Appeared in Recipes for Reading: The Community Cookbook and Its
Stories, ed. Anne L. Bower. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1997, pp. 136-259.
==============================================================

                            The Moral Sublime:

          The Temple Emanuel Fair and Its Cookbook, Denver, 1888


                       Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

                            New York University
 
     The Fair Cook Book is the earliest known Jewish fundraising
cookbook in America.  Only one other early example has been
documented: Our Sisters' Recipes, published two decades later in
Pittsburgh, and inherited by Anne L. Bower from her grandmother. 
It is discussed in this volume.  Though fortunately Bower can
provide the family context for this cookbook, nothing is known
about why or for whom the volume was produced.  The Fair Cook
Book is not very different from Our Sisters' Recipes or from many
other such cookbooks that would follow.  What makes it quite
exceptional is how much we know about the circumstances of its
production--the women who provided the recipes and the occasion
of its publication.  The Fair Cook Book, issued by the Ladies of
Temple Emanuel, was sold at the fair they organized in 1888 to
raise money to pay off the mortgage on Denver's Temple Emanuel.
     Cookbooks were one of many devices for raising money at
these fairs and they continue to function in this way today. 
Some fundraiser cookbooks have gone on to earn millions of
dollars in their own right, the most famous being The Settlement
Cook Book, which first appeared in 1901.  Though Jewish
fundraiser cookbooks are more prolific than ever, they have never
been accorded much importance by scholars.  Libraries do not
collect them.  Bibliographers are inclined to ignore them.  Even
cookbook collectors look askance at them--not all recipes have
been tested; the volumes are repetitive; the recipes of even poor
cooks make their way into their pages; and the borsht jello rings
and gefilte fish quiche of yesteryear hold little interest for
those seeking gourmet cuisine or traditional Jewish dishes. 
Little is known about the exact circumstances of the books'
production and the older the book, the less likely such
information will be recovered.  For all these reasons, The Fair
Cook Book is a precious opening into the lives of Jewish women
and their efficacy in the public sphere.
     Fairs like the one mentioned in the volume's title have
their own history both in the Jewish community and in the wider
American context, from church fairs during the first half of the
nineteenth century to the Sanitary Fairs during the Civil War. 
These events show women actively producing a distinctive public
sphere, one that is heterosocial and predicated on a gift
economy.  The Fair Cook Book offers an unusual opportunity to
analyze American Jewish women in public and their instruments,
including food and its inscription, for mobilizing the local
community and sustaining its institutions.  The Temple Emanuel
Fair and its cookbook--the work of German Jewish women in the
western United States-- offer a slightly skewed angle of vision
on a subject that has been studied as a largely Protestant
phenomenon during the Civil War period and the decades
immediately following.   
     The Fair Cook Book is a modest volume of forty-nine small
pages.  That it survives and has recently come to the Rocky
Mountain Jewish Historical Society says something about the
historical consciousness of the German Jewish family and the
Denver Jewish community from which it comes.  This little book
bears the name of its original owner, Mrs. Celestine Wisebart. 
The Wisebarts were a prominent family in Denver and active in the
Jewish community.  Celestine's husband, B. W. Wisebart,  was
elected mayor of Central City in 1876 and served as a trustee of
Temple Emanuel.  Celestine's sister-in-law, Frances Wisebart
Jacobs, was known as the Mother of Charities for her pioneering
work in creating the Community Chest, a federated citywide
charity organization, in 1887.  Frances was also a founding
member of the Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society in 1871.  Born in
Kentucky--her family had come to the United States from Bavaria--
Frances died in 1892.  Attended by 4000 people, her funeral was
one of the largest that the city had seen.  
     Kept in the family all this time, Celestine's copy of the
cookbook was found by her grandchild Emmett Louis, now living in
Cortland, New York, when he was cleaning out a cupboard in the
basement of his home.  He sent it to his cousin Jean Morris, also
one of Celestine's grandchildren.  Thanks to the good offices of
Jean's husband, Milton, both of them devoted supporters of the
Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society, this cookbook is now
part of the collection.   
     As in later Jewish fundraising cookbooks, most of the women
who contributed recipes identified themselves.  From their names
we know that some of them were married to  prominent members of
the congregation and of the larger Denver community.  Women not
only contributed recipes, but also worked at the fair itself. 
The cookbook compilers also prevailed on local businesses to buy
full-page advertisements, many of them similar if not identical
to their announcements in the Rocky Mountain News.  Some of the
women were married to the proprietors of these businesses--they
were de facto appealing to their own husbands--and several of the
proprietors were also trustees of the Temple.
