-Israel voting patterns at the United Nations.
Less than a year after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina became the first Latin American country to designate the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization, with Paraguay following suit last year.
Building on a deepening partnership, Saar and Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña also signed a landmark security cooperation memorandum, as the two countries continue to expand their relationship following Paraguay’s move to relocate its embassy to Israel’s capital of Jerusalem in 2024.
“Over the past two very difficult years, our friendship has shown its strength through international forums, mutual cooperation, official visits, and measures against Iran. We have expressed our friendship in meaningful, if sometimes implicit, ways,” Ofek told Channel 12, referring to the country’s growing ties with Paraguay.
In recent years, Latin America has gained strategic importance for Israel as a frontline in countering Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, whose growing influence and criminal networks in the region — especially in Venezuela and Cuba — have prompted Jerusalem to expand its diplomatic, security, and intelligence presence.
“For us, this is a circle of allies that recognizes the same threat we face from Iran’s growing influence in the region, and it is only natural to cooperate to halt its expansion,” Ofek said. “We have seen firsthand how damaging this is, particularly in the context of attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets.”
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Australian Nurses Plead Not Guilty Over Viral Video Threatening to Kill Israeli Patients
Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 27, and Ahmad Rashad Nadir, 28, face criminal charges in Australia for statements made in an online video in February 2025 in which they allegedly threatened Israelis, prompting nationwide bans from treating patients. Photo: Screenshot
Two nurses in Australia who were charged over a viral video in which they allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients pleaded not guilty during their arraignment on Monday.
Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 27, and Ahmad Rashad Nadir, 28, previously worked at the Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney until appearing on a video with Israeli social media personality Max Veifer in February 2025.
The footage, which circulated widely, featured Abu Lebdeh stating she would refuse to treat an Israeli patient and would instead kill them, while Nadir used a throat-slitting gesture when he confessed to having already killed many.
“It’s Palestine’s country, not your country, you piece of s—t,” Lebdeh told Veifer.
“One day your time will come, and you will die the most disgusting death,” she added.
Veifer began asking the two during a night shift discussion how they would respond if an Israeli seeking treatment landed in their hospital. Abu Lebdeh, preempting the question, interrupted: “I won’t treat them. I’ll kill them.”
Nadir interjected: “You have no idea how many s—t dog Israelis came to this hospital,” and using a throat-slitting gesture, continued, “I sent them to Jahannam,” the Islamic word for hell.
The video went viral and sparked global outrage, prompting a two-year nationwide suspension to prevent them from continuing to treat patients.
Abu Lebdeh was charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass.
Nadir was also charged with federal offenses, including using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offense, as well as possession of a prohibited drug.
Speaking before Judge Stephen Hanley at Downing Center District Court in Sydney, Abu Lebdeh appeared “with tears streaming down her face,” according to Australia’s Sky News.
The Australian reported last year that Lebdeh has expressed remorse and is now experiencing extreme anxiety. An uncle told a journalist that she “will come out and make a statement when she’s ready, but you can’t talk to her now because she’s having a panic attack, an anxiety attack. We might be calling the ambulance for her.”
Lawyer Zemarai Khatiz represents Nadir and confirmed to Sky News that the defense strategy would seek to make the video inadmissible in court.
“It will be, yes,” Khatiz stated before declining to elaborate. “You will have to just wait until the first of June when the applications are heard.”
The video drew international attention, with Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Sharren Haskel, demanding action.
“There needs to be an investigation immediately into these two Australian medical professionals who are saying they will kill Israeli patients – and suggesting that they already have,” Haskel posted on social media after the video was released. “They are expressing criminal intent towards Jewish people; this must be stopped.”
Haskel went on to declare antisemitism “a disease that is spreading in Australia,” arguing the nurses should be fired and their behavior must “be treated with the highest consequences under the law.’”
“They have broken the Hippocratic Oath,” the diplomat continued. “They have talked about killing Jews, they show the true racism and hate that the Australian Jewish community is currently enduring.”
A US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago told The Algemeiner last year that she no longer feels safe in hospitals given the atmosphere of heightened antisemitism.
“In the past year alone, my little boy has witnessed many hostile protests where ‘anti-Zionists’ have actually come into the Jewish community without permits to intimidate us. Time and time again, instead of [authorities] dispersing and arresting anyone in the crowd for screaming racial slurs and threats, Jews are asked to evacuate and told if they don’t run away, they are inciting violence,” the woman said.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” she continued, referring to the case in Australia. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
Following the video’s exposure and international condemnation, a group of 50 Muslim leaders and organizations came together in defense of Abu Lebdeh and Nadir. “This statement is not about defending inappropriate remarks,” the coalition wrote in a letter. “It is about pushing back against the double standards and moral manipulation at play while the mass killing of our brothers and sisters in Gaza is met with silence, dismissal, or complicity.”
The district court scheduled the suspended nurses’ trial for Aug. 31 with an anticipated five days of arguments and deliberations. A pre-trial hearing will take place on June 1.
