I'm very Used to It as a matter of historical memory... It's a touchy subject, you see. We are blamed for it, and it's not entirely baseless...
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It's been like 140 years since we last plied you with government-mandated booze, though, I think at this point we can conclude that you like the stuff :)
aug 31, 2025, 2:53 pm โข 6 0 โข view
My family had that history, and also a really absurd number of their descendants became booze distributors and speakeasy owners in Prohibition-era New Jersey.
aug 31, 2025, 9:06 pm โข 3 0 โข view
Like, I was looking at some court records for one of them a few days ago, and noticed a familiar name on the next page -- someone else related to me, very distantly related to the first guy, also being charged with illegal distribution of alcohol.
aug 31, 2025, 9:07 pm โข 4 0 โข view
Look up "propination" if you have no idea what I'm talking about
aug 31, 2025, 2:53 pm โข 6 0 โข view
learned something new today!
aug 31, 2025, 2:55 pm โข 4 0 โข view
Me too. Thank you pymund
aug 31, 2025, 2:57 pm โข 4 0 โข view
You're welcome:) (The propination and related arendator system are practically the stock of both Jewish folklore and all of Jewish records from Eastern Europe - so while only a few nerds know the terms, the vague situation is as familiar to your typical Hasidic kid as Cinderella is in the West)
aug 31, 2025, 3:00 pm โข 6 1 โข view
Everyone's great-n-grandpa was an โarenderโ whom the local โpuritzโ (szlachta landowner) threw into his dungeon for falling behind in rent payments... and the math says that these stories are an *underestimate* of how many arendators there were
aug 31, 2025, 3:04 pm โข 4 0 โข view
I was actually surprised, when I started getting into the documents for my professional reasons, how authentic this part of the storytelling was - I always thought the tavern-keeping village Jew was a Hasidic folktale trope exaggerating a relatively rare profession.
aug 31, 2025, 3:09 pm โข 6 0 โข view
But no. In the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, even a century after it was dissolved, the ratio of taverns to people was about 1:~200 (give or take a factor of 2) and the tavern-keepers were disproportionately Jewish - for centuries
aug 31, 2025, 3:09 pm โข 8 0 โข view
My favourite (rather obscure) Hasidic story in this genre is the Jewish tavern keeper who's tavern is losing money because it's located on a route of decreasing importance as industrialization or something proceeds - and his Rebbe blesses him that things should improve ...
aug 31, 2025, 3:14 pm โข 10 1 โข view
... and they do, when an icon in the village church starts manifesting some miraculous liquid and becomes a local pilgrimage site. The Jewish tavern keeper has several successful years of business, and then informs the Rebbe that he's retiring now and moving into town. The icon stops working, the...
aug 31, 2025, 3:14 pm โข 10 0 โข view