Duo Benches Today’s Bentsher

A new egalitarian, LGBT-friendly version of the little post-meal book

By Brigit Katz for Tablet Magazine

 David Zvi Kalman and Joshua Schwartz are on a mission to restore a little booklet to its former glory. When bentshers, small scale pamphlets containing the Hebrew Grace After Meals, were first printed 500 years ago, they were large volumes lovingly adorned with woodcuts, engravings, and intricate drawings. Today, they have mostly been reduced to flimsy little things doled out as party favors at Jewish weddings.

“Jewish weddings are the worst thing to ever happen to bentshers!” according to Kalman. “Because bentshers are now mass-produced, there’s a push to make them smaller, and a push to make them cheaper. They’ve become much more utilitarian texts, and much less an object of beauty.”

At the end of October, Kalman and Schwartz—doctoral students at Penn and NYU, respectively—will release the second edition of Seder Oneg Shabbos, a visually arresting, meticulously designed bentsher that harks back to an earlier time in Jewish history. The book also contains a modern twist: “egalitarian and queer-inclusive language.”

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