The charges against Abu Lebdeh and Nadir reflect a global trend that has emerged since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel wherein medical practitioners come under scrutiny or even legal prosecutions following the exposure of antisemitic statements and behavior.
One notable case drawing attention involved Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, who British police arrested on Oct. 21, charging her with four offenses related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred. In November, she was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK over social media posts denigrating Jews and celebrating Hamas’s terrorism. She also described London’s Royal Free Hospital as “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and declared her belief that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”
That same month, UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the National Health Service (NHS)., amid reports of widespread antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new plan in October to address what he described as “just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively” in the NHS.
Another notable incident occurred in September, when a Belgian doctor reportedly listed “Jewish (Israeli)” as a medical problem in a child’s report.
Jewish writer Jonath Weinberger, a dual Belgian-Israeli citizen living in Amsterdam, recounted an episode in November about a nurse denying her medical care after refusing to remove a pro-Palestinian button
In Argentina, a Buenos Aires doctor received a suspension following a social media post in which he wrote about Jews that “instead of performing circumcision, their carotid artery and main artery should be cut from side to side.”
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‘Don’t be a wimp’: Josh Shapiro, Philly DA Larry Krasner spar over ICE-Nazi comparisons
(JTA) — The Jewish governor of Pennsylvania this week rebuked one of his state’s most visible elected officials for comparing ICE officers to Nazis, leading to a protracted war of words between the two men.
The spat between Josh Shapiro and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, Democrats with a long-running rivalry, comes amid a rise in such incendiary comparisons used to describe weeks of chaotic Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently invoked Anne Frank when discussing ICE, and was criticized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, among others. Celebrities like Bruce Springsteen and Stephen King have also compared ICE to the Gestapo. Some Jews, including those with connections to the Holocaust, have also made such comparisons as ICE’s behavior in the streets of Minneapolis and other cities has become more aggressive and deadly.
For Shapiro, such waters are proving especially difficult to navigate. Shapiro holds higher office aspirations and has become more vocal in his criticisms of ICE in recent days while also saying his office is more open to collaboration with agents.
The fight began last week when Krasner, a pugilistic progressive prosecutor, called ICE “a small bunch of wannabe Nazis” at a rally amid speculation that ICE could turn its attentions to his city. Then, musing about when Trump’s term ends, Krasner likened his own office to Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal.
“If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities, we will find you, we will achieve justice and we will do so under the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” he said.
Shapiro, in response, called Krasner’s comments “abhorrent” and “wrong, period.”
“We need to bring down the rhetoric, bring down the temperature, and create calm in the community,” the governor said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.
Other state officials, including Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who has vocally allied with the pro-Israel Jewish community, also condemned Krasner’s remarks. So did the White House, whose press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared video of Krasner’s comments and asked, “Will the media ask Dems to condemn?”
That didn’t deter Krasner, the son of an Evangelical minister mother and Russian Jewish crime novelist father who enlisted to fight Nazis in World War II. Instead of “bringing down the temperature,” the DA, who does not identify as Jewish, escalated.
“Gov. Shapiro is not meeting the moment,” Krasner told the Philadelphia Inquirer Tuesday. “The moment requires that we call a subgroup of people within federal law enforcement — who are killing innocent people, physically assaulting innocent people, threatening and punishing the use of video — what they are.”
He added, “Just say it. Don’t be a wimp.”
The interview came days after Krasner doubled down on ICE-Nazi comparisons during a CNN appearance, when he also claimed that white supremacists had threatened him with the gas chamber.
“There are some people who are all in on a fascist takeover of this country who do not like the comparisons to what happened in Nazi Germany,” Krasner told Kaitlan Collins on Thursday. “The reality is, they’re taking almost everything they do out of the Nazi playbook. And I say that as the son of a volunteer who served in World War II, who explained his experiences to me.”
Speaking to the Inquirer, Crasher went on to quote Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who fled Nazi Germany for the United States, became a civil rights and Zionist activist, and delivered a famous speech entitled “The Problem of Silence” at the March on Washington in 1963.
“Bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem,” the DA quoted Prinz. “The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.”
Krasner continued, “A reminder, Mr. Governor: Silence equals death.” Referring to ICE, he said, “These are people who have taken their moves from a Nazi playbook and a fascist playbook.”
The two men have longstanding differences, and it’s not the first time Nazis have come between them. In 2019, when Shapiro — then the state’s attorney general — hired away some of Krasner’s staff, Krasner and his remaining staff referred to them as “war criminals” and joked that they had fled to “Paraguay” (a country that housed fleeing Nazis after World War II). The joke received pushback at the time from the Anti-Defamation League.
Jews have been caught up in the fight against ICE in a myriad of ways. On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that a British Jewish immigrant to suburban Philadelphia was subpoenaed by the Department of Homeland Security. Identified in reports only as Jon, the former Soviet Jewry activist had written a critical email to a federal prosecutor about his handling of an Afghan immigration case.
The post ‘Don’t be a wimp’: Josh Shapiro, Philly DA Larry Krasner spar over ICE-Nazi comparisons appeared first on The Forward.