     The recipes themselves are divided into thirteen sections: 
breads and biscuits; soups; fish; meats; salads; pies; oysters;
puddings; fruit cakes; cookies; cakes; pickles, sauces, and
catsups; and miscellaneous.  Recipes are loosely classified and
do not always belong in the sections where they appear.  The
cuisine is diverse.  American favorites include corn bread or
Johnny Cake, white muffins, graham gems, okra gumbo, and
especially oysters, which were very popular in this period. 
Though not kosher, oysters figure prominently in  Jewish
cookbooks addressed to Reform Jewish readers in the nineteenth
century.  The Fair Cook Book is distinguished by the prominence
of Central European and some Anglo-Jewish dishes.
     Mrs. Adler contributed recipes for what we would recognize
as kreplekh (what she calls forcemeat) and matzoh balls, both of
them for soup.  Her matzoh balls call for ginger and her potato
soup uses mace.  These aromatic touches are characteristic of
Central European Jewish cuisine.  There are thirteen recipes in
the fish section, several of them for boiled or stewed fish,
served with a golden sauce thickened with egg yolks and seasoned
with lemon, parsley, cayenne, mace, and ginger.  Some are served
cold.  Mrs. L. B. Weil's sweet and sour fish is prepared with
raisins, ginger snaps or Lebkuchen, vinegar, and molasses.  Her
husband was a trustee at the time.  In the "fish chowder" recipe,
salmon, tomatoes, and potatoes are layered in a deep dish and
baked.  Mrs. S. Landman's "Entree Fish" surrounds fish croquettes
with mushrooms or truffles.  Such fish dishes play a prominent
role in Jewish cuisine, particularly as one of the courses of a
Sabbath or festival meal.  Cold fish is especially important in
meals for holy days when cooking is prohibited.
     The meat section contains four recipes for tongue.  Fresh
tongue is boiled with pickling spices (mace, cloves, cinnamon,
allspice, nutmeg, cayenne).  Or, the tongue is pickled, baked,
and served cold.  Pressed beef is made by tying an eight-pound
brisket "tightly in a cloth with some marjoram, cayenne pepper,
salt and ginger."  After two weeks in brine and four hours of
boiling, the brisket is allowed to cool, pressed with a heavy
weight, and eaten cold.  Of the four recipes for salad, one is
for potato salad and the other three for chicken salad.  
     About half the cookbook is devoted to desserts, which is not
uncommon.  Several factors have contributed to the preponderance
of recipes for baked goods in cookery books of the period,
including changes in the technology of stoves; introduction of
new ingredients (hydrogenated oils and baking powder, for
example); the importance of exact ingredients, temperature, and
timing in baking; and the elaboration and complexity of pastries
and confectionary.  These are often the show pieces of the
kitchen and reserved for special occasions.  
     Three of the five pie recipes are for lemon meringue pie. 
There are eighteen pudding recipes.  Mrs. H. Goldsmith's "Rich
Purim Pudding" is to all intents and purposes a plum pudding. 
Passover recipes also turn up in this section as Mrs. Decker's
"Matsos Charlotte," a kind of lasagne--three whole matzohs are 
soaked and drained, layered with butter, raisins, lemon peel,
nutmeg, cinnamon, and sugar, and coverd with a rich milk and egg
custard.  Mrs. H. Goldsmith also provided a recipe for
"Grimslechs for Passover," a pudding made by boiling together
raisins, almonds, apples, currants, brown sugar, matzoh, and
lemon, and then adding wine and eggs.  The fruit cake section
includes seven "fruit cakes" and four tortes (almond, poppy seed,
apple, and bread).  In addition to "molasses cookies" and three
recipes for cream puffs, the cookie section provides instructions
for "almond cakes" (another word for cookies in this context),
"poppy cookies," "Lebkuchen," and "Almond Kifels," which are a
kind of almond macaroon.  There are also eighteen cake recipes,
ranging from pound cake to "Bund Kuchen," "Pepper Nuts" (there is
a second recipe for pepper nuts in the section on fruit cakes),
and citron cake. 
     The pickle and catsup section includes Mrs. S. E. Cohn's
"Deutsche Senf Gurken," which calls for cucumbers to be packed in
salt and later removed from the salt and treated with vinegar,
horseradish, mustard seeds, and peppers.  Cohn's husband had been
a trustee of Temple Emanuel some ten years earlier.  This section
also includes Mrs. B.M. Emanuel's "Grape Catsup."  Highlights in
the miscellaneous section are the "Tutti Frutti," fruit and sugar
soaked in alcohol for a long time, and "Heavenly Hash," oranges
stuffed with chopped mixed fruit that have been frozen and then
"tied with narrow ribbons," "Sweet Pickle Peaches," and "Potatoe
[sic] Pancakes."
