CRAFT BEER Bar Mitzvah Shmaltz Brewing Company was recently awarded the gold medal for 2010 as “Best American Craft Beer” and the overall “Best in Show” by Beverage World Magazine. A recipient of the “Distinguished Business Award” from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, Shmaltz was also ranked one of the “Top 20 Fastest Growing Bay Area Companies” in 2009 by San Francisco Business Times. Established by Jeremy Cowan in San Francisco in 1996 with the first batch of 100 cases of He’brew Beer® bottled, labeled, and delivered by hand, Shmaltz has sold over eight million bottles of beer to date. Along with their acclaimed line of He’brew Beers®, Shmaltz introduced its sideshow-inspired Coney Island Craft Lagers® in 2007. Proceeds help Coney Island USA, a 501(c)(3) Arts Non-Profit fulfill its mission to defend the honor of lost forms of American popular culture in Brooklyn’s historic Coney Island neighborhood. He’brew Beer® and Coney Island Craft Lagers® are available in over twenty-five states through more than thirty wholesalers at nearly two thousand retail specialty shops across the U.S. including Beverages & More, Whole Foods, Total Wine, select Krogers and Publix, and Cost Plus World Market. Shmaltz Brewing beers have appeared in such distinguished media outlets as The New York Times, CNN Headline News, The Onion, Beer Advocate Magazine, NPR’s “Weekend Edition,” Men’s Health, MSNBC, San Francisco Magazine, The Jerusalem Report, New York Jewish Week, Washington Post, Forbes, Entrepreneur.com, and Epicurious.com.
From the beer label for Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A.: “Satire equals tragedy plus time.” – Lenny Bruce Emmis, Shmuck! 40 years alive. 40 years dead. And shares of Lenny Bruce commodities are still longterm performers – solid! Sure there’s been books, posters, films, plays, a box set of course. But the big Four-O inspires innovation, something hip, modern – unorthodox – a taste that really swings… Ladies and Gentlemen, Shmaltz Brewing Co. is proud to introduce Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A. Brewed with an obscene amount of malts and hops. Shocking flavors – far beyond contemporary community standards. We cooked up the straight dope for the growing minyons of our nation’s “extreme” beer junkies. Judges may not be able to define “Radical Beer,” but you’ll damn well know it when you taste it. Bruce died, officially declared a pauper by the State of California, personally broken and financially bankrupt simply for challenging America’s moral hypocrisies with words. The memorial playbill read: “Yes, we killed him. Because he picked on the wrong god.” –Directed by, the Courts, the Cops, the Church… and his own self-destructive super ego. Like Noah lying naked and loaded in his tent after the apocalyptic deluge: a witness, a patron saint, a father of what was to come. Sick, Dirty, Prophetic Lenny: a scapegoat, a martyr, a supreme inspiration. From Burlesque to Broadway, Carnegie Hall to the Courtroom, Long Island to Lima, Ohio to L.A., savor the provocative spirit of Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A., our HE’BREW monument to the richness, the bitterness and the sacred sweetness that is life… L’Chaim! - Jeremy Cowan, proprietor
ALSO BY JEREMY COWAN Fiddler on the Roof, (Tevye) Menlo School spring musical, 1987 Projector, ‘zine, New Orleans, 1992 Beer Label Shtick: 1996-present Press Releases 1996-2006; edits to Jesse’s 2006-present Shmaltz Business Plan, 1999: leading to complete loss of all friends-and-family investment by 2001 Maxing out all personal credit cards, and surviving to shatter all previous Shmaltz Brewing sales records, 2003-2010 Decision to ask close friend James Sullivan to co-write Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah, 2009-2010… because check out what he’s handcrafted: ALSO BY JAMES SULLIVAN Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America 7 Dirty Words: The Life and Crimes of George Carlin
How It Took 13 Years, Extreme Jewish Brewing, and Circus Sideshow Freaks to Make Shmaltz Brewing Company an International* Success by
JEREMY COWAN
with James Sullivan
Because making a character “alive” means getting to the bottom of his existential problem. Which in turn means getting to the bottom of some situations, some motifs, even some words that shape him. Nothing more. – Milan Kundera, Art of the Novel Real mysteries cannot be solved, but they can be turned into better mysteries. – Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces
Copyright © 2010 by Jeremy Cowan All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or as a reference on a beer label. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below. Do not ask for free beer. Malt Shop Publishing 912 Cole St., Suite 338 San Francisco, CA 94117 www.maltshoppublishing.com info@maltshoppublishing.com ISBN: 978-0-982-93253-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010934612 Ordering Information: Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by synagogues, homebrew clubs, sideshow schools, MBA programs, and others. Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers, please contact Malt Shop Publishing, info@maltshoppublishing.com First printing September 2010 Book design by Matt Polacheck Cover photos by Todd Huffman Cover photos shot at 4th Ave. Pub in Brooklyn - thanks Kirk! Printed in the U.S.A. * “International”: Since this is the legalese page, we can in fact confirm that we consistently ship beer to Western Canada (which does not count as part of the United States). We also sent two shipments to London but that kinda fell apart so I’m calling us “International” for now, and we’ll work on more exports to justify the bombast. I just think it sounds too cool to pass over.
Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah : Today I am a Man.
This book is dedicated to my Mom. I love you!
And to my Dad and to Granny, I miss you.
Except for all the pages that have drug references and bad language -- those are for the amusement of my friends. I love you and often miss you too.
The work-related parts, which are always personal for me, are dedicated to my co-workers. I could not have done it without you all. I love you too. Now get back to work.
JUNE 2003, NEW YORK CITY I emerged first thing Monday morning from the crush of the Eighth Avenue subway line walking west through bright already-moist summer air. I don’t remember thinking about the $50,000 I’d charged to two credit cards that month. For a guy who hadn’t had a full-time job in over six years and had already lost $135,000 of his closest friends-and-family investment, I felt surprisingly optimistic. I don’t remember any back pains from the month spent on Peter’s foldout couch in Park Slope; I don’t remember being concerned about our lack of AC at my current sublet above the wood-burning pizza place in Williamsburg. What I do remember is a brand new size large black Beefy-T with a simple, powerful, one color metallic gold screen print declaring to anyone coming toward me that HE’BREW -- The Chosen Beer was back in business. It’s unlikely that even one person walking toward me would have known about the hiatus, but I certainly did. Seven years after taking a shot at creating a beer that had grown out of an inside joke with some high school friends, my little one-man company had received local and national media coverage, expanded to multiple states across the country, brewed with one of the highest rated craft breweries at the time… and done nothing but lose money year after year. I got married in the middle, and then divorced before the end. I had been paid to talk about He’brew Beer at the most prestigious Jewish museum in the country, and I’d failed out of a Buddhist meditation retreat, only to find a small sense of revelation in a two-dollara-night grass hut on a beach in Thailand. That summer morning, I mistakenly thought I was meeting the sales rep from my newest wholesaler to finally strike the mother lode -- the most populous Jewish neighborhood in the country on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Walking west from Midtown, I realized that instead I was heading towards Hell’s Kitchen, maybe twenty blocks south of the heartland of the Jewish Diaspora.
Nidal, my guide for the day, was born in East Jerusalem to Palestinian parents. After the 1967 Six Day War, his family moved to Jordan for nearly a decade before finally settling in northern Italy where he’d lived from high school until he was thirty years old. He’d recently immigrated to Coney Island and met, then married, a Dominican woman who had converted to Islam. Our first stop for the day would prove to be about the same as the rest: little bodegas that mostly sold lottery tickets, individual cigarettes, egg and cheese sandwiches, and beer. Most of the beer crammed into impossibly small sliding glass door coolers was Bud, Heineken and Corona. After a quick introduction by the sales rep to the young guys behind the counter, I launch into my first pitch of the second coming of Shmaltz Brewing. “Hi, my name’s Jeremy and this is my beer and how about bringing in a couple cases for your customers?” From behind a wall of overloaded clear plastic shelves, the buyer looks down at my new shirt and the He’brew Beer in my hand and asks, “What is this, some kind of Jewish thing?” Turns out the owners of nearly all the small corner stores in the neighborhood are from Yemen. The kid snaps a look over at his cousin… and suddenly an old man pops out from the back room… and another guy appears from the front of the store. Everyone is speaking Arabic fast and loud with accompanying hand gestures while I stand in the middle with a salesman’s grin. A pause in the action and the buyer looks at the sales rep: “Dude, what’s the deal?” Nidal shrugs, “It’s just a beer. Just business.” Everyone looks at me. Everyone looks at each other. Back to me, back to each other. Then the kid says to me and Nidal together, “Alright, send me a case of each and we’ll see how it goes.” We walked out the door and shook hands on our first sale of the day. I figured if I could sell Jewish beer with a Palestinian refugee to Yemeni Muslims in Hell’s Kitchen, maybe everything would turn out just fine.
CONTENTS See Appendix for suggested beer pairings to enjoy with each chapter.
INTRODUCTION: Why a book?
