Jason Feldman’s Star and Shamrock, a Jewish-Irish tavern in Washington’s H Street corridor, has to be the only bar in the District where battery-operated menorahs are on each table, fried matzoh balls are served with He’Brew drafts and Hanukkah has been proclaimed hip.
“My bubby would be proud,” said Feldman, using the Yiddish word for grandmother.
On the first night of the eight-day Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, Feldman, 37, is wearing a backward Mets cap and eating a hot pastrami on rye at a carved wooden bar.
Feldman is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, “but I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Jersey and my father is now in Boca,” he laughs. He moved to Washington in 1999 and worked as a bartender for several years.
With the opening of his own bar, Feldman has become Washington’s best-known Heebster — a contraction of Hebrew hipster. It’s a term that was probably coined in Heeb magazine, a subversive online publication aimed at young urban Jews. “Heeb” is an ethnic slur the magazine’s founders hope to reclaim in much the same way the word “queer” has been reclaimed by some gays.
Feldman’s irreverent take on secular Jewish life includes taking the iconic and famously oversweet kosher wine and making “Manischewitz sangria” to serve at the pub. His shtick is part of a larger mind-set that is — not surprisingly — prevalent in and around Brooklyn. But manifestations of the Heebster vibe can be spotted in Washington, too.
Like all subcultures, this one is getting a boost from the Internet. “Heebsters who move to D.C. now get involved in 30 seconds because of a Google search, instead of spending three months to find out about each other,” said Michael Karlan, 43, president of Professionals in the City, which organizes the long-running Gefilte Fish Gala in Washington on Christmas Eve.
The new D.C.-based Web site Gather the Jews, taking its name from the Book of Esther, is also bringing young Jewish professionals together. “The young Jewish scene here has seen a real rebirth. It’s really robust. And we want to help people navigate that,” said site director Stephen Richer, 26. Started just last year, Gather the Jews already has 2,600 people in the Washington area reading its weekly newsletters.
The newsletters list groups such as the newly formed “Not Your Bubbe’s Sisterhood,” an effort by the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in downtown Washington to “reinvent traditions and culture in a way that resonates with young women in their 20s and 30s,” said Jackie Leventhal, 28, director of cultural programming and communication at Sixth & I. The group has a “no-boys-allowed” rule and discusses topics like J-Date and Jewish guilt, she said.
“There’s so much more going on now around Washington for the nonreligious Jewish hipster,” says Jed Ross, 31, of Georgetown. Ross started manufacturing and marketing his “18 Vodka,” its name a reference to a lucky Jewish number, in 2009. Feldman uses Ross’s vodka to make martinis and serves them with menu items such as Guinnness-soaked meatballs in challah roll and “Latke Madness,” a platter with three potato pancakes, hot corned beef and grilled sauerkraut.
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