     By taking a not strictly orthodox approach to ritual law, by
affirming philanthropy, and by cultivating a distinctive cuisine,
The Fair Cook Book is a characteristic expression of German
Reform Jews in America in this period.  First, it is an example
of the treyf (in violation of ritual purity) cookbook.  The
inclusion of oysters, lard (which probably refers to hydrogenated
cottonseed oil rather than pork fat) and suet, and the mixing of
milk and meat, indicate that kashruth, while rarely violated in
the volume, was not scupulously adhered to.  In the Reform
movement, the rejection of kashruth was a matter of principle,
rather than indifference.  This cookbook reflects the more
moderate Reform stance of Temple Emanuel.    Incorporated in
1874, the Temple was the only synagogue in Denver at the time and
it served the small Jewish community--as late as 1885, there were
less than 500 Jews in town.  Most of them were from Germany
(especially Bavaria and Prussia), a good number from Russia and
Poland, and a few from France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
England, and Canada.  Less than twenty-five per cent were born in
the United States, coming mainly from New York, Missouri, Ohio,
and Illinois.
     Second, the cookbook is affirmatively an instrument of
philanthropy.  Not only was philanthropy was one of the most
powerful ways in which German Jews expressed their Jewishness,
but also philanthropy was an acceptable way for women to
participate in the public culture of the Jewish community and of
the city more generally.  They were expert orchestrators of the
gift economy at the heart of fundraising enterprises like the
fair and its cookbook.
     Third, as in other Reform Jewish cookbooks, we find a
diversified Jewish cuisine.  The repertoire is eclectic, drawing
from Anglo-American and regional American cuisines, from the
Anglo-Jewish kitchen, and most important, from the Western
Ashkenazi table--and in the Denver case, more specifically from
the Jewish culinary traditions of Bavaria and Prussia.  This is
flavorful cuisine--aromatic, spicy, sweet and sour.  It is also a
bourgeois cuisine.        
     The cookbook was one element in a larger fundraising
project, the Temple Emanuel Fair.  According to the announcement
in the Rocky Mountain News on October 21, 1888, the fair was
"given by the Ladies' Fair Association."  It was held at the
Armory on Champa and Fifteenth Street from Monday October 22
through Saturday October 28.  The purpose of the fair was to
raise a substantial amount of money to pay off the Temple's debt. 
In this it succeeded, and two weeks after the fair, the trustees
turned over $12,315 to pay off the principal and interest.  A
substantial portion of this sum came from fair proceeds, which
totalled more than $4000.  The minutes of the Trustees of the
Temple indicate that the women were asked to provide an exact
financial reckoning, but no details are there recorded.
     One of the sixteen booths at the fair (No. 7), "was
designated as the Cook Book and stationary stand."  It was here
that The Fair Cook Book was sold.  The cookbook figured in other
ways as well.  Because of services at the Temple on Friday
evening, the Fair closed early that day.  But it did feature a
merchants' lunch from noon to 2:00 p.m.  The Rocky Mountain News
announced that the lunch would be "served under the capable
direction of Mrs. Dr. Eisner.  All the pretty young ladies will
be present to wait on the tables, and the lunch will be prepared
from the receipts in the cook book compiled by the ladies of the
fair.  All the delicacies of the season will be served, and we
can safely advise anyone wishing something good to eat to attend
to-day."  The press characterized the cuisine as "the good old-
fashioned German style of cooking," noted the ample portions, and
declared the venture a success: "Quite a large sum was realized
from this lunch, and the ladies added to their already well-known
fame as caterers."  The lunch would have appealed to the largely
German population of Denver.
     Mrs. Dr. Eisner, who was in charge of the restaurant for the
duration of the fair, is reported to have said that the
merchants' lunch "will be the finest lunch ever served in this
city."  As a prominent socialite who entertained visiting
luminaries, for example, Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Dr. Eisner was famous
for her hospitality and for her table.  Clearly, the women had
confidence and pride in their cooking skills and some even had
good reputations as caterers.  Mrs. Dr. Eisner was assisted by
Mrs. Goldberg, Mrs. Emanuel, Mrs. D. Cohen, and Mrs. Heitler. 
Presumably those who tasted the food would want the recipes and
the merchants' lunch would not only generate income in its own
right, but also stimulate sales of the cookbook.  Though the fair
closed the day after the lunch, the cookbook was presumably for
sale until the stock was exhausted.
     This fair was like the many Jewish fairs mounted in the
United States at the time to raise money for synagogues,
hospitals, orphan asylums, homes for the aged, and other Jewish
institutions, especially the large sums necessary to pay for a
new building.  When there was a financial crisis like the
imminent foreclosure on a mortgage, it was imperative to raise a
very large sum of money very quickly.  The crisis was often not
just financial, but also one of leadership and congregational or
community morale.  As American women learned during the Civil
War, nothing could generate more money faster than a fair and, as
it turned out later, than a cookbook.  The fair had the added
benefit of pulling people together around a common cause in a way
that was immensely pleasurable.  This is what one observer of the
period, writing about the great Sanitary Fairs during the Civil
War, called "the moral sublime."  