CHAPTER 1
Genesis, Act 1: Beers In The Garden................................................... 1
CHAPTER 2
The Old Country............................................................................... 18
CHAPTER 3
Let There Be Rock, Blood, and Revelation........................................ 36
CHAPTER 4
Underwater Kabbalah and a Mission Burrito Of Love..................... 54
CHAPTER 5
Genesis, Act 2: West Of Eden aka Exile Never Tasted
CHAPTER 6
Conan The Distributor...................................................................... 73
CHAPTER 7
Business School 001: Catholic School Girl Meets
CHAPTER 8
Business School 002: Success For Dummies................................... 107
CHAPTER 9
Finally, Business School 101, Hold The Viagra............................... 123
CHAPTER 10
Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory.................................. 142
CHAPTER 11
I Don’t Have The Cash For The Guns Or Ammo,
CHAPTER 12
Genesis, Act 3, and The Messiah I’d Been Waiting For................... 179
So Good............................................................................................ 63
The Candyman.................................................................................. 90
But I Do Have $50,000 Of Credit For The Beer............................ 160
CHAPTER 13
40 Days And 40 Nights… And 40 Days
CHAPTER 14
Miraculous Jewbelation: This Chanukah, Candles
CHAPTER 15
Pomegranates And C cksuckers.................................................... 224
CHAPTER 16
Step Right Up! Welcome To The Freak Show................................ 242
CHAPTER 17
They Came, They Tried To Kill Us, We Survived, Let’s Drink:
And 40 Nights And… Repeat........................................................ 193
Won’t Be The Only Thing Getting Lit........................................... 210
*
Crisis, Resolution, Crisis, and The
CHAPTER 18
The Promised Land-Ish.................................................................. 283
APPENDIX
....................................................................................................... 312
Ultimate Excel Spreadsheet............................................................ 259
Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah (needs an INTRO: why beer??) From the beginning, my co-writer, Jim, included this note in the first line of the first draft of the manuscript we’d been swapping for many months. I’d been looking at it knowing that this particular question is one of the easiest to answer. Many more questions have been much harder to approach. What to include, what to skip, and what the hell is a struggling, only-recently-profitable small-business owner doing writing a several hundred page book, instead of sticking to his already-way-more-thanfull-time job running the company? Given that Shmaltz Brewing only recently broke $2 million in annual sales of specialty beers with dancing rabbis and sideshow freaks adorning the labels, the better question might be, why a book? Several quick and easy answers pop into my head. My grandmother published a few, and I thought that was simply one of the coolest things. I have letters from her to William Styron and Anais Nin -- more social than literary, but retaining the aura of a literary life. For a college literature major, ironically, I didn’t even read much until well into high school. I had to take a speed reading class just to keep up. A customized gift when I was four or five, My Birthdayland Adventures cannot really count as my first book. That honor must go to Conan the Liberator, the first book I remember picking out myself, at the old Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, California. Showing off huge pecs and cut abs, enthroned, grasping a shining steel sword presumably liberating a number of half-naked women in the foreground -- from what, I never discovered. I don’t remember ever opening the book. Hey, I was ten. But I do remember being forced to make choices for book reports in elementary school, so I labored through sports biographies of my heroes, from Terry Bradshaw to Dr. J. I suppose more a Soc than a Greaser (though truly neither in suburban ‘80s Bay Area), I discovered S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and finally started to enjoy reading. Similar to the Three Pillars of Shmaltz Brewing, I don’t think I’m giving anything away by acknowledging the four pillars of Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah. More in tone and imagination than in substance, I felt these works floating like planets around my literary world: Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain, Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, Dave Eggers’s memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. The answer to why a book? comes surprisingly close to the answer to why beer? Honestly, I just thought it would be fun and, I hoped, kinda funny. It has proven to be much more work than anything I ever imagined. I’ve been asked many times when mentioning this project, “Who is your ‘target market?’” As with Shmaltz Brewing, I have no data to offer. Given that craft beer finally broke a paltry five percent of overall beer sales (and that includes Sam Adams, Sierra vii
Nevada, Fat Tire and all the other huge small-beer companies) and that Jews hold steady at two percent of the population (with half of them too young and half too old and half who truly don’t drink beer), my market adds up to somewhere in the vicinity of zero percent of the general public. Less than a blip on a rarely, if ever, watched radar. As a purely niche entrepreneur, I have no fear of small numbers. I, personally, don’t find much meaning beyond momentary entertainment from most blockbusters. I’ve stopped even bothering with the best-selling beers. Why should I worry about it with my own creations? Even presuming the intimacy of the group that may gather to hear this tale, I am likely to disappoint a portion of whoever shows up for the party. Religious or even modestly traditional Jews, after reading what I hope shines as sincere commitment to our traditions and texts, will be disappointed with much un-orthodox behavior in several chapters. Atheist Jews may mock my attempt at mystical spirituality in the Holy Land and dismiss the ongoing struggles with Torah interpretations embedded in our beer labels. Business readers might laugh at, or empathize with, the amateurish attempts at starting a venture, but will likely want a more serious examination of ROI (Return on Investment) and EBIDA (Earnings before Interest, Depreciation, and Amortization). There should be some helpful moments, but unlikely enough to merit required M.B.A. reading. Some friends, so many of whom have been vital to the life force of Shmaltz Brewing, will be disappointed not to be included. I apologize and owe you a round, or several. Plenty of others will be horrified to even be mentioned. Certain business colleagues will recognize the compliments, and perhaps nod at the digs. Others will likely be way too busy to even open the email about the book, much less crack open the book itself. At least one business owner will likely say, “That bastard still owes me thirty-five grand.” Beloved beer geeks will crave more details on original gravities and finishing hops. Those who love Blue Moon or Stella will think I’m the asshole for generally thinking they show poor judgment. All I can ask is forgiveness and indulgence. Take what you will, and wipe up spilled beer with the rest. Either way, I will certainly take it personally. This business and this book have been nothing but a deeply personal journey for me. As we all know, sometimes it’s the small moments that make the larger picture come to life. So special thanks to David “Yo Idea Man” Boyer for first suggesting self-publishing, even while I kind of hosed him by bailing on a promised sublet in Brooklyn. He also said, “Well, does it pass the Mom-test?” for my concerns about certain details. I’ve simply removed those pages from the copy I’ve sent my own Mom, so please keep the rest just between us. Having long ago lost the right to say anything I do anymore is a one-man show, I need to acknowledge those responsible for bringing this project into the world. Without Leah’s willingness to record my brain-spew chronology, covering the first thirteen years of the business and forty years of my life, this book would not have happened. Without Noah viii
stepping in, and stepping up, at a particularly crucial moment (the last minute), daring, urging, and supporting a frantic re-re-rewrite of so many elements of the manuscript, this book would have been a lesser version of itself. Without Matt, my creative brother, as always pimping out everything he touches far beyond anything I could have envisioned, this manuscript would have remained just a Word doc printed on copy paper bound with a binder clip. And Jim, who spent hours and hours over months and months translating my rambling stories into a coherent narrative, brought his well-honed craft to the myths and moments of Shmaltz Brewing Company. The prayer in Hebrew is called the Shehecheyanu, which more or less says thanks so much to everyone who got me to this moment. Amen. Let’s get on with the show. Cheers, J.C. September 2010 San Francisco, Brooklyn, beyond
ix
CHAPTER 1
Genesis Act 1: Beers In The Garden
F
or underage kids in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-to-late-‘80s, the Holy Grail of fake IDs was a state-issued identity card from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Not an actual driver’s license, which would require an in-person test and legal snags far too advanced for the average college-bound scofflaw. Not a giant posterboard cutout from the back room of a head shop in the Haight, or someone’s brother’s fraternity basement at Cal. A DMV ID card was the real deal. You could hold your head high and buy-up anywhere -- bars to bodegas to the biggest grocery store chains on the Peninsula -- without so much as a whiff of trouble. No parking-lot veterans demanding a two-cans-on-a-twelvepack commission, or worse yet, simply walking out the back door with your beer and your change, laughing about grifting the high school boys. DMV IDs were bulletproof. They were, that is, until all five of us who had ID cards were accosted by two plainclothes inspectors from the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control, several pitchers into our favorite Friday night ritual: frozen strawberry daiquiris at Compadres Mexican Cantina on the El Camino Real in south Palo Alto. It did not help that most of us had taken gag names pulled from TV personalities and dead poets we studied in junior-year English class. 1
CRAFT BEER
Bar Mitzvah
It also did not help that not one of us was carrying a second form of ID, or even a wallet, except for Henry, who had mocked up a frequent flyer card for America West Airline to match his phony alter-ego. One ID, one twentydollar bill each. Henry’s mother had to vouch for all of us at the police station, and nearly everyone’s golden tickets got punched. Except mine. The Man giveth but somehow forgot to taketh away. Luckily, Jews don’t believe in Hell. After almost meeting his maker, Tom Lacy’s belief system was his own concern. My concern was making sure Tom typed up the form on his parents’ manual typewriter correctly so we could be the masters of our own beer destiny, and procure wine coolers when the girls asked. At age seventeen, Tom “Exploding” Lacy had casually walked into the Christian Bookstore on Veterans Boulevard to obtain two certificates of baptism. One of my closest friends, and a very smart and creative young man, Tom had demolished his parents’ living room a year or so earlier when an experiment with model rocket fuel went terribly awry. He also blew a hole in his own guts and had the scars to prove the tale. A couple years later, Tom would escape the wrath of the Atherton police when an officer asked for his driver’s license. “Tom Lacy… ? Tom -- Exploding -- Lacy?! Oh, man, I was the officer at the scene that day. Great to see you’re still alive, kid. Now, just be careful and go straight home. Tom ‘Exploding’ Lacy… go figure.” Baptism certificates. Yes, through some extraordinary quirk in the known universe, the California DMV accepted certificates of baptism as proof of age. So Tom sat in front of his parents’ old manual and worked his magic. As I nervously attempt not to fidget in line at the Mountain View DMV, there are glossy color posters on the walls strongly declaring fake IDs to be a crime punishable by something I don’t remember fearing enough to dissuade me from applying for my VIP beer pass. The large gal hunched behind the desk asks in a disinterested voice, “Which one of these birthdays is correct?” Umm, whhaaat? Just an hour earlier, Tom and I had discussed what birthdays to use. Cunningly, we decided it would be easiest to use our real ones, dated four years earlier. Somehow he’d misheard me and used April 20th -- not April 24th, which is my actual birthday -- and I hadn’t noticed. When I filled out the application, I’d written April 24th. 2
GENESIS ACT 1: BEERS IN THE GARDEN
“So which one is correct?” What to do? I could bolt: hurdle the lane lines, crash through a huge room of bystanders past the warning posters, and hope to bust out the glass doors and down the street, perhaps to the Tower Records across the street or the mini-mall down San Antonio Blvd., to escape the security guards chasing me. Instead, I said, Oh, ha ha, I must have been thinking about my, uh… zip code. Of course, the baptism date is right. Lemme change that. Without a blink or a pause, she slams the stamp on the form and says, “Go to Window Six and get your picture taken.” Several months after La Debacle de Compadres, I still had not heard from the cops or received a summons. On a whim I called the DMV, mentioning a lost ID. Another disinterested voice: “No problem. You’re still in the computer, so just come on in, fill out the form, and take a new picture. No baptism certificate needed. You’re in the system.”
The story of He’brew, the Chosen Beer, begins, naturally, with a creation myth: Volleyball, manicured lawns, the glorious sunshine of youth and, predictably, underage drinking. Josh and I stood taller than most in the front yard of Rob and Ben’s parents’ house in Atherton. The town, which has one of the richest zip codes in the country, was not what you’d call a hotbed of Jewish activity. Robert had started an annual volleyball tournament in honor of the family’s dead Rhodesian Ridgeback. One afternoon after school, his brother Ben discovered Leo, lifeless in the entry hall. He’d eaten most of a neighbor’s big metal garbage can and died from the internal wounds. The volleyball games were serious business, an unsponsored version of our own NCAA tournament. Someone had stolen an official CBS Sports banner from Stanford Stadium, and we draped it on the front stairs as a backdrop. Each year Robert fastidiously plotted the winners’ and losers’ brackets on two oversized wipe boards. It was considered a privilege to design the yearly custom-printed t-shirt. It was considered a necessary evil to endure the summer’s rotation of ringers who showed up in the form of older brothers 3
CRAFT BEER
Bar Mitzvah
back from college or new girlfriends who just happened to be 6’1” with an unstoppable overhand jump serve. Bob and Dodie Mullen, surrogate Mom and Dad to many of us, generously hosted the fest for fourteen or fifteen years, until so many of the players were chasing their own children that there was hardly anyone left to play the damn game, or drink the damn beer. Josh was a good athlete, and an outspoken young man. I remember him taunting the other guys, saying how badly we were going to beat them. During the clowning someone pointed out that our two-man team was all-Jewish. “What’s the deal -- Jews vs. Gentiles?” Henry, Andy, Rob, and Ben were all goyish (though Henry and Andy have since batted both ways by marrying nice Jewish girls). Affectionately, they called out “Go Team Jew,” or “the Jew Crüe,” or “Two Live Jews.” Shmaltzy from the beginning. Eighteen-ish in the late 1980s, on a good day we would be drinking Coors Light. That was a step up from the more common suitcases of shwag from the Redwood City bodega that sold to minors. And then came the Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler phase – a trunkful for a U2 show at the Cow Palace, and the same for Howard Jones at Kaiser Pavilion. Twice. Hey – one of the busty blondes from history class flashed me at the first Howard Jones show, so I figured number two was worth a shot. Turned out not to be. Around the volleyball net, the idea just kind of popped out. “This team needs its own beer. You know what: The Jews need their own beer. Every other ethnic group in the U.S. has their own beer.” “We’ll call it He’brew. And the tagline will be Don’t Pass Out, Passover.” We all remember it as a collective effort, although I will claim that I at least blurted out the punchline. I can’t really take credit for the whole thing. Thirteen-plus years of my life and career spawned from ambiguous beginnings at best. In any case, the joke stuck. For years, we’d trot it out alongside choice lines from Blazing Saddles and The Blues Brothers, Fletch and Caddyshack.
