![]() ![]() Contracts were usually for a period of three years, during which time leaseholders were obliged to pay the rent at specific points. On the smaller noble estates, Jews would lease single taverns and breweries, and sometimes mills as well. On the magnate estates, composed of villages numbering from several dozen up to more than 100, richer Jews would lease all the estate’s taverns and breweries, and then sublet them to people usually recruited from the lower echelons of Jewish society. The size of the estate in which they worked could influence the tavernkeepers’ economic status. By the nineteenth century, the figure of the Jewish tavernkeeper became a common motif in Polish belles lettres, the most famous being the sympathetic figure of Jankiel in Adam Mickiewicz’s epic poem, Pan Tadeusz. So numerous were Jewish tavernkeepers that they became a recognized feature of Polish rural life. This was particularly the case since profits from taverns and breweries leased by Jews formed an integral part of the noble, royal, and church income, and the tavernkeepers’ economic activities played a significant role in the economic life of the estates, which were run along feudal lines. ![]() The fact that there were so many Jews producing and selling alcohol influenced relations both within the Jewish community and between Jews and Christians. Printed by Lemercier, Paris, for publication by J. The leasing of taverns and breweries thus became a highly significant and accessible source of income for Jews-particularly following the wartime destruction and economic instability of the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In addition, Jews were not only more literate and numerate than the peasants, but were also prepared to pay high rents for the taverns. Jews remained prominent in this field because landowners, who viewed peasants as incompetent and prone to drunkenness, preferred to lease their taverns to Jews, whose sobriety and restraint were felt to lead to greater profits. This was despite bans imposed by Pope Benedict XIV and the 1753 synod of the Catholic church in Poland, as well as after protests of some Polish bishops. In the rest of Poland, Jews leased the vast majority of taverns and breweries on royal and noble estates-and even many of those in villages owned by monasteries and other church institutions. The only region of Poland in which the majority of the Jews’ income came from other sources was the western region of Wielkopolska, where they made up only 5 percent of rural tavernkeepers. Thus the taverns could always be counted on to provide a steady source of income. Landowners also held a monopoly on producing and selling alcohol (Pol., propinacja), which meant that peasants were required to buy beer and vodka only in landowners’ taverns and were also banned from importing such items from other lords’ estates. Another reason was that alcohol could be sold more quickly and easily than grain, with vodka (made from rye) and beer growing in popularity. One reason was that the price of beer and vodka increased more rapidly than that of grain, a factor that inclined landowners to devote an ever-increasing proportion of their grain harvests to the production of alcohol. The development of this field of Jewish economic activity resulted from economic and social changes in Poland and Lithuania in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress) Kopelzon, Luboml, Poland (now Lyuboml, Ukr.), 1920s–1930s. ![]() Liquor labels from a distillery owned by M. ![]()
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