Professor Robert Liberles (Ben Gurion University, Beersheva)
Coffee first arrived in Germany from the Middle East in the late seventeenth century and spread across Europe in the early eighteenth century. The lecture will explore German Jewish responses to the introduction of the new beverage. Professor Liberles will examine responses by Jews and the Jewish community to questions of halachah or religious law, social challenges, and the economic opportunities that emerged with the arrival of coffee. The "coffee debates" provide a fascinating insight into some of the controversies that raged amongst Jews who had recently acquired a higher economic status and mercantile aspirations, and yet were still tied to the traditions of life behind the ghetto walls.
Robert Liberles, holds the David Berg and Family Chair in Eastern European History at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva and is a mathematics graduate of MIT, an ordained rabbi and has a Ph.D. in Jewish History (1980). He is the author of Religious Conflict in Social Context (winner of the 1986 National Jewish Book Award in History); Salo Baron: Architect of Jewish History (1995), and one of the four authors of Jewish Daily Life in Germany (2004). Professor Liberles is currently working on Jews, Coffee, and Innovation.