Cut to years later, on vacation with my girlfriend and her family. Tracy’s father was a lawyer and a bit of an entrepreneur, having once operated a small franchise of sub shops in Cleveland. He always floated killer family trips, and 4
GENESIS ACT 1: BEERS IN THE GARDEN
I’d started getting the hook-up. We went to Australia for three weeks, cruised through nature parks, saw a kangaroo, held a koala. One day we fished for crocodiles with bacon out of the back of a four-wheel drive. We were on a boat in a river, bird-watching, I think. Somehow, the volleyball game and the idea for a Jewish beer came up. When the words came out of my mouth -- “We had this joke about a beer called He’brew” -- I remember Tracy’s father sitting in the boat and saying, “Huh, a Jewish beer. That could be pretty cool. There’s nothing else like it. If you made it tasty and fun, why wouldn’t everybody like it?” I’d just gotten my first official career-ish job, in a company that I really liked, in the exact professional direction I’d been aiming. My first reaction to Bob’s suggestion was, That’s an absolutely terrible idea. Why would I ever give up the new art gig to start… a beer company? A Jewish beer didn’t seem like one of the products the world desperately needed. However, when I came back from that vacation with Tracy’s family, there was a persistent, nagging itch in my brain. After trying unsuccessfully to ignore it, I finally decided to scratch it just a bit. It was May, 1996. I figured I’d at least start looking into whatever it might mean to make a beer without owning a brewery or becoming a brewer. So I took the most basic pass at a few phone calls. It’s a very common question -- people will say, “Hey, we have an idea for a beer. What do we do now?” Especially with beers specifically targeted to ethnic or minority groups. Today, I get that question more than most -- from Korean-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Gay Americans and, most recently, Cajun-Americans. I’d call up northern California and Central Valley brewers and say, Hi, I’m Jeremy. I have a weird question: Can you guys make some beer for me? In the beginning, I probably just looked up “Breweries” in the Yellow Pages (this, of course, was before the Internet was fully cooking), or went to the grocery store and grabbed all the bottles I could find. I made chickenscratch notes, trying to figure out the questions I should be asking. I got people like Dan Gordon of Gordon Biersch on the phone (nice Jewish boy trained at the renowned Weihenstephan, brewing German-style lagers), and I connected with Pete Slosberg of Pete’s Wicked Ale, who, unbeknownst 5
CRAFT BEER
Bar Mitzvah
to me, was a member of my synagogue. Dan’s new production brewery in San Jose produced five hundred barrels per batch, about eight thousand cases, much more than I was looking for at the time -- and more than I would sell in any given year until seven years into the business. He offered encouraging thoughts, and I moved on. Pete, a maverick in the industry who has since become a good friend, was struggling at the time through some challenging times with his company, which, like several others, had gone public in the mid-‘90s. He said, “Get a million dollars and spend it on advertising. Then get another million dollars and spend it on advertising.” I had two grand in the bank to start. It became apparent fairly quickly that our best option to get this experiment off the ground was a tiny “brew-on-premise” (BOP) facility off the Rengsdorf exit of Highway 101 in Mountain View, forty-five minutes south of San Francisco. Brewmakers stood next to Petco in the mini-mall. A new InN-Out Burger would shortly revolutionize the neighborhood, but at the time a bunch of rather forgettable businesses sprawled across the big-box footprint. Tim owned, or at least ran, the operation. It was the kind of place where your fraternity, your ad agency, or your non-profit would go and brew fivegallon batches of beer. They had all the ingredients, and lots of recipes. You’d brew on the first day, get it into the white plastic fermenters, and leave it in their cold box for a couple of weeks. Then your group would come back, after the staff had filtered and carbonated, and you’d hand-bottle your beer and put your wacky, one-of-a-kind, official beer label on it. I wasn’t telling anyone yet about the specific idea for Jewish beer. We tend to think that the minute you put your great idea out in the world some loser, or some genius, is going to steal it from you. At the time, Tracy and I were going to be fifty-fifty partners. She was going to handle the art, and I was going to handle the “business” side, though I had no idea what that really meant. Brewmakers was the perfect place for me to start. The brewer there, Simon, would go on to become the head brewer for Pyramid Breweries, over in Berkeley. At Brewmakers, Simon had a little seven-barrel brewing system, which made about one hundred cases of twelve 22 ounce bottles. Your fraternity could make seven cases or so in the five-gallon system, or Simon could make a bigger, semi-commercial batch. 6
GENESIS ACT 1: BEERS IN THE GARDEN
At the time, it was the tail end of the initial explosion of craft beer -not that I had any idea then that the first microbrew “bubble” was bursting. Brewmakers had started amid the enthusiasm of the early-‘90s, while the initial craft-beer wave was still growing. By the time I got going, the business was starting to tank. But for a while, they were making their own beers, selling them in grocery stores -- 22 ounce “bombers,” hand-bottled, hand-labeled. At our first meeting, Tim was charismatic and extremely passionate about what he was doing. He made me a believer. He gave the most detailed explanations of the brewing process I’ve ever heard, to this day. I’ve gone on a lot of brewery tours, and not one person has gone into the detail that Tim did when he was just talking to me and Tracy. Unfortunately, Tim turned out to be, shall we say, a compromised figure. I knew next to nothing about brewing. I’d worked at a brew pub in New Orleans, so I knew the absolute basics. I knew there were a bunch of stainless tanks, and some hoses… um, grain, and yeast. Right? But I had no idea about the details, and had never brewed a batch myself. I put together what I saw as a crucial confidentiality agreement based on one I’d finagled from my day job, and I told Tim and Simon what I wanted to do -- my big secret. Given the hindsight of thirteen years of Jewish brewing, I had very little reason to worry about someone stealing my idea. Most of the time your nice little idea is not worth the effort for anyone else. The reason it’s creative and unique is because it’s a giant pain in the ass, and no one else is gonna believe in it like you believe in it. Logically, I didn’t really think there were hundreds of people sprinting out the doors of their businesses to create a Jewish beer. But there certainly were a couple of Jewish wine and food companies at the time that had ideas which, if they’d chosen to pursue them, could have put me out of business before I got started. They already had the distribution network, the reputation, the graphics department, the PR, the sales staff -- everything necessary to do it. As a brewer, Tim certainly fit the bill. He drove a beat-up Jeep with beer stickers on the back, and he wore his Carhartt jacket and a pair of duck shoes. He hand-delivered a lot of the beer himself. He told me he’d raised a million or two to start, and he’d just gotten another million. His plan was to build Brewmakers all over the west, to franchise it out. It was a great business model: 7
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Make beer for nine cents and sell it for four dollars. He was going to set the world on fire, and he sounded reliable and confident. I really liked talking to him. His enthusiasm was contagious. And then there was Simon, the brewer, who actually made all the magic happen. I learned in retrospect that when the frontman is talking a mile a minute, but the people who do the actual work have a slightly sour look on their faces and a hard time meeting your eyes, there’s potential danger looming. Little did I know, the business was perpetually thirty to sixty days from going out of business. But Simon was awesome to work with. My first meeting with him was pretty embarrassing. I started to realize that I’d never before consciously, carefully, methodically… drank a beer. Even in the brew pub where I worked in New Orleans, we never did any staff trainings or beer tastings. We never talked to people about hops or malts, or balance, or flavor contrasts and complements. At the time, if you’d put glasses of Sierra Nevada, Anchor Steam, and Sam Adams in front of me, I couldn’t have told you the difference. To this day, Simon and I still joke about it. I wasn’t at all sure what I wanted, but I knew what I thought the experience should be like. Leaning over to him, I exclaimed: It should be like biting into the most delicious, perfectly grilled, wonderfully dressed turkey Reuben you’ve ever had! The flavor should fill your mouth in an utter moment of Manna. “Turkey Reuben.” He looked at me like, “This guy’s out of his fucking mind.” Here’s a brewer who had nothing to do with Judaism, didn’t know Jewish food or Jewish shtick, and he’s listening to me wax allegedly poetic about this journey we were gonna go on with our new beer. When I was finished, he paused a moment and then deadpanned, “Uhh, malts? Hops? Anyway, why don’t you bring me a bunch of beers you think you like, and we can taste them together.” I probably brought in about thirty beers, and we “researched” together -pale ales, ambers, red ales, ESBs. Everything in the category that was darker than golden and lighter than porters. It’s amusing to know now how little I knew then. There were a number of niche microbrews, generally contract-brewed, much like I would be doing, popping up in the Bay Area at the time. Queer 8
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Beer, waving the rainbow flag, was started by a very experienced marketing guy, and quickly disappeared. Brothers Brewing, one of several African-American micros that popped up around the country, had a good run for a few years in the Bay Area before running out of steam and closing up shop. Nationally, Three Stooges beer set the bar high, or low, depending on your perspective, for gimmick contract-brews. The partners, from outside Boston, sold truckload after truckload of licensed product that stacked high everywhere it went and sold out in cheap and furious blasts, until finishing its career a few years later, marked down, discontinued, never to return. But they sold some humongous numbers, for sure. New labels for dogs, fishing, buxom blondes, a frog flipping the bird… Pretty much everyone who’s done stuff like that, if they were successful, made their nut in fast and short-lived blasts of initial orders of inexpensive beer, or even t-shirts, and got out. More commonly, they ran into all the headaches and difficulties, and ran out of interest, and bailed. And for all the right reasons: They ran out of money, like I did. They ran out of hours in the week, like I did. Some had family problems, and some had drinking problems. Because of the reduced margins on contract brewing, there’s very little money to be made on truly gimmick-y labels slapped on truly forgettable beer. From the beginning, I’ve known that I wanted to be a contract brewer -- but using my own version of what I thought could be a tasty collaboration with the right brewers. I certainly didn’t have the money, but I also didn’t particularly have the desire, to build a brewery. As my friends and exgirlfriends love to joke, I can barely lift a finger to cook for myself. I’ve never been fascinated by the mechanics or the chemistry. I love experiencing and exploring the flavors, and I love the product as it moves into the world. I love the creativity, the imagination, the concept, the excitement. My energy comes from everything outside the vats, so that’s where I figured I’d invest and spend my effort and my time. Even with my admittedly limited beer knowledge, the goal has always been to make a truly high-quality beer that was interesting, flavorful, something I could be proud of and, of course something I’d want to share with friends and, most importantly, drink myself. But I didn’t know enough about brewing to know what that meant. 9
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Simon would ask me specific questions about flavors, and I never knew how to answer him. I’d wander around in these terms I didn’t really understand. He was great, and very respectful, considering the gibberish that was pouring out of my mouth. At the time, pale ales like Sierra Nevada set the standards. And amber ales from all over the west coast were extremely popular; every brewery had one. So I said, Let’s make it in between the two styles. I could not describe it at the time, but I have since used these words on all our marketing shtick for Genesis Ale: “Crisp, smooth and perfectly balanced between a west coast-style pale and amber ale, with a supple malt sweetness and a pronounced hop flourish.” Nice shelf talker. Yum. My first beer ended up being a kind of hybrid. It didn’t fit any particular category or style, which has been pretty much the same with all our beers since. We didn’t know what to call it, so we made up the name “Light Brown Ale.” I remember Simon was standing on the brewing ladder, and he said, “Brown ales like Full Sail and Newcastle and Negra Modelo are all a little darker.” This beer was definitely lighter in color, had more of a malt flavor, with enough of a hop presence, though it wasn’t a pale ale. The phrase “Light Brown Ale” has been on the label ever since. Like many other things in He’brew history, it didn’t exactly catch on. As it turns out, there was and still is no “light brown ale” category -- not at Great American Beer Festival, or World Beer Cup, or in Beer Judge Certification Program style guides. And no one jumped on it, any more than other companies jumped on the category for Jewish-themed beers. No sweat -- I’m happy as usual to be the only fish in a little pond. I started doing my research in June, and I finalized the relationship with the brewery by the end of the summer. Simon brewed the beer, and we put out our small first batch of cases by the end of November. The whole thing took about four months. Looking back, that seems like an impossibly short time, given that I knew nothing about what we were starting. It became clear there was an endless, dizzying amount of details I never even imagined to try to get one little Jewish beer into the world. I figured I was going to spend two grand of my own savings and see what happened. Hopefully, I’d cover my costs. And if people liked it, great -- maybe
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I’d keep it going. Writing this down, it seems pretty straightforward. Then why at the time did it all seem so damn hard?
