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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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Colombian President Gustavo Petro sparks outcry over tweet reading ‘Heil Hitler’
(JTA) — Colombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, sparked fierce condemnation from Israeli and Latin American leaders after he tweeted the phrase “Heil Hitler” Sunday in response to an op-ed endorsing a candidate in the country’s upcoming presidential election.
Petro, a left-wing president in the final weeks of his term ahead of the country’s June 21 runoff election, posted the Nazi phrase in response to an op-ed supporting right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella.
Petro subsequently defended his use of the Nazi slogan, arguing that he was critiquing the language used by the op-ed’s author, which he said included “fascist phrases.”
His defense came after criticism from Israeli leaders and others who said the “Heil Hitler” comment was inappropriate.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, called on the Colombian leader to “come to your senses and apologize” before Wednesday, when he is slated to preside over a debate at the United Nations Security Council.
“President of Colombia, @petrogustavo, whatever is going on in your personal life, there are lines that must never be crossed,” Danon wrote in a post on X. “Using Nazi slogans is a disgraceful low from which there is no coming back.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry also decried the post, writing on X that it was a “total loss of moral compass and an indelible stain on Colombia’s legacy.”
The episode comes amid shifting norms about the use of Holocaust analogies and language in political discourse. After being considered out of bounds for a long time, people on both the right and the left have increasingly shed those norms amid growing political polarization and extremism around the world.
The “Heil Hitler” post was not the first time Petro has landed in hot water for invoking the Holocaust. In the wake of Oct. 7, Petro drew backlash from Jewish and Israeli leaders for likening the actions of Israel to Nazi Germany. On social media, he has repeatedly called political rivals Nazis, including last month when he wrote in a post on X that Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had behaved like a “true Nazi” after he posted videos taunting detained activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
In 2024, Petro also severed diplomatic ties with Israel, accusing the country of commiting genocide in Gaza, an accusation Israel has denied. Espriella, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, has vowed to renew diplomatic ties with Israel.
On Monday, 24 Latin American lawmakers signed onto a statement condemning Petro’s rhetoric, warning that his repeated use of references to Naziism risked distorting Holocaust memory.
“The use of references to Nazism must not become a rhetorical tool to discredit political or ideological positions. Democratic leaders have a responsibility to promote a respectful public debate that is conscious of the weight of words,” the statement read.
The statement was initiated by the Coalition of Latin American Legislators Against Antisemitism, which is led by the Combat Antisemitism Movement. The signatories included lawmakers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.
Shay Salamon, CAM’s executive director of Latin American affairs, said in a statement that Petro’s invocation of the phrase reflected a “troubling record of antisemitic expressions and conduct” by the Colombian leader.
“When a leader uses the authority of his office to stigmatize the Jewish people or trivialize their historic suffering, silence is no longer an option,” Salamon said.
The post Colombian President Gustavo Petro sparks outcry over tweet reading ‘Heil Hitler’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel looms large as Maine heads to the polls in Graham Platner’s Senate primary
(JTA) — As Graham Platner wrapped up his campaign for the Maine Democratic Senate nomination Tuesday, he ended it the way he began: by taking aim at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby and political funder.
The Democrat’s first online ad, released in August, boasted that, unlike his competitors, he would never get AIPAC’s endorsement because he believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Last week, he suggested that AIPAC funding meant his Republican opponent was “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu,” drawing allegations of antisemitism from a range of Jewish groups.
Along the way, Platner has courted multiple rounds of controversy over Israel and Jews. And in the race’s final days, new reports about Platner’s past behavior toward women have fueled anti-Israel rhetoric among some of his supporters — and further splintered Democratic support for the oyster farmer and political neophyte whose spirited run for office has alarmed many Jewish leaders.
Now, Mainers are heading to the polls with Israel and antisemitism allegations looming large.
Platner, 41, ran as a populist promising to inject progressive energy into a Senate race where both the incumbent Republican and the establishment Democratic pick, Gov. Janet Mills, are in their 70s. (Mills suspended her primary campaign as Platner soared in polls, but she remains on Tuesday’s ballot.) In an election cycle when anti-Israel rhetoric is surging on the left, Platner — who has Jewish extended family, including a stepbrother who lives in Israel and works on Israel policy issues for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — embraced the stance by making genocide accusations a key part of his stump speech.