     Women were largely responsible for organizing and running
these fairs, which bore the imprint of their sensibility.  Within
the space and time of the fair, women created a distinctive
public sphere for the whole community.  Indeed, their presence at
the fair was perhaps its greatest attraction, for beautifully
outfitted respectable women en masse in public was a "brilliant
spectacle," as the male reporters of the period were fond of
writing.  
     The Temple Emanuel Fair is firmly in this tradition. 
Indeed, it was neither the first nor the only such fair organized
by Temple Emanuel.  The ladies of the Temple had organized an
earlier one, from September 11-16, 1876, to raise money to offset
the debt on what was then the new synagogue building.  The 1876
fair featured a ball, raffles, prizes, a "Tabernacle Illustrative
of Old Jewish Ceremonials; [and] an art gallery, original and
attractive."  They also ran a Strawberry Festival in 1884 and
various other fundraising events, including charity balls.  
     The 1888 fair ran for a week.  In bigger cities with a
larger Jewish population, the fair might run for two weeks.  It
was sited in one of the biggest public spaces in town, typically,
as in Denver, in the Armory.  The space was often lavishly
decorated with evergreens, bunting, flags and banners, and gas
lights.  Predicated on a gift economy, these events used various
devices to separate visitors from their money.  
     First, there were goods for sale--most of it outright, some
of it by raffle, lottery, or auction.  Local merchants
contributed from their stock, members of the community brought in
items from their homes, including furniture, jewellery, a fancy
pipe or walking stick, and women made things for the fair, often
fancy work that showed off their needlework skills.  On the
opening day, the press reported that the beautiful and
symmetrically arranged booths would "contain everything in the
bric-a-brac line imaginable and will be presided over by a bevy
of beautiful ladies."  Some stands were thematically decorated. 
The Turkish booth (No. 1) was outfitted "in Oriental style" and
featured cigars and coffee served by Mrs. Loeb, Mrs. Tischler,
and Mrs. Shandal.  While some stands sold a particular kind of
mechandise,  confectionary (No. 6) and crockery (No. 16), others
offered miscellaneous goods.  Several stands were the
responsibility of a Jewish organization such as the young ladies'
aid, which sold embroidery and fancy articles at their booth (No.
4).   
     Second, there were standard fixtures--the art gallery, post
office, lemonade stand, floral bower, restaurant, voting
contests, and fair newspaper.  An art gallery was featured at
both Temple Emanuel fairs.  Since it was customary at other fairs
to charge admission to the art gallery, I would assume that to be
the case here too, though sometimes the price of admission to the
fair itself included entrance to special exhibitions within.  At
the fair post office, "letters were given to the young men from
their sweethearts by Mrs. Auerbach and Miss Maud," an indication
that for a good cause, young women could be quite forward in
public. Clearly the fair was also a courtship ritual.  The flower
booth was the centerpiece of the mise-en-sc‚ne  No man without a
flower on his lapel could escape being pressed to buy a
boutonniere from the women responsible for this booth.  The
beverage stand was invariably billed as Rebecca at the Well
(sometimes as Isaac's Well) and the Temple Emanuel Fair was no
exception. Miss Esther Franklin, "attired in Oriental costume, is
a very charming impersonation of Rebecca at the well, and is kept
busy all evening slaking the thirst of the dry people with
lemonade."  The fair restaurant might be run by the women
themselves or, in the case of very large events, by a
professional caterer. 
     At the political booth, people voted for the most popular
candidate for governor by paying ten cents for each vote, there
being no limit on the number of times one person could vote. 
This was one of the most popular attractions at the fair.  The
advertisement for the closing event especially noted the "final
vote on silk flag for governor," the silk American flag going to
the winner.  A total of 8,245 votes were cast, netting $824.00,
which was more than the fair had earned in an entire day earlier
that week.  Political booths and other types of voting contests
were standard features of such fairs.
     In this way the entire event reversed the logic governing
business to produce the distinctive gift economy of the fair. 
Merchants gave goods away and sellers did not keep the money they
earned.  People were encouraged to speculate in the irrational
sphere of raffles and lotteries and fortune-telling.  Reversing
the crime of buying votes, they paid to vote and to vote as many
times as they wished, whether for most popular political
candidate or for most popular little girl, who at this fair
received a doll.  They were encouraged to have their fortunes
told at No. 9, "the fortune teller tent, at which two beautiful
young ladies, Miss Maud Miller and Miss Ryan, dressed in
fantastic Gypsy costumes, revealed the past, present and future
for the small sum of 25 cents."