I was working on the stuff I was pretty confident I could pull off -- the shtick. I talked to some friends who worked in advertising agencies. We had a beer tasting at my place. I wanted to decide how outrageous to make the packaging, and the consensus was to make it as over the top as we could. Why not go for it? I knew the beer was going to be called He’brew, and the tag line would be “Don’t Pass Out, Passover.” Every writer, radio voice, or amateur blogger who has ever interviewed me has asked, “So, do you ever get any negative feedback about the catch phrase?” The answer is, hardly ever. However, there was a brief period at the very beginning when I got some confused letters. Once in a while, people would say, “I think I’m offended, but I don’t know why. There’s nothing in particular that I find offensive. Is this blasphemous?” The original intention of the product was to reach those in the Jewish world called the “non-affiliated” Jews -- those who are Jewish by birth, who will define themselves as Jewish, but won’t do much about it. They don’t have the education, or the tools, or typically much desire to participate in the community. Quite often they have never had a particularly positive Jewish experience to justify any concern or curiosity for a more meaningful Jewish life. For them, identity has felt more a burden than a birthright. I had a very personal connection to that precise feeling: knowing you’re Jewish, being proud that you’re Jewish, but not doing, or even knowing how to try to do, much about it. We wanted the product to provoke a response. We wanted to riff off the Beastie Boys, Mel Brooks, Seinfeld. The whole point was to reach skateboarders, video gamers, smart-asses, hipster girls who were involved in the environment or politics or art or fashion -- whatever subculture all we Jewish kids were jumping into. There was nothing else on the supermarket shelves that was relevant to celebrating that type of Judaism. Instead, we were aiming for the realm of literary magazines, art shows, indie-band side projects. The idea was intentionally outrageous. We never thought the product would show up at a 11
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Jewish community center or at a synagogue. Tracy and I thought it was going to be for outlying pop-cultural Jews, much more like the future new-schoolJew projects of Heeb magazine and J-Dub Records. I was conscious from the beginning that we were trying to infuse the beer itself, the labels, the events we chose to participate in, with content so people could use it as an occasion to explore Jewish culture. The only other specifically Jewish products were matzoh, gefilte fish, and Manischevitz. There were some kosher wines that were great quality, but with nothing particularly Jewish about the content. It was kosher, made by Jews, for Jews, but with no added layer of education through the product itself. That was an important part of what I hoped to accomplish. In fact, kosher is not really an issue with beer. When it comes to beer, three rabbis will offer four answers. When I started, I didn’t even get the beer certified kosher. Most products made with only grains, hops, yeast, and water would be kosher anyway. Wine, with its sacramental tradition, demands intricate regulation, Talmudic discourse, mystical interpretation. Beer, perhaps considered the drink of the Egyptian overlords (or, more recently, the German beer hall-ers), was barely even regulated. Though the bumper sticker “Jews Don’t Drink Beer” loomed, I knew from experience that the stereotype had enough exceptions to disprove the rule. With varying levels of Judaic identification, plenty of Jewish guys populated microbrewing. Just at the top were Ken Grossman at Sierra, Pete Slosberg of Wicked Ale fame, Alan Newman and Matt Cohen from Magic Hat, Alan Sprints at Hair of the Dog, Jon Bloostein at Heartland Brewing, Alan Shapiro ( J-Bro -- now Sr., for our brethren in Seattle) of S.B.S. Imports, and of course the Rheingold family (not of the craft beer tribe, but from an earlier era of American brewing history). Countless brewers, reps, and staff have swung by the He’brew booth or a pint night to share the secret handshake. Each time that happens, it reinforces the existence of an unspoken, and rarely documented, underground Jewish brewing conspiracy. But five thousand years of beautiful tradition -- “from Moses to Sandy Koufax,” as John Goodman says in The Big Lebowski -- nevertheless could not muster a fraction of the rabbinic attention for beer that wine had earned. Anyway, the percent of people in northern California who were keeping 12
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kosher was minimal. But as I expanded to L.A., Chicago, and New York, I knew it would be important to get the certification. It wasn’t necessarily a huge selling point, but it was an obvious question. Every retailer would ask, “So it’s a kosher beer?” Almost a year later, I began working with a kosher supervisor1, Rabbi Lisbon at Kosher Supervision of America in L.A. Wonderful to work with, a real mensch, he cut me a deal on the Rabbi Seal of Approval, and he even let me slide on payments when I hit financial bottom a few years later. Looking for a way to make the beer, the beverage itself, somehow more Jewish, I decided to use pomegranate juice in the brewing process. Pomegranates are one of the Seven Sacred Species listed in the Torah (Deuteronomy 8:8). When Moses leads the Hebrews out of Egypt through the desert to the edge of what Abraham had known as the Promised Land, he sends spies into Canaan. They return with a famous remark: “It’s a land flowing with milk and honey.” They bring back what become the seven sacred species -- wheat, barley, pomegranate, figs, dates, grapes, and olives. Pure, delicious, unadulterated malted barley (or wheat) is the base ingredient in all high-quality all-malt, adjunct-free craft beers. I figured I’d work from that. I’d grown up with a pomegranate tree in a neighbor’s yard, which helped me imagine a connection between California and the Middle East. Putting pomegranate in the beer was intended more for symbolic purposes than flavor, although I did think the sweetness and tartness might complement the sweeter malts and more bitter and spicy hops. (Of course, I didn’t exactly know that at the time.) I went to the wholesale produce market at the edge of the Mission District at five a.m. and bought eight crates of pomegranates. A group of friends gathered around the floor of our apartment and squeezed the pomegranates by hand, cutting open the crowns and squeezing them into a five-gallon white bucket. We were watching ER to pass the time. On the show, the hospital doors fly open, and blood is spurting everywhere. Meanwhile, rich crimson pomegranate juice is pouring over everyone’s hands, dripping into the vessel between us. My cuticles were stained for weeks. 1 Especially with my original intention to reach unaffiliated Jews, kosher was even less important. However, as comes up later, when the organized and religious Jewish communities embraced He’brew, it became a priority to make sure everyone had confidence in the certification, so they could in fact include The Chosen Beers in the “sacred rites and rituals” of their lives.
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At the brewery the next day, Simon tossed the juice into the kettle. To pull out more of the flavor, we probably should’ve thrown it into the fermenter, but the boiling process basically pasteurized the pomegranate juice, which we figured was safer. (Didn’t need an Odwalla-style E. coli outbreak, which had happened that same month.) We thought it was a beautiful way to add a hint of uniqueness to the beer, and it gave some Jewish content to the actual liquid in the bottle. Though I was set on the name of the beer, I still needed a name for the company. I looked around at other beer companies and came to the conclusion that the way Sam Adams did it was pretty effective. The Boston Beer Company made Samuel Adams, which had several beer styles -- Boston Lager, Boston Ale, Cherry Wheat, etc. Each beer had individual names, and the brand was Samuel Adams. I have a perfect visual memory of the exact moment I thought of the slogan “The Chosen Beer.” Standing with the bathroom door slightly ajar, a couple feet from our bed, I was taking a leak, thinking how Budweiser claims to be the “King of Beers.” Miller is the “Champagne of Beers,” and Coors calls itself the “Banquet Beer,” however outdated that may sound. Shlong in hand, it came to me: We’ll call our baby The Chosen Beer. It seemed so obvious. From there, the shtick just started pouring fast and furious. Our first creation should clearly be Genesis Ale. And the first question at Passover every year is “Why is this night different from all other nights?” In town at one of our tastings, my buddy Eli’s brother, a Jewish doctor from Seattle named Cookie, dropped the suggestion, Why is this beer different from all other beers? To this day, Cookie’s inspiration remains the first line on the Genesis label. In the beginning, there was an idea, and it was good. A beer to celebrate the Jewish-American experience. For the company name, I truthfully can’t remember when I came up with the word shmaltz. Everybody loves to ask about that. It seems familiar and evocative, but most people are not exactly sure why. And it’s just fun to say. Inevitably, someone at a sales meeting will say, “Doesn’t that mean lard?” Shmaltz, in fact, is Yiddish for “chicken fat” -- an old-fashioned Jewish comfort food. Grandmothers would spread it on black bread as a snack, a nostalgic standard of Jewish cooking. I quickly realized Shmaltz worked as 14
GENESIS ACT 1: BEERS IN THE GARDEN
the company name on at least three levels. Besides the idea of a nouveau hand-crafted comfort food, comedians like Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Henny Youngman are often referred to as having a shmaltzy sense of humor -- that Catskills shtick that I thought was so appropriate for the brand. On top of that, as a dedicated craft beer, we’ve always said up-front that we don’t use adjuncts like rice or corn as fillers or cost-cutters. Though the origins may have started otherwise, these days major brewers use rice to make their beer cheaper and lighter (and less flavorful). The primary ingredient of every craft beer is malted barley, or wheat, or rye, and the word malt is right there in the middle of shmaltz. So it was, quite literally, a triple threat, a power trio: the trinity of Shmaltz. The way I wrote the first label is the way I wrote the thirteenth: I sat around doing research with the Torah open, and I started grabbing passages. The Genesis Ale label came together like a dream. I tried to tie together the cultural crossroads of the Middle East as the birthplace of civilization -- every major empire, from the ancient world through the World Wars, has crossed paths right in the land of Israel -- with the idea that California represented a cultural crossroads of its own, where east meets west, convergent energies and philosophies, a sense of opportunity and history and destiny. From the Golden Gate to the City of Gold. Just as I had my own identity crafted by my parents and my environment, by the pop culture around me and the history of California, the beer too has its own identity. I am proud of the fact there aren’t a lot of beer labels that quote from the Torah. And it’s not just irreverent. I was very serious about trying to make something that was funny, contemporary, and relevant to the Jewish experience I’d had, and wanted to share. I wanted the product to create experiences for people. I wanted somebody to be drinking He’brew and think, “Sweet, this is a cool moment.” Anchor Steam has an incredible history behind it -- they’re tied into (and in fact have helped create) an authentic San Francisco tradition. So much about that brand has meaning and substance. Through something as commonplace as beer, my brand allowed me to draw on the history of an entire civilization and make it my own playground, my own canvas -- to cram as much shtick as I could on a beer bottle and all the stuff that would go on around it. 15
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We wanted the label to shock and engage people. I used to say it was “flamboyantly Jewish.” We felt like we were targeting customers like ourselves: young, creative, the Lollapalooza, X- and Y-branded generations. Yet very quickly, and totally unpredictably, I would get a deluge of requests for the beer from some of the largest, most organized Jewish community groups around the country -- which made for some interesting reactions, given the art that we ended up using. We were talking to a couple of artists down the hall from us about creating an image for the label, and all of a sudden Tracy said, “Why are we having someone else do it? I can do this.” I said, I think that would be amazing. Tracy’s paintings have always been urgent and expressive, balancing structure and anarchy. Her work is abstract, for the most part -- very physical and lush. We talked about something referencing Chagall’s iconic painting of a modernist green violinist dancing through the center of a village. We wanted something that would be a kind of Fiddler on the Roof meets the Mission District. She did a bunch of prototypes, and the one we liked best looked like a giant dancing green rabbi looming over a cityscape from San Francisco to Jerusalem. It was supposed to be a bold statement -- “Wow, what is that?” Admittedly, it’s a pretty aggressive image. I liked everything about it, though I did appreciate that the green face was rather intense. Whether the average beer buyer looking at the bottle-wielding friendly Godzilla would get the Chagall reference was debatable, though over the years I have heard a few people make the connection. But we weren’t creating a product for the average beer buyer. On the shelf, you couldn’t miss it. The artwork definitely grabbed people walking down the beer aisle. At the time, many of the other craft-brew labels featured a dog, or a mountain, a fish, a sunset -- a lot of regional landmarks, usually reflecting the topography or the local wildlife. There was nothing like our label when it came out. I thought it did the job. But it also scared a few people. All these years later, the labels for our Coney Island beers now get a similar reaction. Nobody walks by without looking at those labels. If I put my business card on the bar, someone three stools down will holler, “What’s that?” The office manager at my wholesaler in Kansas recently blurted, “It’s kind of 16
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scary, and I’m afraid of clowns.” Luckily, when we put out He’brew, not many people said, “It’s scary, and I’m afraid of Jews.” We actually did clean up the image a bit. The rabbi had a slightly mangled mouth, so after we got the digital image we had a friend put a smile on his face. Our graphic-design friend Ramon made the lips red and straightened the rabbi’s teeth a bit. We trimmed up the Rasta-dread earlocks, and we were ready to roll. It certainly got us some instant recognition, some notoriety. For the most part, grocery store packaging is not the most provocative artistic endeavor. If that same image appeared on a Playbill for a Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, nobody would have batted an eyelash. But because it’s a beer label, people didn’t know how to take it. A few people thought it looked like the caricatures of Jews from Nazi Germany, but Tracy borrowed the rabbi’s nose directly from her father and me. The original artwork was probably three to four feet wide by two to three feet high. We rolled it up and brought it to my grandmother’s house to show it to her and my mother and my aunt. Sitting around a suburban coffee table at my Granny’s retirement community, it did not go over well. We unfurled this gorgeous, bright, powerful statement. All three women kindly complimented the background and cityscape, but they felt the face was grotesque. As an artist, Tracy wasn’t making Hallmark cards, and we weren’t trying to sell He’brew to grandmothers (or even mothers). Between the shtick, the outrageous label, the ridiculous names, and the hint of pomegranate, we felt we definitely had a one-of-a-kind story to tell. We had a narrative that would be my most complex, multi-layered attempt to create art, commerce, and meaning. And to create a party.
17
Kids From the label for Jewbelation Bar Mitzvah, 2OO9
dear ttb: these “children� are well over 21.
dear newsweek:
do Jews drink right to left?
Believe the HYPE!