That has earned him support in some corners. In a viral video from a rally over the weekend, a Platner supporter dismissed concerns about his tattoo of the Totenkopf symbol, a skull-and-crossbones image worn by Nazi concentration camp guards, which Platner tattooed over earlier this year amid criticism even as he insisted that he hadn’t known it was a Nazi symbol.
Then the supporter asserted that if Platner had a different tattoo, it would have been a dealbreaker for her: an Israeli flag.
“I don’t support genocide, and he doesn’t either, and that would show that he’s being inconsistent,” the woman told the New York Sun.
The exchange exacted disbelief from some. “Are you kidding me? A tattoo of the Israeli flag is worse than a Nazi symbol?” tweeted Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who is Jewish. “This should not be welcome in the Democratic Party!”
Pro-Israel donors have responded accordingly, shoring up the war chest of Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
“Susan Collins’s latest financial report just came out. A staggering one-third of her money raised this quarter came directly from AIPAC,” Platner tweeted on June 1. “Senator Collins is bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly.”
Collins has described herself as broadly “pro-Israel” but also recently provided a crucial vote for a measure to end the joint U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. OpenSecrets, the nonpartisan campaign finance information website, confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that its analysis of public Federal Election Commission data showed that a third of donations to Collins in the previous quarter were gifts from individuals who used the pro-Israel lobby as an intermediary. Collins also received a small donation directly from the group’s super PAC.
Still, Platner’s tweet ignited sharp criticism for suggesting that AIPAC represented Israeli influence, rather than donations by American supporters of Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League said the remark “invokes classic antisemitic rhetoric” and added, “Such accusations call up the age-old dual loyalty trope that casts Jewish Americans as more loyal to Israel than their own country.”
The Nexus Project, an antisemitism watchdog that is more forgiving of some forms of criticism of Israel than the ADL, also criticized the tweet.
“The insinuation that the government of Israel is ‘buying’ or directly controlling any politician who receives AIPAC funding or any American political donor that donates through a pro-Israel conduit is reductive and wrong,” Jonathan Jacoby, Nexus’ president, told JTA in a statement.
Undeterred, Platner on Saturday again invoked AIPAC while going after a member of his own party: Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a staunch Israel supporter. Fetterman had recently criticized Platner in harsh language, telling CNN, “When I was growing up, if someone had a clear Nazi tattoo on them, you probably could conclude that they’re a Nazi sympathizer.”
Fetterman, Platner said in response, had “become a stooge for AIPAC and the Republican party.”
Reached for comment on the phrasing of his AIPAC remarks, a Platner campaign spokesperson said, “Whether it’s private equity, billionaires, corporations, super PACs, etc., Graham is committed to getting money out of politics.”
Amid the mounting scandals, Platner met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last week to shore up support for his candidacy among Democratic leaders. Speaking with reporters afterward, Schumer — who is Jewish, considers himself a leader on fighting antisemitism and had said he would support Platner’s campaign after Mills dropped out — repeatedly dodged questions about his confidence in Platner.
Some anti-Israel voices claim that the criticism reflects a conspiracy by Israel to prevent Platner from taking office.
“If you want a handy list of people who work for Israel, look at everyone criticizing Graham Platner now, especially Democrats,” the progressive influencer Cenk Uygur tweeted on Friday. “I get why Republicans want to tear him down. But Democrats attacking their own candidate only happens when they are ordered to do so by their handlers.”
His supporters, meanwhile, went on the offensive after a report in The New York Times cited multiple ex-girlfriends who said he had engaged in abusive and bullying behavior during their relationships.
The story featured as its most prominent voice Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican operative and former staffer at the conservative Heritage Foundation. In the article, Fifield claimed that Platner had known about his Totenkopf tattoo when he was dating her despite the candidate’s public insistence that he hadn’t recognized its Nazi origins. Platner had called his tattoo “my Totenkopf” while with her, Fifield told the Times, sharing a text in which she referred to the tattoo as a Nazi symbol before Platner said he was aware of what the tattoo represented.
Platner “has a Nazi tattoo on his chest,” Fifield texted her friends last summer, according to the Times. “It’s a Totenkopf … I will personally go campaign for Collins.”