     The reversals of this gift economy gave to the fair some of
the features of carnival associated with the fancy dress and
masked Purim balls so popular in this period.  This is especially
apparent in the thematic booths, not only the Turkish and fortune
telling booths and Rebecca at the Well.  Stand No. 12 was "a
pretty illustration of 'The old woman who lived in a shoe,' whose
children were waited upon by Misses Rothschild, Weill and
Silverman."  From the press, we know that in several cases the
women were in costume.  So too were the children who performed
dances as part of the entertainment programs at the fair--
Chinese, Japanese, and Gypsy dances, and the dances of all
nations.  The good cause sanctioned the spectacular presence of
women in public and gave to such Jewish public culture a
particularly performative quality.
     Formal performances were a featured part of the fair and a
way to get visitors to return night after night.  They included
the Koenigsberg-Lewis Orchestra, well-known elocutionist Miss
Josephine Beemer, and the choral society of the Trinity Methodist
church, which performed sections from the oratorio "Joan of Arc." 
The press billed the Children's Carnival as the highlight of the
event: "nearly sixty children, from 4 to 16 years of age, will
execute a number of fancy dances under the direction of Professor
Louis Mahler, who has been drilling the little ones for nearly
six weeks past" and in appropriate dress.  Their performances
each evening and at the Friday matinee were warmly received. 
Indeed, having children perform was a sure way to draw adults to
the event, at the very least their families and friends.
     The fair opened with a grand ceremony and ended with an
auction, dancing, and at midnight, the announcement of the winner
of the political contest.  The opening started with an overture
performed by Mr. S. Koenigsberg's orchestra.  Then Dr. DeSolla
offered a prayer, Dr. Donald Fletcher, president of the Chamber
of Commerce, delivered an address, and Miss Clara Bernetta
recited a passage from "Lucretia Borgia."  About thirty children
performed a dance, after which the sale of raffle tickets began.  
     Dr. Fletcher's speech suggests the larger importance of the
fair to the Denver Jewish community.  First, he aligned himself
with women's rights and praised "the woman of the Israelitish
church from the dawn of history" for her role "in the home, the
church and the state."  Lauding the work of women in raising
money for worthy causes and volunteering their own time and labor
to help the less fortunate, Fletcher argued that the social
welfare provided thereby "prevents more wrong than the court
house cures" and urged those assembled to give generously to the
cause.  He then compared this fair with church fairs,
denomination by denomination, praising Jews and Judaism as the
"tap root of Christianity."  Condemning the humiliations that
Jews have suffered, Fletcher listed illustrious Jewish statesmen
and artists and noted "the patriotism of the race" and the
aristocracy of Jewish blood.
     He prevailed on the fairgoers to give generously because,
"Let me remind you, there is not, I believe, a single church
charitable institution, or building of a benevolent institution
in this city, but that it is partly paid for by contributions
from our Hebrew fellow citizens.  Now let us all reciprocate." 
(Just the previous year Frances Wisebart Jacobs had established a
city-wide charity organization.)  Fletcher went on to suggest
that the synagogue is "a financial barometer."  Where there is a
synagogue, there are Jews, and where there are Jews, there is
prosperity.  Therefore, if Denver allowed Temple Emanuel to
foreclose on its mortgage and the Jews of Denver were to move to
Pueblo or Cheyenne, "where is the bottom of your real estate
prices gone to?"  
     Fletcher appealed simultaneously to the self-interest of
Denverites--Jews are an asset to the city's economy--and to their
moral superiority in transcending sectarian differences, putting
aside bigotry, and "with enthusiasm, appreciating the model home
life, the loyalty to home and state institutions and the good
citizenship of the people who attend the Temple Emanuel."  "In
one short week," he explained, "all creeds and no creeds, could
wipe out the debt in the midst of general good feeling."  He then
declared the fair open.  Indeed, Jews were among the first to
settle in Denver and they were prominent in Denver politics,
government, and business.  This fair offered the larger Denver
community an opportunity to show their ecumenical spirit by
supporting the effort to put Temple Emanuel on a secure financial
footing.  Fletcher's speech is a prime example of the moral
sublime.
     While it is believed that fundraiser cookbooks like The Fair
Cook Book date from the Civil War, the fairs are themselves are
older--and possibly the cookbooks too.  Because they are so
ephemeral, we cannot assume that the earliest extant volumes are
the first to be published.  The immediate model for the many
Jewish fairs that were held across the country during and after
the Civil War is the Sanitary Fair, which also prompted the
publication of cookbooks to raise money for the cause.  Cookbooks
were but one of many types of publications occasioned by such
fairs, which might include collections of poetry, limericks, or
songs, albums of signatures by distinguished fair visitors,
addresses and memorials, programs, guides, and art catalogues,
daily fair newspapers, souvenir albums, and reports of various
kinds..  