APPENDIX
CHAPTER 1....... Genesis, Act 1: Beers In The Garden Theme appropriate but not encouraged: Coors Light, Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers First beer of the night: HE’BREW Origin Pomegranate Ale CHAPTER 2....... The Old Country Theme appropriate, also not particularly encouraged: Maccabee, or only slightly better, Goldstar
Sentimental favorite now long sold out, but nectar: Rejewvenator, Year of the Fig in honor of my grandmother who loved figs… and grammar
CHAPTER 3....... Let There Be Rock, Blood, And Revelation Theme appropriate and historically relevant: Abita Turbodog in a 32-ounce go-cup
Fertile Crescent City evolution: R.I.P.A. on RYE, our Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A. aged in Sazerac 6-Year rye whisky barrels
CHAPTER 4....... Underwater Kabbalah And A Mission Burrito Of Love Theme appropriate at a Mission St. taqueria: Negra Modelo though I’d probably just go strawberry or melon agua fresca
Welcome home to Bay Area Hop School: Anchor Liberty, Speakeasy Big Daddy, Magnolia Proving Ground, 21st Amendment Brew Free or Die, Russian River Pliny the Either CHAPTER 5....... Genesis, Act 2: West Of Eden Aka Exile Never Tasted So Good Hear O’ Israel, The Beer is One: Genesis Ale CHAPTER 6....... Conan The Distributor Self-distributed delights: Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous, Captain Lawrence Extra Gold
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APPENDIX CHAPTER 7....... Business School 001: Catholic School Girl Meets The Candyman Theme appropriate but not encouraged: Red Bull
Encouraged but should I be offended?: Lost Abbey Judgment Day.
Back in time at the Crow Bar in North Beach or wherever you find yourself:
the Sammy Davis Jr (Black and Tan with Guinness and Genesis. Even better sub North Coast Old #38 on Nitro)
CHAPTER 8....... Business School 002: Success For Dummies Theme appropriate, scientifically impossible without a time machine, likely to taste very bland, but Jewish : Rheingold Light (Thanks Dr. Joe!)
From my first year with wholesalers: Lagunitas Brown Shugga originally released in 1997 CHAPTER 9....... Finally, Business School 101, Hold The Viagra Theme appropriate, not encouraged, and thankfully not in existence: Evan’s He-brew or He-brew Is-real Good Beer
As a shout out to Homeboy Liquors: Dogfish Golden Shower/Era
As a shout out to inspirational Stouts: Bell’s Expedition, North Coast Old Rasputin CHAPTER 10..... Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory Theme appropriate and almost my career, twice: Mendocino Red Tail Ale (I’d probably go with Eye of the Hawk)
As a huge Thank you to Brooklyn Brewery for bringing He’brew to NYC: Local Number 2 Mazel tov to all those who submitted Beers Brewed for Weddings: Belgian Frambozen from Dennis at CB&Potts (CO), hopped up wheat from Jon at Power House Brewing
(OH), Wedding Belle Ale brewed by the bride and maid of honor with Brewdude Dixon now at Dunedin (FL), Wedding Alt (and every year for 11 anniversaries and counting) from Tom at Brewers Alley (MD), Scott’s Offering for Joe and Leah at Shorts (MI),
Kelso from Kelly at Greenpoint (NY), Luciernaga (The Firefly, originally O’Schneider
Wedding Ale) from Ron at Jolly Pumpkin (MI), and Nectar of the Hops for David from Redstone (CO) who points out that mead not beer stands as the original inspiration for the “honeymoon.”
Only one beer brewed for a divorce (I guess one would be enough): Burned and Bitter, smoked IPA from George at Water Street (WI)
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APPENDIX CHAPTER 11..... I Don’t Have The Cash For The Guns Or Ammo, But I Do Have $50,000 Of Credit For The Beer
Theme appropriate but do they serve beer in prison? Bagel Beer
Perfect beer for vacation in Hanoi: Bia Hoi (fresh, local draft delivered daily)
Beer to say I was very upset but then I got paid and recently you’ve been very nice to send me birthday cards the last few years, and I liked meeting your son who’s now the boss: Rogue Imperial Pilsner or Hazelnut Brown
CHAPTER 12..... Genesis, Act 3, And The Messiah I’d Been Waiting For Truly the beer I was waiting for and still love: Messiah Bold
For Darren my co-worker and Brent at Red Light Red Light: Barrel Aged Messiah in firstuse fresh Rittenhouse 100 rye whisky barrels
CHAPTER 13..... 40 Days And 40 Nights… And 40 Days And 40 Nights And… Repeat.
Theme appropriate, but not encouraged: Michelob Ultra and Crack
Favorite beer to debut the week before my tour stop in Philly at Monk’s, November 2003: Ommegang, Three Philosophers
CHAPTER 14..... Miraculous Jewbelation (This Chanukah, Candles Won’t Be The Only Thing Getting Lit)
Umm hmm well, lemme see, wait, I know: Miraculous Jewbelation. Ok well any Jewbelation
since each successive year can claim to be the Most Extreme Chanukah Beer ever created. CHAPTER 15..... Pomegranates And C cksuckers
*
Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A.: Though this beer failed as my ticket to making Sarah Silverman fall in love with me, it remains the totem beer for Shmaltz Brewing and possibly my life. Drink responsibly and please avoid arrest for verbal obscenity.
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APPENDIX CHAPTER 16..... Step Right Up! Welcome To The Freak Show A Four-In-One Beer Spectacle:
O Start the dance with an Albino Python (one that doesn’t blow up or sue you, see Ch. 18)
O throw down a Sword Swallower (our hoppy yet silky smooth tribute to the World’s Hottest and Nicest Sword Superstar),
O arise and take possession of a blood red Freaktobefest (ideally at our Freaktoberfest festival), and
O nail it home with a Human Blockhead (luscious and dangerous, just like the MC himself ).
O Somehow find yourself waking up in the Michael Jackson suite at the Brickskeller in D.C., happy, and without any (more) face tattoos.
CHAPTER 17..... They Came, They Tried To Kill Us, We Survived, Let’s Drink: Crisis, Resolution, Crisis, And The Ultimate Excel Spreadsheet
Beer we need to support: anything from a small brewer who got royally screwed by the Hop Crisis of 2007-2009 (and ongoing) but survived to brew again
A couple favorites: Ithaca Flower Power, Terrapin Rye Squared, Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
CHAPTER 18..... The Promised Land-ish Thematically appropriate and strongly encouraged: Better and better craft beer.
As Mike from Founders put it in his Beer Advocate column, it’s not “extreme” beer, it’s simply progress.
Last Call: Shmaltz Liquor: Jewbelation, R.I.P.A. or Blockhead whiskeys, micro distilled
with the help of St George’s Spirits, coming soon; oh, and with a goblet back of Vertical Jewbelation, a barrel aged blend of all 7 years. Enjoy the manna, L’Chaim!
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Original Press Release
“On the cusp” of profits right from the beginning 22
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Two Pillars of the Jewish Community
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Emails from the Tribe
You should really read this one because it shows much-loved enthusiasm. The “cool things” part after the recycling can is precious.
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The following are the 613 commandments and their source in scripture, as enumerated by Maimonides: To know there is a God Ex. 20:2 Not to even think that there are other gods besides Him Ex. 20:3 To know that He is One Deut. 6:4 To love Him Deut. 6:5 To fear Him Deut. 10:20 To sanctify His Name Lev. 22:32 Not to profane His Name Lev. 22:32 Not to destroy objects associated with His Name Deut. 12:4 To listen to the prophet speaking in His Name Deut. 18:15 Not to test the prophet unduly Deut. 6:16 To emulate His ways Deut. 28:9 To cleave to those who know Him Deut. 10:20 To love other Jews Lev. 19:18 To love converts Deut. 10:19 Not to hate fellow Jews Lev. 19:17 To reprove a sinner Lev. 19:17 Not to embarrass others Lev. 19:17 Not to oppress the weak Ex. 22:21 Not to speak derogatorily of others Lev. 19:16 Not to take revenge Lev. 19:18 Not to bear a grudge Lev. 19:18 To learn Torah Deut. 6:7 To honor those who teach and know Torah Lev. 19:32 Not to inquire into idolatry Lev. 19:4 Not to follow the whims of your heart or what your eyes see Num. 15:39 Not to blaspheme Ex. 22:27 Not to worship idols in the manner they are worshiped Ex. 20:6 Not to worship idols in the four ways we worship God Ex. 20:6 Not to make an idol for yourself Ex. 20:5 Not to make an idol for others Lev. 19:4 Not to make human forms even for decorative purposes Ex. 20:21 Not to turn a city to idolatry Deut. 13:14 To burn a city that has turned to idol worship Deut. 13:17 Not to rebuild it as a city Deut. 13:17 Not to derive benefit from it Deut. 13:18 Not to missionize an individual to idol worship Deut. 13:12 Not to love the idolater Deut. 13:9 Not to cease hating the idolater Deut. 13:9 Not to save the idolater Deut. 13:9 Not to say anything in the idolater’s defense Deut. 13:9 Not to refrain from incriminating the idolater Deut. 13:9 Not to prophesize in the name of idolatry Deut. 13:14 Not to listen to a false prophet Deut. 13:4 Not to prophesize falsely in the name of God Deut. 18:20 Not to be afraid of killing the false prophet Deut. 18:22 Not to swear in the name of an idol Ex. 23:13 Not to perform ov (medium) Lev. 19:31 Not to perform yidoni (“magical seer”) Lev. 19:31 Not to pass your children through the fire to Molech Lev. 18:21 Not to erect a pillar in a public place of worship Deut. 16:22 Not to bow down before a smooth stone Lev. 26:1 Not to plant a tree in the Temple courtyard Deut. 16:21 To destroy idols and their accessories Deut. 12:2 Not to derive benefit from idols and their accessories Deut. 7:26 Not to derive benefit from ornaments of idols Deut. 7:25 Not to make a covenant with idolaters Deut. 7:2 Not to show favor to them Deut. 7:2 Not to let them dwell in the Land of Israel Ex. 23:33 Not to imitate them in customs and clothing Lev. 20:23 Not to be superstitious Lev. 19:26 Not to go into a trance to foresee events, etc. Deut. 18:10 Not to engage in astrology Lev. 19:26 Not to mutter incantations Deut. 18:11 Not to attempt to contact the dead Deut. 18:11 Not to consult the ov Deut. 18:11 Not to consult the yidoni Deut. 18:11 Not to perform acts of magic Deut. 18:10
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Men must not shave the hair off the sides of their head Lev. 19:27 Men must not shave their beards with a razor Lev. 19:27 Men must not wear women’s clothing Deut. 22:5 Women must not wear men’s clothing Deut. 22:5 Not to tattoo the skin Lev. 19:28 Not to tear the skin in mourning Deut. 14:1 Not to make a bald spot in mourning Deut. 14:1 To repent and confess wrongdoings Num. 5:7 To say the Shema twice daily Deut. 6:7 To serve the Almighty with prayer Ex. 23:25 The Kohanim must bless the Jewish nation daily Num. 6:23 To wear tefillin (phylacteries) on the head Deut. 6:8 To bind tefillin on the arm Deut. 6:8 To put a mezuzah on each door post Deut. 6:9 Each male must write a Torah scroll Deut. 31:19 The king must have a separate Sefer Torah for himself Deut. 17:18 To have tzitzit on four-cornered garments Num. 15:38 To bless the Almighty after eating Deut. 8:10 To circumcise all males on the eighth day after their birth Lev. 12:3 To rest on the seventh day Ex. 23:12 Not to do prohibited labor on the seventh day Ex. 20:11 The court must not inflict punishment on Shabbat Ex. 35:3 Not to walk outside the city boundary on Shabbat Ex. 16:29 To sanctify the day with Kiddush and Havdalah Ex. 20:9 To rest from prohibited labor on Yom Kippur Lev. 23:32 Not to do prohibited labor on Yom Kippur Lev. 23:32 To afflict yourself on Yom Kippur Lev. 16:29 Not to eat or drink on Yom Kippur Lev. 23:29 To rest on the first day of Passover Lev. 23:7 Not to do prohibited labor on the first day of Passover Lev. 23:8 To rest on the seventh day of Passover Lev. 23:8 Not to do prohibited labor on the seventh day of Passover Lev. 23:8 To rest on Shavuot Lev. 23:21 Not to do prohibited labor on Shavuot Lev. 23:21 To rest on Rosh Hashanah Lev. 23:24 Not to do prohibited labor on Rosh Hashanah Lev. 23:25 To rest on Sukkot Lev. 23:35 Not to do prohibited labor on Sukkot Lev. 23:35 To rest on Shemini Atzeret Lev. 23:36 Not to do prohibited labor on Shemini Atzeret Lev. 23:36 Not to eat chametz on the afternoon of the 14th day of Nissan Deut. 16:3 To destroy all chametz on 14th day of Nissan Ex. 12:15 Not to eat chametz all seven days of Passover Ex. 13:3 Not to eat mixtures containing chametz all seven days of Passover Ex. 12:20 Not to see chametz in your domain seven days Ex. 13:7 Not to find chametz in your domain seven days Ex. 12:19 To eat matzah on the first night of Passover Ex. 12:18 To relate the Exodus from Egypt on that night Ex. 13:8 To hear the Shofar on the first day of Tishrei (Rosh Hashanah) Num. 9:1 To dwell in a Sukkah for the seven days of Sukkot Lev. 23:42 To take up a Lulav and Etrog all seven days Lev. 23:40 Each man must give a half shekel annually Ex. 30:13 Courts must calculate to determine when a new month begins Ex. 12:2 To afflict oneself and cry out before God in times of calamity Num. 10:9 To marry a wife by means of ketubah and kiddushin Deut. 22:13 Not to have sexual relations with women not thus married Deut. 23:18 Not to withhold food, clothing, and sexual relations from your wife Ex. 21:10 To have children with one’s wife Gen. 1:28 To issue a divorce by means of a Get document Deut. 24:1 A man must not remarry his ex-wife after she has married someone else Deut. 24:4 To perform yibbum (marry the widow of one’s childless brother) Deut. 25:5 To perform halizah (free the widow of one’s childless brother from yibbum) Deut. 25:9 The widow must not remarry until the ties with her brother-in-law are removed (by halizah) Deut. 25:5 The court must fine one who sexually seduces a maiden Ex. 22:15-16 The rapist must marry the maiden Deut. 22:29
