Jews Welcome Coffee is a collection of several essays by Robert Liberles—some of them previously published in part or in their entirety—organized around the theme of coffee in various early modern German-Jewish contexts. In these essays, the topic of coffee serves as the starting point for provocative discussions both of halakhic development and of social tensions within and beyond the Jewish community. Liberles follows the topic through an impressive range of early modern sources and historical situations and anchors it in an engaging narrative. This, then, is a micro-historical study on a (more) macro-historical scale.

Liberles opens the book with a broad overview of the introduction of coffee to the Islamic world. He notes the medical and legal discussions around it, as well as its economic and social ramifications, before discussing its introduction to early modern taverns and coffeehouses, first in the Ottoman Empire and then in Europe. Such public spaces served as sites where this liquid refreshment was offered, but more importantly, they acted as sites of social and political communication and discussion. Here Liberles takes advantage of recent historiographical interest in public space, communication, and daily life. He also considers briefly the history of material culture, noting the creation and sale of vessels to produce and serve the drink.

Despite the growing demand for it, coffee was not always positively received or uniformly welcomed. Some believed it to have quite negative qualities, encouraging idleness and sedition; some thought it a deadly poison. Furthermore, coffee frequently served as a flashpoint of controversy, highlighting the realignment of traditional social and economic roles. Situating his study within the context of Jewish resettlement in central Europe, Liberles views the return of Jews to these lands and the arrival of coffee (beginning with the opening of the first coffeehouses in the last quarter of the seventeenth century and ending in the middle of the eighteenth century) as unrelated but synchronous developments that reflected key characteristics of the dawn of modernity. His review of a short treatise on coffee by Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, the German publicist known for his work on Jewish rights, underscores such a connection, even if Dohm himself did not recognize one.

After this broad overview, Liberles turns his attention to rabbinic responses to coffee. Drawing primarily from the responsa literature, including responsa by Jacob Reischer and Meir Eisenstadt, Liberles evaluates rabbinic responses to questions about the preparation of coffee (e.g., its preparation by gentiles on the Sabbath, or during Passover, and the use of non-kosher utensils to do so), as well as the consumption of coffee (e.g., what blessings should be recited over coffee; whether public consumption had a different status from private). Liberles notes that German rabbis had limited experience with this new commodity and so were forced to consult the rulings of Sephardic rabbis who had greater familiarity with it. Eliciting insights from limited sources, Liberles compares issues that developed around coffee with issues that developed around other food items, drawing from the stockpile of medieval rabbinic literature. Throughout he provides a clear exposition of complex halakhic matters. He concludes that rabbinic authorities appear to have been more concerned with the fine points of halakhah, as enumerated above, than they were with the mixing of Jews and Christians in coffeehouses, though he notes that over time increasing stringencies were enacted because coffeehouse visits were associated with declining morals.

Liberles next turns his attention to daily life, making use of Hebrew writings on medicine and halakhah, as well as German governmental reports, legislation, and court cases. He discusses, for example, the development of petty coffee trade among lower-class Jews, and the use of coffee as a stimulant in the practice of nocturnal rituals. He observes that the private consumption of coffee appears to have increased during the course of the eighteenth century, suggesting an impact of coffee beyond the public coffeehouse. Liberles argues that coffee serves as a “potent symbol of the tentative advance of Jews on the path toward increased economic and social integration into German society in the later years of the eighteenth century” (85). An extensive cache of economic and legal documents involving Frankfurt Jews serves as a rich resource for him to evaluate and advance that claim; he examines in detail several cases in which Jews in the coffee trade faced restrictions and competition. These documents contain both expressions of traditional anti-Jewish hostility and new charges, such as the accusation that the Jews formed a state within a state.

In the final chapter, Liberles considers the position of Jews as reflected in public coffeehouses after the walls of the ghetto were torn down. Through detailed analysis of a case involving a coffeehouse proprietor who refused to serve Jews, and then had his establishment disrupted by several rowdy Jews, Liberles uses the concept of “overlapping spheres,” distancing himself from the typical historiographical conceptualization of the ghetto as separated from gentile society. Yet sharing air with non-Jews, Liberles writes, was not the same as sitting with them at the same table. For Liberles, “The struggle to achieve social harmony between Jews and Christians in early modern Germany was not only a nonlinear process; in many ways, that harmony was never achieved at all.” In the case of the coffeehouse incidents, “Jews turned to more formal paths and to public authorities to try to enforce a social integration that they had not been able to attain otherwise, freely and naturally” (132).

Liberles was an outstanding scholar, teacher, and colleague. His untimely death prevented him from developing more fully the implications of the cases he presents in Jews Welcome Coffee. More needs to be said, for example, about regional variations, about existing social tensions and class structures within early modern German Jewish communities, and about what it meant to be a “German” Jew, in order to fully explicate these cases. Similarly, while Liberles adopts the concept of “overlapping spheres,” he also relies on traditional concepts of ghettoization, acculturation, and the interaction of tradition and innovation. While these concepts have value, they tend to shape the discussion of Jews and coffee rather than to allow for new insights. Further, the terms “tradition” and “innovation” are perhaps too value-laden to be particularly useful for conceptualizing the early modern environment. The dualism reflected in the book's subtitle was developed as a response to early nineteenth-century modernity. The term “overlapping spheres” begins to suggest this early modern complexity, but it would need to be further elaborated.

In the end, this short but provocative book is a wonderful study that addresses an enticing theme with acumen and broad scholarly vision. It raises some central issues that have attracted the attention of the most reflective historians for generations, and it suggests ways to begin thinking about early modern Jewry with greater nuance and impact. Liberles, then, has offered us a valuable study with which to continue exploring the sources, as well as to develop new ways to capture Jewish experience. While he will not be here to continue the journey with us, he has helped set us on a remarkably exciting and useful path and for that, and for so much else, he will be fondly remembered.