     During the Civil War, more men were dying in infirmaries
than on the battle field due to unsanitary conditions and
inadequate medical supplies.  Many women lost husbands, fiances,
brothers, fathers, and other loved ones.  Widows were left
without support, many of them with children.  Compassion for the
men on the field and for the women and children they left behind
prompted women to lobby the government to form the Sanitary
Commission.  Women then set about raising millions of dollars
through Sanitary Fairs that they organized in many parts of the
country.  Many features of the Temple Emanuel Fair can be found
there.  Indeed, these fairs had become so popular that Our Daily
Fair, the newspaper published daily at the Philadelphia Sanitary
Fair in 1864, could refer to "the fair movement in the United
States" and trace its history "in other countries and former
wars," including the French Revolution, the Prussian uprising
against the French in 1813, and the revolutionary movements in
Europe in 1848.  But, Our Daily Fair continues, despite the
popular enthusiasm and patriotism expressed in the prior
examples, they were "short-lived and spasmodic" in comparison
with the Sanitary Fairs.
     Though they were the largest events of their kind at the
time, the Sanitary Fairs were elaborations of earlier church
fairs, ladies' fairs, and fancy fairs popular in New England
since the 1830s and modelled on even earlier English fairs of
this kind.  As Beverly Gordon has suggested, these events--and
their economic, social, and political importance--have been
underestimated by later scholars (though their importance was
certainly appreciated at the time).  She attributes later
dismissals of these events to the stereotype that they were run
by housewives with time on their hands, who made useless things
for sale like fancy work or who supplied equally superficial
bric-a-brac and other novelties.  
     Two principles governed the organization of the fair, type
of merchandise and institutional sponsor.  To achieve greater
coherence, fair organizers arranged merchandise by category and
created a temporary department store.  To express their
solidarity, organizations also set up their own booths.  At the
Sanitary Fair in Cincinnati, the Jewish community set up four
stands: "one each by the Allemania Club, the Phoenix, a group
calling themselves the 'Independent Ladies,' and the Broadway
Synagogue."  The Jewish stands are estimated to have contributed
about a third of the proceeds generated by the Fair.  However,
Jews were not in accord on the question of group participation. 
Some felt that Jews should participate as citizens and should not
label "Jewish participation as Jewish."  Nor did they want to
be the only ones to establish "denominational stands."
     The Sanitary Fairs, as well as the Jewish charity fairs that
followed, drew on world's fairs, the first of which took place in
London in 1851.  Not only did various states of the Union take
part in the Sanitary Fairs, but also there was some international
participation.  England, for example, showed support for the
Sanitary Commission's compassionate efforts to care for war
sufferers on both sides of the conflict.  Even the exhibits and
entertainments owed something to world's fairs, for example, the
Indian Department and performance of "War Dances" at the
Metropolitan Fair in Manhattan in 1864.  
     The Sanitary Fairs also built on the custom of using
admission to especially organized art exhibitions--as early as
the 1790s in France--to raise money to help destitute workers. 
Indeed, as Bertram W. Korn, notes in his study of American Jews
and the Civil War, "August Belmont [a Jew]...opened his art
collections to the public eye and swelled the coffer of the
Sanitary Commission with the proceeds from admission fees." 
Art exhibitions were a regular feature of world's fairs, Jewish
charity fairs, and Sanitary Fairs, and the Jewish press reported
extensively on them.  With respect to the Metropolitan Fair, for
example, the Jewish Messenger recommended the art collection
there to "those who never have been among the wondering visitors
to the Louvre or the Munich Gallery" and went on to say that "the
Gallery at the 14th Street building will compare more than
favorably" to the painting and statuary at the Crystal Palace. 
This statement is clear evidence that world's fairs were a point
of reference for these events.
     Jewish women had participated in Sanitary Fairs and in other
fundraising efforts for the Sanitary Commission.  As already
noted, many members of Temple Emanuel's Ladies Fair Association
had come to Denver, established only in 1859, from  New York,
Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois.  No doubt some of Denver's Jewish
women had visited and possibly even participated in Sanitary
Fairs held in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Chicago, Pittsburg, New Orleans, and San Francisco, among others.
     Moreover, Jewish women had established their own charitable
societies even before the Civil War and were already very
experienced at fundraising for various causes. According to Korn,
"In 1860 there were thirty-five permanently organized charitable
societies in New York City" and many of them were not associated
with a synagogue.  New York City Jews formed a large community,
with over twenty different German congregations, at the time. 
In the case of Denver, where the Jewish community was smaller, it
was harder to raise large sums of money.  A similar fair in New
York in the 1880s could yield over $100,000.  
     This was a point of considerable pride.  In a little
"history of Jewish fairs," the Jewish Messenger started its
account with the fair organized in 1860 by the ladies of the
Portuguese Synagogue in New York.  The article then declared that
in "picturesque appearance, elegance and perfection of detail,
and substantial promise," the Hebrew Charity Fair of 1870, which
prompted this historical account, would have "no rival since the
Great Sanitary Fair seven years earlier, not alone in pecuniary
results, but in character as spectacle."  With the following
words, "A more lovely spectacle can scarcely be imagined--glowing
with bright colors, brilliant with light, gay and glorious in the
noble assemblage of 'fair women and brave men,'" the reporter
captured the moral sublime.  What better context for Jews--and
especially Jewish women--to appear in public as Jews. 