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613 Mitzvot He is never allowed to divorce her Deut. 22:29 The slanderer must remain married to his wife Deut. 22:19 He must not divorce her Deut. 22:19 To fulfill the laws of the Sotah Num. 5:30 Not to put oil on her meal offering (as usual) Num. 5:15 Not to put frankincense on her meal offering (as usual) Num. 5:15 Not to have sexual relations with your mother Lev. 18:7 Not to have sexual relations with your father’s wife Lev. 18:8 Not to have sexual relations with your sister Lev. 18:9 Not to have sexual relations with your father’s wife’s daughter Lev. 18:11 Not to have sexual relations with your son’s daughter Lev. 18:10 Not to have sexual relations with your daughter Lev. 18:10 Not to have sexual relations with your daughter’s daughter Lev. 18:10 Not to have sexual relations with a woman and her daughter Lev. 18:17 Not to have sexual relations with a woman and her son’s daughter Lev. 18:17 Not to have sexual relations with a woman and her daughter’s daughter Lev. 18:17 Not to have sexual relations with your father’s sister Lev. 18:12 Not to have sexual relations with your mother’s sister Lev. 18:13 Not to have sexual relations with your father’s brother’s wife Lev. 18:14 Not to have sexual relations with your son’s wife Lev. 18:15 Not to have sexual relations with your brother’s wife Lev. 18:16 Not to have sexual relations with your wife’s sister Lev. 18:18 A man must not have sexual relations with an animal Lev. 18:23 A woman must not have sexual relations with an animal Lev. 18:23 For men not to use sex to gain ‘ownership’ over other menLev. 18:22 Not to have sexual relations with your father Lev. 18:7 Not to have sexual relations with your father’s brother Lev. 18:14 Not to have sexual relations with someone else’s wife Lev. 18:20 Not to have sexual relations with a menstrually impure woman Lev. 18:19 Not to marry non-Jews Deut. 7:3 Not to let Moabite and Ammonite males marry into the Jewish people Deut. 23:4 Not to prevent a third-generation Egyptian convert from marrying into the Jewish people Deut. 23:8-9 Not to refrain from marrying a third generation Edomite convert Deut. 23:8-9 Not to let a mamzer (a child born due to an illegal relationship) marry into the Jewish people Deut. 23:3 Not to let a eunuch marry into the Jewish people Deut. 23:2 Not to offer to God any castrated male animals Lev. 22:24 The High Priest must not marry a widow Lev. 21:14 The High Priest must not have sexual relations with a widow even outside of marriage Lev. 21:15 The High Priest must marry a virgin maiden Lev. 21:13 A Kohen (priest) must not marry a divorcee Lev. 21:7 A Kohen must not marry a zonah (a woman who has had a forbidden sexual relationship) Lev. 21:7 A Kohen must not marry a chalalah (“a desecrated person”) (party to or product of 169-172) Lev. 21:7 Not to make pleasurable (sexual) contact with any forbidden woman Lev. 18:6 To examine the signs of animals to distinguish between kosher and non-kosher Lev. 11:2 To examine the signs of fowl to distinguish between kosher and non-kosher Deut. 14:11 To examine the signs of fish to distinguish between kosher and non-kosher Lev. 11:9 To examine the signs of locusts to distinguish between kosher and non-kosher Lev. 11:21 Not to eat non-kosher animals Lev. 11:4 Not to eat non-kosher fowl Lev. 11:13 Not to eat non-kosher fish Lev. 11:11 Not to eat non-kosher flying insects Deut. 14:19 Not to eat non-kosher creatures that crawl on land Lev. 11:41 Not to eat non-kosher maggots Lev. 11:44 Not to eat worms found in fruit on the ground Lev. 11:42 Not to eat creatures that live in water other than (kosher) fish Lev. 11:43 Not to eat the meat of an animal that died without ritual slaughter Deut. 14:21 Not to benefit from an ox condemned to be stoned Ex. 21:28 Not to eat meat of an animal that was mortally wounded Ex. 22:30 Not to eat a limb torn off a living creature Deut. 12:23 Not to eat blood Lev. 3:17 Not to eat certain fats of clean animals Lev. 3:17 Not to eat the sinew of the thigh Gen. 32:33
Not to eat mixtures of milk and meat cooked together Ex. 23:19 Not to cook meat and milk together Ex. 34:26 Not to eat bread from new grain before the Omer Lev. 23:14 Not to eat parched grains from new grain before the Omer Lev. 23:14 Not to eat ripened grains from new grain before the Omer Lev. 23:14 Not to eat fruit of a tree during its first three years Lev. 19:23 Not to eat diverse seeds planted in a vineyard Deut. 22:9 Not to eat untithed fruits Lev. 22:15 Not to drink wine poured in service to idols Deut. 32:38 To ritually slaughter an animal before eating it Deut. 12:21 Not to slaughter an animal and its offspring on the same day Lev. 22:28 To cover the blood (of a slaughtered beast or fowl) with earth Lev. 17:13 To send away the mother bird before taking its children Deut. 22:6 To release the mother bird if she was taken from the nest Deut. 22:7 Not to swear falsely in God’s Name Lev. 19:12 Not to take God’s Name in vain Ex. 20:7 Not to deny possession of something entrusted to you Lev. 19:11 Not to swear in denial of a monetary claim Lev. 19:11 To swear in God’s Name to confirm the truth when deemed necessary by court Deut. 10:20 To fulfill what was uttered and to do what was avowed Deut. 23:24 Not to break oaths or vows Num. 30:3 For oaths and vows annulled, there are the laws of annulling vows explicit in the Torah Num. 30:3 The Nazir must let his hair grow Num. 6:5 He must not cut his hair Num. 6:5 He must not drink wine, wine mixtures, or wine vinegar Num. 6:3 He must not eat fresh grapes Num. 6:3 He must not eat raisins Num. 6:3 He must not eat grape seeds Num. 6:4 He must not eat grape skins Num. 6:4 He must not be under the same roof as a corpse Num. 6:6 He must not come into contact with the dead Num. 6:7 He must shave his head after bringing sacrifices upon completion of his Nazirite period Num. 6:9 To estimate the value of people as determined by the Torah Lev. 27:2 To estimate the value of consecrated animals Lev. 27:12-13 To estimate the value of consecrated houses Lev. 27:14 To estimate the value of consecrated fields Lev. 27:16 Carry out the laws of interdicting possessions (cherem) Lev. 27:28 Not to sell the cherem Lev. 27:28 Not to redeem the cherem Lev. 27:28 Not to plant diverse seeds together Lev. 19:19 Not to plant grains or greens in a vineyard Deut. 22:9 Not to crossbreed animals Lev. 19:19 Not to work different animals together Deut. 22:10 Not to wear shaatnez, a cloth woven of wool and linen Deut. 22:11 To leave a corner of the field uncut for the poor Lev. 19:10 Not to reap that corner Lev. 19:9 To leave gleanings Lev. 19:9 Not to gather the gleanings Lev. 19:9 To leave the gleanings of a vineyard Lev. 19:10 Not to gather the gleanings of a vineyard Lev. 19:10 To leave the unformed clusters of grapes Lev. 19:10 Not to pick the unformed clusters of grapes Lev. 19:10 To leave the forgotten sheaves in the field Deut. 24:19 Not to retrieve them Deut. 24:19 To separate the “tithe for the poor” Deut. 14:28 To give charity Deut. 15:8 Not to withhold charity from the poor Deut. 15:7 To set aside Terumah Gedolah (gift for the Kohen) Deut. 18:4 The Levite must set aside a tenth of his tithe Num. 18:26 Not to preface one tithe to the next, but separate them in their proper order Ex. 22:28 A non-Kohen must not eat Terumah[clarification needed] Lev. 22:10 A hired worker or a Jewish bondsman of a Kohen must not eat Terumah Lev. 22:10 An uncircumcised Kohen must not eat Terumah Ex. 12:48 An impure Kohen must not eat Terumah Lev. 22:4 A chalalah (party to #s 169-172 above) must not eat Terumah Lev. 22:12 To set aside Ma’aser (tithe) each planting year and give it to a Levite Num. 18:24
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613 Mitzvot To set aside the second tithe (Ma’aser Sheni) Deut. 14:22 Not to spend its redemption money on anything but food, drink, or ointment Deut. 26:14 Not to eat Ma’aser Sheni while impure Deut. 26:14 A mourner on the first day after death must not eat Ma’aser Sheni Deut. 26:14 Not to eat Ma’aser Sheni grains outside Jerusalem Deut. 12:17 Not to eat Ma’aser Sheni wine products outside Jerusalem Deut. 12:17 Not to eat Ma’aser Sheni oil outside Jerusalem Deut. 12:17 The fourth year crops must be totally for holy purposes like Ma’aser Sheni Lev. 19:24 To read the confession of tithes every fourth and seventh year Deut. 26:13 To set aside the first fruits and bring them to the Temple Ex. 23:19 The Kohanim must not eat the first fruits outside Jerusalem Deut. 12:17 To read the Torah portion pertaining to their presentation Deut. 26:5 To set aside a portion of dough for a Kohen Num. 15:20 To give the foreleg, two cheeks, and abomasum of slaughtered animals to a Kohen Deut. 18:3 To give the first shearing of sheep to a Kohen Deut. 18:4 To redeem firstborn sons and give the money to a Kohen Num. 18:15 To redeem the firstborn donkey by giving a lamb to a Kohen Ex. 13:13 To break the neck of the donkey if the owner does not intend to redeem it Ex. 13:13 To rest the land during the seventh year by not doing any work which enhances growth Ex. 34:21 Not to work the land during the seventh year Lev. 25:4 Not to work with trees to produce fruit during that year Lev. 25:4 Not to reap crops that grow wild that year in the normal manner Lev. 25:5 Not to gather grapes which grow wild that year in the normal way Lev. 25:5 To leave free all produce which grew in that year Ex. 23:11 To release all loans during the seventh year Deut. 15:2 Not to pressure or claim from the borrower Deut. 15:2 Not to refrain from lending immediately before the release of the loans for fear of monetary loss Deut. 15:9 The Sanhedrin must count seven groups of seven years Lev. 25:8 The Sanhedrin must sanctify the fiftieth year Lev. 25:10 To blow the Shofar on the tenth of Tishrei to free the slaves Lev. 25:9 Not to work the soil during the fiftieth year (Jubilee)Lev. 25:11 Not to reap in the normal manner that which grows wild in the fiftieth year Lev. 25:11 Not to pick grapes which grew wild in the normal manner in the fiftieth year Lev. 25:11 Carry out the laws of sold family properties Lev. 25:24 Not to sell the land in Israel indefinitely Lev. 25:23 Carry out the laws of houses in walled cities Lev. 25:29 The Tribe of Levi must not be given a portion of the land in Israel, rather they are given cities to dwell in Deut. 18:1 The Levites must not take a share in the spoils of war Deut. 18:1 To give the Levites cities to inhabit and their surrounding fields Num. 35:2 Not to sell the fields but they shall remain the Levites’ before and after the Jubilee year Lev. 25:34 To build a Temple Ex. 25:8 Not to build the altar with stones hewn by metal Standard->Ex. 20:24 TLT Yemenite->Ex. 20:23 Not to climb steps to the altar Ex. 20:27 To show reverence to the Temple Lev. 19:30 To guard the Temple area Num. 18:2 Not to leave the Temple unguarded Num. 18:5 To prepare the anointing oil Ex. 30:31 Not to reproduce the anointing oil Ex. 30:32 Not to anoint with anointing oil Ex. 30:32 Not to reproduce the incense formula Ex. 30:37 Not to burn anything on the Golden Altar besides incense Ex. 30:9 The Levites must transport the ark on their shoulders Num. 7:9 Not to remove the staves from the ark Ex. 25:15 The Levites must work in the Temple Num. 18:23 No Levite must do another’s work of either a Kohen or a Levite Num. 18:3 To dedicate the Kohen for service Lev. 21:8 The work of the Kohanim’s shifts must be equal during holidays Deut. 18:6-8 The Kohanim must wear their priestly garments during service Ex. 28:2 Not to tear the priestly garments Ex. 28:32 The Kohen Gadol ‘s breastplate must not be loosened from the Efod Ex. 28:28 A Kohen must not enter the Temple intoxicated Lev. 10:9 A Kohen must not enter the Temple with his head uncovered Lev. 10:6
