As he weaves in and out of traffic in New York City on a Friday afternoon, David
Itzkowitz has two things on his mind: Shabbat and beer.
Beer because
Itzkowitz, 26, is a co-founder of Lost Tribes, a beverage company that makes
microbrews derived from ancient recipes held dear by Jewish cultures from exotic
parts of the world. And Shabbat because Itzkowitz, an observant Jew, still has a
few deliveries left to make before sundown.
“It's all about the pale
ale,” Itzkowitz tells JTA by phone on his way to a delivery in the Bronx. “You
need a balance of the perfect amount of hop with a little malt. It needs to
tickle your taste buds and have a little buzz, too.”
The idea behind Lost
Tribes, which is less than a year old, was born in 2009 when three of the
company’s five founders ventured to Israel to learn more about the country’s
budding microbrewery industry and come up with ideas for their own
beer.
They spent a lot of time with Jews that some say hail from the 10
lost tribes of Israel -- Ethiopian Jews, said by some to be descendants of the
Tribe of Dan, and Indian Jews, said by some to be from the Tribe of
Menashe.
“We were exploring, looking to find new recipes, and Jews from
all these interesting places kept approaching us about their family recipes,”
Itzkowitz said. “They were worried that these ancient recipes, which are
thousands of years old, would be lost, since nobody was selling them on a
commercial scale and their kids didn’t know them.”
The three collected
recipes, took notes and, upon their return stateside, began working with a
brewmaster to test the recipes and develop the beers for commercial
sale.
By early this year the group -- Itzkowitz, Allan Farago, Ari Smith,
Andrew Septimus and Rabbi Harry Rozenberg, five Jewish childhood friends all
under age 31 -- began selling the beer commercially. Lost Tribes now sells to 75
locations in New York, mostly bars and supermarkets but also by special
delivery. The company hopes to go national in the coming
months.
According to the company's website, “2,700 years ago, ten of the
twelve tribes were sent into exile, eventually settling across Europe, the
Middle East, Africa and Asia. Legend has it that one day the tribes will return
home bearing gifts from their lands. We’ve discovered that each tribe holds a
unique crew recipe -- we believe that their brews were the gifts they were meant
to bring home.”
Lost Tribes sells three beer lines: a pale ale they call
Shikra, an Aramaic word for alcoholic beverage; Tej, an Ethiopian-adapted recipe
of honey and herbs that is kosher for Passover; and a low-calorie option called
Light.
The beers are made in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York,
and the company’s warehouse is in Queens. The company says it donates a fixed
amount of profits to Israeli groups that work with Jews from the ethnic
minorities said to be from the lost tribes.
One of the company’s next
projects -- aside from developing more craft brews -- is to launch a social
media website called iTribe, where people from around the world can digitally
connect and learn about ancient traditions by sharing photos, literature and
recipes.
After Lost Tribe’s website went live in 2011, people from around
the world wrote in claiming to be part of a lost tribe and offering up their own
family recipes, the founders said.
“We got an email last week from
someone in Japan who said he was part of a lost tribe and has an incredible
Japanese whiskey recipe for us,” Itzkowitz said. “We’ve also heard from Lemba,
people from South Africa with a Jewish claim, who have their own brew recipe."
Rozenberg adds, "We’re hoping to get to a point where we have an entire set of
these ancient beer options.”
It’s not surprising that so many of these
cultures have their own beer recipe, Rozenberg said. After all, nearly every
culture has its own alcoholic traditions, though carbonated beer of the sort
imbibed today did not emerge until the 16th or 17th century.
Even the
Talmud speaks of beer, Rozenberg notes, pointing to a passage in Tractate
Pesachim in which Rav Papa, a famous sage, makes beer from dates.
“We
adapted our Shikra line of beer after him -- it’s a pale ale made with organic
dates from Israel,” Itzkowitz said.
Lost Tribes is in the process of
developing several new beverages, including Zuting, a rice and yeast-based wine;
Chibuku, a heavy beer of Zimbabwean origins; and their own version of
sake.
Farago, the inhouse beer connoisseur, attributes much of the
company’s success to New York’s downtown tech scene, Silicon Alley, where the
brewer has partnered to do corporate parties with companies such as Vimeo,
Buzzfeed and College Humor. Lost Tribes also runs Tumblr’s monthly beer-pong
tournaments. Forbes magazine listed Lost Tribes as one of the new cool beers to
try.
“The response has been so great, and the reorder requests from the
bars have been overwhelming,” Farago said. “People love our backstory. It’s
great to see how many people care about our attempts to resurrect ancient
brews.”