     During the Civil War, already existing Jewish women's
organizations redirected their efforts to wartime needs by
collecting supplies or providing personal service or by directing
the proceeds of their fundraising efforts to the Sanitary
Commission.  Jewish women also formed new organizations expressly
for this purpose. Some Jewish women  and their organizations
found that participation in the large metropolitan Sanitary Fairs
offered them an unparalled opportunity to take part in a
spectacular local event with high national visibility.  In the
case of New York, the organizers of the 1864 Metropolitan Fair
included Jewish representatives on the various committees,
"undoubtedly to assure the cooperation of all the Jewish
organizations."  Jewish participation in these activities was a
mark of patriotism and good citizenship and let Jews show that
they were not parochial.

     Women were the impressarios of some of the largest
philanthropic social events in their communities.  In conceiving,
organizing, and managing these events, they not only raised large
amounts of money in a very short time but also helped create the
public culture of their communities.  A round of philanthropic
activities gave form to social life--from the Purim balls and
Hanukkah pageants so popular during the latter half of the
nineteenth century, both largely organized by men, to the Purim
Kettle Drums and charity fairs, which were mainly in the hands of
women.  Among German Jews, social events with a charitable
objective became an important way of dealing with the Jewish
holidays.  Families rented boxes at the opera house where Purim
balls were held and received visitors there, instead of at home.
Special Purim quadrilles were composed for the occasion.
     Supplementing the studies of how women organized events by
and for themselves, Mary Ryan has analyzed how women participated
in community-wide civic events.  My concern is their role in
organizing events for the whole community.  With the exception of
Gordon's pioneering work, these events have received little if
any attention.  One reason may be the tendency to view
instruments like the cookbook and charity fair, and for that
matter, decorative sewing or fancy work, as trvial means to
consequential ends--the building of synagogues, churches,
hospitals, and orphan asylums; the caring for soldiers during the
Civil War; and advocating for Abolition, temperance, and women's
suffrage.  As I have tried to show, the ends are also the means
and these events are worthy of analysis in their own right.  They
were, among other things, an experiment in a heterosocial public
culture managed by women.  
     Listen to an observer complain in 1864 of the limited range
of places that respectable women could visit:
     There is one things that always strikes us with wonder in
     the amusement world of New York, which is the want of
     matinees or afternoon entertainments.  There are thousands
     of ladies and children, those who perhaps have not
     attendants even for evening amusements, who would be glad to
     patronize an afternoon performance if they had reliance on
     its perfect order and respectability.  These are confined to
     the Museum, the Stereoscopticon and the Menagerie.  Why some
     of our first-class theatres should not give an occasional
     matinee we do not know.  Certainly there can be no better
     time for the experiment than during the Sanitary Fair, when
     the city will be full of strangers only in for the day, or
     citizens out for a day's pleasure.
In no small measure, the fairs addressed a felt need for a public
social place in which women would be comfortable and in which
they could act.
     The apparent frivolity of these events, according to Gordon,
was carefully staged by the women who organized them to display
"the powerful playing at being powerless."  It was as if by
magic that these women worked their wonders in the fairyland they
deliberately contrived.  Magic removed the aura of work, of
labor, from the arduous efforts to organize and run these events,
though the women who ran the Sanitary Fair were faulted for
tiring of "the daily routine of amateur shopkeeping and
dickering" and sometimes sending their "clerks and subordinates"
to fill in for them.  Cultivated and strategic, the aura of
frivolity made the display of entrepreneurial women less
threatening.
     These fairs were an artform in their own right, as Gordon
right claims.  So dizzying was the spectacle, that one observor
referred to the Sanitary Fair as the "Insanity Fair," while
others spoke of fair mania.  Like the cookbooks, the fairs
operated within a gift economy and valorized financial
transactions that in other contexts would be considered
irrational if not illegal.  As for the cookbooks, they formalized
the informal exchange of recipes among women.  They moved the
culinary expertise of women from private interpersonal
transactions into a coordinated collective enterprise, whereby
accumulated kitchen wisdom sustained large community
organizations.  
     While most of today's fairs are a pale shadow of the
nineteenth-century extravaganzas, the cookbooks have enjoyed an
efflorescence.  By the end of the century, the fairs had become
so big and so arduous--and repetitious-- that people became
ambivalent about this way of raising money.  There was even the
feeling that the very idea of a fair was worn out.  At the same
time, fairs like the one mounted by the Educational Alliance at
Madison Square Garden in 1895 became even more "sophisticated and
professionally run events," as Gordon notes, to the point that
magazines published articles on how to administer them and even
encouraged women to buy exotic goods wholesale and sell them at a
profit at the fair, as was being done in England. Gordon, "Play
at Being Powerless," 153.  