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A Kohen must not enter the Temple with torn clothes Lev. 10:6 A Kohen must not enter the Temple indiscriminately Lev. 16:2 A Kohen must not leave the Temple during service Lev. 10:7 To send the impure from the Temple Num. 5:2 Impure people must not enter the Temple Num. 5:3 Impure people must not enter the Temple Mount area Deut. 23:11 Impure Kohanim must not do service in the temple Lev. 22:2 An impure Kohen, following immersion, must wait until after sundown before returning to service Lev. 22:7 A Kohen must wash his hands and feet before service Ex. 30:19 A Kohen with a physical blemish must not enter the sanctuary or approach the altar Lev. 21:23 A Kohen with a physical blemish must not serve Lev. 21:17 A Kohen with a temporary blemish must not serve Lev. 21:17 One who is not a Kohen must not serve Num. 18:4 To offer only unblemished animals Lev. 22:21 Not to dedicate a blemished animal for the altar Lev. 22:20 Not to slaughter it Lev. 22:22 Not to sprinkle its blood Lev. 22:24 Not to burn its fat Lev. 22:22 Not to offer a temporarily blemished animal Deut. 17:1 Not to sacrifice blemished animals even if offered by non-Jews Lev. 22:25 Not to inflict wounds upon dedicated animals Lev. 22:21 To redeem dedicated animals which have become disqualified Deut. 12:15 To offer only animals which are at least eight days old Lev. 22:27 Not to offer animals bought with the wages of a harlot or the animal exchanged for a dog Deut. 23:19 Not to burn honey or yeast on the altar Lev. 2:11 To salt all sacrifices Lev. 2:13 Not to omit the salt from sacrifices Lev. 2:13 Carry out the procedure of the burnt offering as prescribed in the Torah Lev. 1:3 Not to eat its meat Deut. 12:17 Carry out the procedure of the sin offering Lev. 6:18 Not to eat the meat of the inner sin offering Lev. 6:23 Not to decapitate a fowl brought as a sin offering Lev. 5:8 Carry out the procedure of the guilt offering Lev. 7:1 The Kohanim must eat the sacrificial meat in the Temple Ex. 29:33 The Kohanim must not eat the meat outside the Temple courtyard Deut. 12:17 A non-Kohen must not eat sacrificial meat Ex. 29:33 To follow the procedure of the peace offering Lev. 7:11 Not to eat the meat of minor sacrifices before sprinkling the blood Deut. 12:17 To bring meal offerings as prescribed in the Torah Lev. 2:1 Not to put oil on the meal offerings of wrongdoers Lev. 5:11 Not to put frankincense on the meal offerings of wrongdoers Lev. 3:11 Not to eat the meal offering of the High Priest Lev. 6:16 Not to bake a meal offering as leavened bread Lev. 6:10 The Kohanim must eat the remains of the meal offerings Lev. 6:9 To bring all avowed and freewill offerings to the Temple on the first subsequent festival Deut. 12:5-6 Not to withhold payment incurred by any vow Deut. 23:22 To offer all sacrifices in the Temple Deut. 12:11 To bring all sacrifices from outside Israel to the Temple Deut. 12:26 Not to slaughter sacrifices outside the courtyard Lev. 17:4 Not to offer any sacrifices outside the courtyard Deut. 12:13 To offer two lambs every day Num. 28:3 To light a fire on the altar every day Lev. 6:6 Not to extinguish this fire Lev. 6:6 To remove the ashes from the altar every day Lev. 6:3 To burn incense every day Ex. 30:7 To light the Menorah every day Ex. 27:21 The Kohen Gadol (“High Priest”) must bring a meal offering every day Lev. 6:13 To bring two additional lambs as burnt offerings on Shabbat Num. 28:9 To make the show bread Ex. 25:30 To bring additional offerings on Rosh Chodesh (“ The New Month”) Num. 28:11 To bring additional offerings on Passover Num. 28:19 To offer the wave offering from the meal of the new wheat Lev. 23:10 Each man must count the Omer - seven weeks from the day the new wheat offering was brought Lev. 23:15
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613 Mitzvot To bring additional offerings on Shavuot Num. 28:26 To bring two leaves to accompany the above sacrifice Lev. 23:17 To bring additional offerings on Rosh Hashana Num. 29:2 To bring additional offerings on Yom Kippur Num. 29:8 To bring additional offerings on Sukkot Num. 29:13 To bring additional offerings on Shmini Atzeret Num. 29:35 Not to eat sacrifices which have become unfit or blemished Deut. 14:3 Not to eat from sacrifices offered with improper intentions Lev. 7:18 Not to leave sacrifices past the time allowed for eating them Lev. 22:30 Not to eat from that which was left over Lev. 19:8 Not to eat from sacrifices which became impure Lev. 7:19 An impure person must not eat from sacrifices Lev. 7:20 To burn the leftover sacrifices Lev. 7:17 To burn all impure sacrifices Lev. 7:19 To follow the procedure of Yom Kippur in the sequence prescribed in Parshah Acharei Mot (“After the death of Aaron’s sons...”) Lev. 16:3 One who profaned property must repay what he profaned plus a fifth and bring a sacrifice Lev. 5:16 Not to work consecrated animals Deut. 15:19 Not to shear the fleece of consecrated animals Deut. 15:19 To slaughter the paschal sacrifice at the specified time Ex. 12:6 Not to slaughter it while in possession of leaven Ex. 23:18 Not to leave the fat overnight Ex. 23:18 To slaughter the second Paschal Lamb Num. 9:11 To eat the Paschal Lamb with matzah and Marror on the night of the fourteenth of Nissan Ex. 12:8 To eat the second Paschal Lamb on the night of the 15th of Iyar Num. 9:11 Not to eat the paschal meat raw or boiled Ex. 12:9 Not to take the paschal meat from the confines of the group Ex. 12:46 An apostate must not eat from it Ex. 12:43 A permanent or temporary hired worker must not eat from it Ex. 12:45 An uncircumcised male must not eat from it Ex. 12:48 Not to break any bones from the paschal offering Ex. 12:46 Not to break any bones from the second paschal offering Num. 9:12 Not to leave any meat from the paschal offering over until morning Ex. 12:10 Not to leave the second paschal meat over until morning Num. 9:12 Not to leave the meat of the holiday offering of the 14th until the 16th Deut. 16:4 To be seen at the Temple on Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot Deut. 16:16 To celebrate on these three Festivals (bring a peace offering) Ex. 23:14 To rejoice on these three Festivals (bring a peace offering) Deut. 16:14 Not to appear at the Temple without offerings Deut. 16:16 Not to refrain from rejoicing with, and giving gifts to, the Levites Deut. 12:19 To assemble all the people on the Sukkot following the seventh year Deut. 31:12 To set aside the firstborn animals Ex. 13:12 The Kohanim must not eat unblemished firstborn animals outside Jerusalem Deut. 12:17 Not to redeem the firstborn Num. 18:17 Separate the tithe from animals Lev. 27:32 Not to redeem the tithe Lev. 27:33 Every person must bring a sin offering (in the temple) for his transgression Lev. 4:27 Bring an asham talui (temple offering) when uncertain of guilt Lev. 5:17-18 Bring an asham vadai (temple offering) when guilt is ascertained Lev. 5:25 Bring an oleh v’yored (temple offering) offering (if the person is wealthy, an animal; if poor, a bird or meal offering) Lev. 5:7-11 The Sanhedrin must bring an offering (in the Temple) when it rules in error Lev. 4:13 A woman who had a running (vaginal) issue must bring an offering (in the Temple) after she goes to the Mikveh Lev. 15:28-29 A woman who gave birth must bring an offering (in the Temple) after she goes to the Mikveh Lev. 12:6 A man who had a running (unnatural urinary) issue must bring an offering (in the Temple) after he goes to the Mikveh Lev. 15:13-14 A metzora must bring an offering (in the Temple) after going to the Mikveh Lev. 14:10 Not to substitute another beast for one set apart for sacrifice Lev. 27:10 The new animal, in addition to the substituted one, retains consecration Lev. 27:10 Not to change consecrated animals from one type of offering to another Lev. 27:26 Carry out the laws of impurity of the dead Num. 19:14 Carry out the procedure of the Red Heifer (Para Aduma) Num. 19:2
Carry out the laws of the sprinkling water Num. 19:21 Rule the laws of human tzara’at as prescribed in the Torah Lev. 13:12 The metzora must not remove his signs of impurity Deut. 24:8 The metzora must not shave signs of impurity in his hair Lev. 13:33 The metzora must publicize his condition by tearing his garments, allowing his hair to grow and covering his lips Lev. 13:45 Carry out the prescribed rules for purifying the metzora Lev. 14:2 The metzora must shave off all his hair prior to purification Lev. 14:9 Carry out the laws of tzara’at of clothing Lev. 13:47 Carry out the laws of tzara’at of houses Lev. 13:34 Observe the laws of menstrual impurity Lev. 15:19 Observe the laws of impurity caused by childbirth Lev. 12:2 Observe the laws of impurity caused by a woman’s running issue Lev. 15:25 Observe the laws of impurity caused by a man’s running issue (irregular ejaculation of infected semen) Lev. 15:3 Observe the laws of impurity caused by a dead beast Lev. 11:39 Observe the laws of impurity caused by the eight shratzim (insects) Lev. 11:29 Observe the laws of impurity of a seminal emission (regular ejaculation, with normal semen) Lev. 15:16 Observe the laws of impurity concerning liquid and solid foods Lev. 11:34 Every impure person must immerse himself in a Mikvah to become pure Lev. 15:16 The court must judge the damages incurred by a goring ox Ex. 21:28 The court must judge the damages incurred by an animal eating Ex. 22:4 The court must judge the damages incurred by a pit Ex. 21:33 The court must judge the damages incurred by fire Ex. 22:5 Not to steal money stealthily Lev. 19:11 The court must implement punitive measures against the thief Ex. 21:37 Each individual must ensure that his scales and weights are accurate Lev. 19:36 Not to commit injustice with scales and weights Lev. 19:35 Not to possess inaccurate scales and weights even if they are not for use Deut. 25:13 Not to move a boundary marker to steal someone’s property Deut. 19:14 Not to kidnap Standard->Ex. 20:14 TLT Yemenite->Ex. 20:13 Not to rob openly Lev. 19:13 Not to withhold wages or fail to repay a debt Lev. 19:13 Not to covet and scheme to acquire another’s possession Standard>Ex. 20:15 TLT Yemenite->Ex. 20:14 Not to desire another’s possession Standard->Deut. 5:19 Yemenite>Deut. 5:18 Return the robbed object or its value Lev. 5:23 Not to ignore a lost object Deut. 22:3 Return the lost object Deut. 22:1 The court must implement laws against the one who assaults another or damages another’s property Ex. 21:18 Not to murder Standard->Ex. 20:13 TLT Yemenite->Ex. 20:12 Not to accept monetary restitution to atone for the murderer Num. 35:31 The court must send the accidental murderer to a city of refuge Num. 35:25 Not to accept monetary restitution instead of being sent to a city of refuge Num. 35:32 Not to kill the murderer before he stands trial Num. 35:12 Save someone being pursued even by taking the life of the pursuer Deut. 25:12 Not to pity the pursuer Num. 35:12 Not to stand idly by if someone’s life is in danger Lev. 19:16 Designate cities of refuge and prepare routes of access Deut. 19:3 Break the neck of a calf by the river valley following an unsolved murder Deut. 21:4 Not to work nor plant that river valley Deut. 21:4 Not to allow pitfalls and obstacles to remain on your property Deut. 22:8 Make a guard rail around flat roofs Deut. 22:8