Speaking to Maine’s public radio after the Times story ran, Platner denied Fifield’s claim. In another interview with MS NOW, Platner struggled to sort out the timeline of Fifield’s text to her friends about his tattoo, which occurred before he said he knew about the tattoo’s origins. Reached for comment, a Platner campaign spokesperson pointed to a previous interview the candidate held with JTA, in which he noted his “direct family connection to Judaism” and positive associations with Jewish religious tradition. Platner has also cast doubt on Fifield’s account, alleging that she is the sole source for reports about his knowledge of his own tattoo.
Reached for comment, Fifield told JTA by email, “I’ve been a vocal Zionist since college. I’ve been a proud conservative since then as well. Both of those things were true when I dated Graham.” Fifield is also close with the Jewish conservative commentator Bethany Mandel, with whom she formerly co-hosted a podcast.
To JTA, Fifield added, “If not being an antisemite is enough to fuel a mob of conspiracy theorists, it says something very dark about our culture.”
Some of Platner’s defenders have suggested the Times article was fueled by pro-Israel adversaries. Online, pro-Palestinian commentator Mehdi Hasan called Fifield “an anti-Palestinian racist and bigot,” sharing a tweet of hers in which she mocked the concept of “a Palestinian museum” and wrote, “What are their accomplishments, inventions, or other notable figures apart from terrorists and bombs made from the water pipes Israel gave them to pipe in free water for their people?”
Others have pointed out that the reporter who wrote the article, Katie Glueck, was co-president of Students for Israel at Northwestern University when the chapter won an “Activist of the Year” award from pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC in 2009.
“The most shocking part of this story is that the NYT had a former AIPAC Activist of the Year (Katie Glueck) write a piece devoted to detailing unsubstantiated claims from a professional Republican activist (Lyndsey Fifield) on how a left Democratic Senate candidate who has promised to take on Israel (Platner) was a lousy boyfriend and sold it as a legit journalistic scoop,” tweeted Marcus Stanley, the director of studies at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an anti-interventionist think tank.
In a statement to JTA, a New York Times spokesperson defended Glueck’s participation in the article.
“Katie Glueck has covered politics for over a decade and is one of the best journalists in media at producing incisive coverage of candidates and campaigns,” the Times’ Charlie Stadtlander wrote in an email. “She approached this article about Graham Platner’s past personal conduct with the same independence she brings to all of her reporting.”
Stadtlander added that the Times stands behind its reporting “of the accounts from Ms. Fifield and the other women, who provided a revealing look at the behavior of a major candidate for the U.S. Senate.”
The drumbeat of criticism has tempered excitement among some Democrats about Platner and his potential to flip a Senate seat. Even California Rep. Ro Khanna, a leading critic of Israel in Congress, offered indirect criticism of Platner and his defenders on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” over the weekend, where he said Platner’s supporters shouldn’t go after his accusers and “should not attack the New York Times reporters who wrote this story.”
“I know those reporters. They’ve written things critical of me. That’s what journalists do,” Khanna said. “Our party doesn’t attack the press. Our party believes that you treat women with equality and respect in all aspects of their lives.”
Still, he continued to signal support for Platner, saying that “he’s taken accountability for that period of his life.” Khanna also spoke at a rally for Platner in Maine over the weekend.
While Platner does not have many prominent Jewish supporters in Maine, and has seen the Jewish Democratic Council of America pointedly withhold its own support of his bid, one of his most visible Jewish allies in the state says he will stand by him.
“I’m still very much in Camp Platner,” Steven Koltai, the chair of J Street Maine who helped organize a Passover seder with the Platner campaign, told JTA following the latest revelations.
Koltai suggested that Platner’s past behavior paled in comparison to the president’s: “Thanks to President Trump, the bar for public office in America has been set at a level that even a subterranean earth worm could overcome.”
Asked about Platner’s comments regarding Collins and AIPAC specifically, he signaled a degree of difference with his candidature: “Of all Senator Collins’s votes, her votes on aid to Israel are very low on my list of complaints about her voting record.”
Platner is expected to sail through the primary. Most recent polls suggest that he and Collins are running neck and neck heading into November.
The post Israel looms large as Maine heads to the polls in Graham Platner’s Senate primary appeared first on The Forward.
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The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
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