       By the 1930s, these affairs had diminished to the small
ventures organized by a local school or church that are familiar
to us today.  Several factors are at work here, perhaps most
important, the professionalization of philanthropy--both the
raising of money and the uses of it for social welfare--and the
emphasis upon a more rational, if not scientific, basis for these
activities.  Women made careers for themselves in the helping
professions.  There arose new media and genres for mobilizing
personal giving--the mega-media-events of our own time, from
Hands Across America and Live Aid to telethons and marathons. 
Less well understood are the changes in sensibility that brought
about the demise of the great charity fair, as we know it from
the nineteenth century.  They point to changes in public culture
and in the role of women in producing it.
     How is it that the cookbook should have had the opposite
fate?  The Settlement Cook Book  has gone through more than
forty editions and sold over 1,500,000 copies, continuing to
generate revenues for charitable causes, for almost a century. By
1970, the sheer volume of charity cookbooks in the United States
discouraged some groups from reprinting their cookbooks.  After
selling 2,000 copies of a cookbook first published in 1978, one
organization reported that "our area now has many Temple
cookbooks, and we feel sales would be too slow to warrant the
expense to our sisterhood."  Others continue to do brisk sales,
notably Second Helpings Please, which has gone through more than
nine printings and 125,000 copies since 1968.  Some congregations
give a copy to each bride married in their synagogue.  
     A survey that I made during the 1980s reveals that Jewish
organizations are producing fundraiser cookbooks in editions as
small as 250 and as large as 25,000.  Some cookbooks have stayed
in print for over 65 years.  Many, but by no means all, are
kosher, not necessarily by conviction so much as in deference to
their kosher coreligionists.  Some volumes are highly profitable-
-a single edition of Second Helpings Please could gross half a
million dollars every three to seven years.
     Other cookbooks offer modest financial rewards but rich
social satisfaction.  Women report wanting to issue another
edition to include the recipes of new members of the community,
or to celebrate the merging of two congregations.  One woman
explained that it was important that everyone be represented in
the cookbook, and another pointed out that including many people
would increase the market and sales.  An Alaska volume has an
editorial policy of no rejections.  Some volumes grow out of
cooking classes at the synagogue or Jewish community center,
while others, like Waiting for Sunset, the Chabad cookbook
published in California (1984), are created "to show it's
possible to keep kosher in Santa Barbara."
     A Canadian volume was undertaken with the goal of
interesting new and younger members in joining the auxiliary. 
One editor complained that the response of the women to requests
for recipes had been so poor that she and her co-editor ended up
contributing most of the recipes under the names of various
family members.  One of the Sephardic cookbooks began as the
independent project of one woman, who, when she could not find a
publisher, offered to split expenses and profits with the
congregation.  In another case, a terminally ill member appealed
to the women to finish the cookbook as her legacy to the Temple.
     Jewish charity cookbooks persist today in a space between
personal giving, where each donor is identified by written and
culinary signature, and collective effort.  Profitability aside,
this type of cookbook offers women a vehicle for activating a
distinctive gift economy predicated on culinary knowledge and its
exchange.  The book itself is a vehicle for their coming
together.  It makes tangible and visible their connections with
one another and their mobilization.  Not only are recipes
contributed and distributed, but also they are performed each
time someone cooks from the book.  Presented at the table, these
dishes enable a kind of virtual commensality.  Authors absent
from the table, but present in the book, make their appearance in
the dish.  They sign the meal, so to speak.  They are made
tangible from the archive, from the collective culinary memory
that the cookbook represents.  Perhaps this is why The Fair Cook
Book survived the hundred years since its appearance and so many
others have followed in its wake.
                                   Note
     This essay was written at the invitation of Dr. Jeanne
Abrams, Director of the Director of the Ira M. Beck Memorial
Archives of Rocky Mountain Jewish History at the Center for
Judaic Studies, University of Denver (Colorado).  The Beck
Archives were recently dedicated and are part of the special
collections at Penrose Library, University of Denver.  This essay
was the basis for a public lecture about the cookbook on March
10, 1994, sponsored by the RMJHS, at the BMH (Beth Medesh
Hagadol) Synagogue, and about the fair on March 6, 1995, as part
of the distinguished lecturer series at the University of
Maryland at College Park.  It appeared in Rocky Mountain Jewish
Historical Notes 13, 1-2 (Spring/Summer 1995), 1-7, in a somewhat
different form.  My warm thanks to Dr. Abrams for bringing the
cookbook to my attention and to Professor John Livingston for his
helpful suggestions.