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613 Mitzvot Not to put a stumbling block before a blind man (nor give harmful advice) Lev. 19:14 Help another remove the load from a beast which can no longer carry it Ex. 23:5 Help others load their beast Deut. 22:4 Not to leave others distraught with their burdens (but to help either load or unload) Deut. 22:4 Conduct sales according to Torah law Lev. 25:14 Not to overcharge or underpay for an article Lev. 25:14 Not to insult or harm anybody with words Lev. 25:17 Not to cheat a convert monetarily Ex. 22:20 Not to insult or harm a convert with words Ex. 22:20 Purchase a Hebrew slave in accordance with the prescribed laws Ex. 21:2 Not to sell him as a slave is sold Lev. 25:42 Not to work him oppressively Lev. 25:43 Not to allow a non-Jew to work him oppressively Lev. 25:53 Not to have him do menial slave labor Lev. 25:39 Give him gifts when he goes free Deut. 15:14 Not to send him away empty-handed Deut. 15:13 Redeem Jewish maidservants Ex. 21:8 Betroth the Jewish maidservant Ex. 21:8 The master must not sell his maidservant Ex. 21:8 Canaanite slaves must work forever unless injured in one of their limbs Lev. 25:46 Not to extradite a slave who fled to (Biblical) Israel Deut. 23:16 Not to wrong a slave who has come to Israel for refuge Deut. 23:16 The courts must carry out the laws of a hired worker and hired guard Ex. 22:9 Pay wages on the day they were earned Deut. 24:15 Not to delay payment of wages past the agreed time Lev. 19:13 The hired worker may eat from the unharvested crops where he works Deut. 23:25 The worker must not eat while on hired time Deut. 23:26 The worker must not take more than he can eat Deut. 23:25 Not to muzzle an ox while plowing Deut. 25:4 The courts must carry out the laws of a borrower Ex. 22:13 The courts must carry out the laws of an unpaid guard Ex. 22:6 Lend to the poor and destitute Ex. 22:24 Not to press them for payment if you know they don’t have it Ex. 22:24 Press the idolater for payment Deut. 15:3 The creditor must not forcibly take collateral Deut. 24:10 Return the collateral to the debtor when needed Deut. 24:13 Not to delay its return when needed Deut. 24:12 Not to demand collateral from a widow Deut. 24:17 Not to demand as collateral utensils needed for preparing food Deut. 24:6 Not to lend with interest Lev. 25:37 Not to borrow with interest Deut. 23:20 Not to intermediate in an interest loan, guarantee, witness, or write the promissory note Ex. 22:24 Lend to and borrow from idolaters with interest Deut. 23:21 The courts must carry out the laws of the plaintiff, admitter, or denier Ex. 22:8 Carry out the laws of the order of inheritance Num. 27:8 Appoint judges Deut. 16:18 Not to appoint judges who are not familiar with judicial procedure Deut. 1:17 Decide by majority in case of disagreement Ex. 23:2 The court must not execute through a majority of one; at least a majority of two is required Ex. 23:2 A judge who presented an acquittal plea must not present an argument for conviction in capital cases Deut. 23:2 The courts must carry out the death penalty of stoning Deut. 22:24 The courts must carry out the death penalty of burning Lev. 20:14 The courts must carry out the death penalty of the sword Ex. 21:20 The courts must carry out the death penalty of strangulation Lev. 20:10 The courts must hang those stoned for blasphemy or idolatry Deut. 21:22 Bury the executed on the day they are killed Deut. 21:23 Not to delay burial overnight Deut. 21:23 The court must not let the sorcerer live Ex. 22:17 The court must give lashes to the wrongdoer Deut. 25:2 The court must not exceed the prescribed number of lashes Deut. 25:3 The court must not kill anybody on circumstantial evidence Ex. 23:7 The court must not punish anybody who was forced to do a crime Deut. 22:26 A judge must not pity the murderer or assaulter at the trial Deut. 19:13 A judge must not have mercy on the poor man at the trial Lev. 19:15 A judge must not respect the great man at the trial Lev. 19:15 A judge must not decide unjustly the case of the habitual transgressor Ex. 23:6 A judge must not pervert justice Lev. 19:15
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A judge must not pervert a case involving a convert or orphan Deut. 24:17 Judge righteously Lev. 19:15 The judge must not fear a violent man in judgment Deut. 1:17 Judges must not accept bribes Ex. 23:8 Judges must not accept testimony unless both parties are present Ex. 23:1 Not to curse judges Ex. 22:27 Not to curse the head of state or leader of the Sanhedrin Ex. 22:27 Not to curse any upstanding Jew Lev. 19:14 Anybody who knows evidence must testify in court Lev. 5:1 Carefully interrogate the witness Deut. 13:15 A witness must not serve as a judge in capital crimes Deut. 19:17 Not to accept testimony from a lone witness Deut. 19:15 Transgressors must not testify Ex. 23:1 Relatives of the litigants must not testify Deut. 24:16 Not to testify falsely Standard->Ex. 20:14 TLT Yemenite->Ex. 20:13 Punish the false witnesses as they tried to punish the defendant Deut. 19:19 Act according to the ruling of the Sanhedrin Deut. 17:11 Not to deviate from the word of the Sanhedrin Deut. 17:11 Not to add to the Torah commandments or their oral explanations Deut. 13:1 Not to diminish from the Torah any commandments, in whole or in part Deut. 13:1 Not to curse your father and mother Ex. 21:17 Not to strike your father and mother Ex. 21:15 Respect your father or mother Standard->Ex. 20:13 TLT Yemenite->Ex. 20:12 Fear your father or mother Lev. 19:3 Not to be a rebellious son Deut. 21:18 Mourn for relatives Lev. 10:19 The High Priest must not defile himself for any relative Lev. 21:11 The High Priest must not enter under the same roof as a corpse Lev. 21:11 A Kohen must not defile himself (by going to funerals or cemeteries) for anyone except relatives Lev. 21:1 Appoint a king from Israel Deut. 17:15 Not to appoint a foreigner Deut. 17:15 The king must not have too many wives Deut. 17:17 The king must not have too many horses Deut. 17:16 The king must not have too much silver and gold Deut. 17:17 Destroy the seven Canaanite nations Deut. 20:17 Not to let any of them remain alive Deut. 20:16 Wipe out the descendants of Amalek Deut. 25:19 Remember what Amalek did to the Jewish people Deut. 25:17 Not to forget Amalek’s atrocities and ambush on our journey from Egypt in the desert Deut. 25:19 Not to dwell permanently in Egypt Deut. 17:16 Offer peace terms to the inhabitants of a city while holding siege, and treat them according to the Torah if they accept the terms Deut. 20:10 Not to offer peace to Ammon and Moab while besieging them Deut. 23:7 Not to destroy fruit trees even during the siege Deut. 20:19 Prepare latrines outside the camps Deut. 23:13 Prepare a shovel for each soldier to dig with Deut. 23:14 Appoint a priest to speak with the soldiers during the war Deut. 20:2 He who has taken a wife, built a new home, or planted a vineyard is given a year to rejoice with his possessions Deut. 24:5 Not to demand from the above any involvement, communal or military Deut. 24:5 Not to panic and retreat during battle Deut. 20:3 Keep the laws of the captive woman Deut. 21:11 Not to sell her into slavery Deut. 21:14 Not to retain her for servitude after having sexual relations with her Deut. 21:14
APPENDIX
More Emails from the Tribe
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APPENDIX
Hangover Ratings emailed April 11, 2OO6 from R. Todd Manahan, Marietta, GA One Star Hangover * No pain. No real feeling of illness. You’re able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 5 sodas and still feel this way. For some reason, your are craving a Philly sub and steak fries. Two Star Hangover ** No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you are chugging is only increasing your rumbling gut, which is still tossing around the fruity pancake from the 3:00 AM Waffle House excursion. There is some definite havoc being wreaked upon your bowels. Three Star Hangover *** Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not productive. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume reminds you of the flavored schnapps shots your alcoholic friends dared you to drink. Life would be better right now if you are home in your bed watching Lucy reruns. You’ve had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 iced teas and a diet Coke -- yet you haven’t peed once. Four Star Hangover **** Life sucks. Your head is throbbing. You can’t speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can’t hide the fact that you only shaved one side of your face. For the ladies, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars. Your eyes look like one big red vein and even your hair hurts. Your sphincter is in perpetual spasm, and the first of about five shits you take during the day makes the eyes water of everyone who enters the bathroom. Five Star Hangover ***** You have a second heartbeat in your head, which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth in an attempt to get the remnants of the poop fairy out. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva so your tongue is suffocating you. You don’t have the foggiest idea who the hell the stranger was passed out in your bed this morning. Any attempt to defecate results in a fire hose like discharge of alcohol-scented fluid with a rare ‘floater’ thrown in. The sole purpose of this ‘floater’ seems to be to splash the toilet water all over your ass. Death sounds pretty good about right now.
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APPENDIX
Sublets & Crash Pads along the ever-wandering He’brew Beer Tour In no Particular order - you’re all superstars - thank you!
Early Couch surfing: 1996-2OO2 Cousin Hildy and Alan, cousin Melinda, Rebecca and Dustin, Greg (friend of a friend from college shortly after he edited Skang Mag), Louise Caplan, Henry, Andy, The Mullens, Samantha, Gabe, Peter of course 2OO3-2OO9-ish - Sublets: - Williamsburg-Itamar, several times - 1st apartment in Chinatown, Israeli musician connection, coincidence - Ina and Steve’s Boca condo: twice - John and Yanghee in SF - Nicole’s studio in Cole Valley (during her trip to India) - All Peter’s apartments - 5th and President in Park Slope w/ Amber/ Darren and the cats and dancers - Tina’s apartment- Fall ’04 (Spring 2005) - John’s studio in Cole Valley - Woman’s house in Skokie, Chicago for 2 weeks; off Craigslist - Will and Sady in Park Slope - Debbie and Grant’s – Williamsburg- summer ’06 Yonis and anything goes - Pearl’s apartment: 19th and 1st - Kathleen’s on Carleton-Summer/Fall ‘07 - Dovid and Erica’s on Potrero - Jim’s loft on Shipley - Seattle Week in basement of nice Dutch hippie and girlfriend - Cathleen in Brooklyn - Chris and Tim’s Ft Greene - Albano and Ellen, Prospect Heights Couches, floors, and guest rooms: - Mike and Popy Fouch, house, and Winnebago, Tampa - Johnny V and Veronica, St. Pete - Moira, Philly - Steph, Portland - Julie Rice, Detroit - Blyth in LA and Minneapolis
- Alan Shapiro, repeatedly, Seattle - Bruce, little Guy Dist., Mesa, AZ In Winnebago—stitches over eye - Craig, the Room, LA - Chris, Indianapolis wine buyer and Dead bootleg for the road - Beer Ninja, Indy, Lay-Z-Boy - Vail sales rep Jeff – killer cook and amazing wine - Aaron, Dayton, OH-with dog - Dana Sade, DC - Robin and Don, DC and Palo Alto - Paige and Mark, DC - floor of Jeff ’s house in DC - Jeff and the co-op, Boston - Jen in Chicago - Rebecca in Tucson - Robin’s cousins in Cleveland - Eva in Minneapolis - Vanessa and Shanta in Madison - Jamie in Colorado - Wendy in Colorado - Bill from Little Guy in Mesa, AZ - Jack in Louisville - Val, Heather’s brother in Marathon - My Pathfinder in Miami in parking lot, after The Room, 1st visit - Nikki’s parents in Lancaster - Trevor’s house in St. Augustine - Heather’s mom’s house in Miami - Hank’s house in Atlanta: Midtown car break-in, one hour * Bag of He’brew shirts and favorite sandals only things stolen * Decided not to do “Israelite” that night - Floor of some Hillel girl’s apt @ Duke - Les Lupo’s house near Baltimore - Couch of sales kid for Cavalier IN - Christina’s in Indianapolis - Mike Shnarsky’s sweet guest suite Milwaukee
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AboUt the AUthors
Jeremy Cowan is the founder and owner of Shmaltz Brewing Company. For more information about the author, please refer to the previous 327 pages of Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah.
James Sullivan is the author of three books, including Seven Dirty Words: The Life and Crimes of George Carlin and The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America. He is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe and a former staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.