This chapter discusses the synagogue sisterhood gift shops that arose during the 1950s in the United States. It focuses on these gift shops as retailers of the ‘Jewish Home Beautiful’ — official, synagogue-endorsed emporiums of American Jewish domestic life. From their founding in 1948 through their heyday in the 1950s and early 1960s, synagogue gift shops served as the main outlets — and in many smaller cities and towns, the only local outlet — for the purchase of Jewish home goods. They also sold the reigning sisterhood philosophy of home observance, which espoused the creation of a modern American Jewish style. Tracing the history of the shops, paying particular attention to the sisterhood staff and strategy, the shoppers, and the stock, this chapter demonstrates the key role that gift shops played in defining and supporting American Jewish home observance. Furthermore, the location of these gift shops in the synagogue and their concerns about what to have and do at home signalled a discourse about the relation of home to synagogue and the redefinition of Jewish heritage in the wake of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel.
