The Independent Orders of B’nai B’rith and True Sisters: Pioneers of a New Jewish Identity, 1843-1914

375 Pages·2011·3.747 MB·English

by  Cornelia Wilhelm

The In dependent Orders
of B’nai B’rith and True Sisters
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The In dependent Orders of
B’nai B’rith and True Sisters
Pioneers of a New Jewish Identity, 1843– 1914
Cornelia Wilhelm
Translated by Alan Nothnagle and Sarah Wobick
wayne state university press detroit
© 2011 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
15 14 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilhelm, Cornelia, 1964–
[Deutsche Juden in Amerika. English]
Th e independent orders of B’nai B’rith and True Sisters : pioneers of a new
Jewish identity, 1843–1914 / Cornelia Wilhelm ; translated by Alan Nothnagle
and Sarah Wobick.
p. cm.
Translation of: Deutsche Juden in Amerika by Cornelia Wilhelm. Stuttgard,
Germany : Steiner Verlag, c2007.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8143-3403-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Jews, German—United States. 2. B’nai B’rith. 3. United Order of True
Sisters. I. Title.
E184.353.W55413 2011
943'.004924073—dc22
2010048304
Th is En glish edition has been translated from the original German publication,
Deutsche Juden in Amerika, by Cornelia Wilhelm. © 2007 by Franz Steiner Verlag,
Stuttgart, Germany. All rights reserved.
Grateful ac know ledg ment is made to B’nai B’rith International and the Lucius N.
Littauer Foundation for their generous support of the publication of this volume.
Typeset by Westchester
Composed in Adobe Garamond Pro and Walbaum
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1. Th e In de pen dent Orders of B’nai B’rith and True Sisters, 1843– 50 13
Th e In de pen dent Order of B’nai B’rith, 1843 23
Th e In de pen dent Order of True Sisters, 1846 41
2. B’nai B’rith as Platform for an American Jewish Identity, 1850– 75 57
Growth, Development, and Function of the Order 57
Th e Order and the Shaping of American Judaism 72
3. Th e Lodges at the Center of Jewish Identity Formation 115
Community Building, Self- defi nition, and Repre sen ta tion 115
Civil Self- awareness and “Becoming American” 117
Th e Development of a Jewish Social Ser vice System
and Modern Jewish Identity 128
True Sisters and Modern Jewish Womanhood 147
4. B’nai B’rith as Mass Or ga ni za tion, 1875– 1900 165
Identity Crisis, Disintegration, and New Departures 165
B’nai B’rith and the Reform Movement 187
True Sisters and the Formation of a Jewish Women’s
Movement 202
v
CONTENTS
5. Adapting to New Challenges, 1900– 1914 217
B’nai B’rith and the Progressives 217
Representing Jewish Interests in America 233
Conclusion 253
Notes 263
Bibliography 323
Index 345
vi
Preface
Th is book is the result of many years of in- depth research that has been
funded by full- time fellowships with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
and—i n the exploratory phase—b y the German Marshall Fund of the United
States. Until now the questions this study explores have remained largely un-
addressed, even though, or perhaps because, the topic of the study focuses on
a complex transatlantic relationship in German and American Jewish history
that needs to be explained in a larger transnational framework reaching be-
yond the limits of a national history or a single ethnic group’s history. Th e
understanding of the historical dynamism and the evaluation of the order’s
legacy require the understanding of cultural concepts of a people on the move
and in transition to a new civil bourgeois identity, in this case between Ger-
many and the United States. It is my hope that this study will help promote a
transnational approach to American ethnic history that off ers new venues to
understand the changing world of the immigrant.
Th e German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, has supported this
eff ort tremendously by publishing the original version of this book in Ger-
man in 2007 and by dedicating a volume of its Reference Guides to German
Jews in the United States. I would like to thank its former director Christof
Mauch for his support in widening the transnational perspective and for
negotiating an English-l anguage version for Wayne State University Press
with its original publisher, Steiner Verlag in Stuttgart.
When I initially embarked on the project, I had just completed a disser-
tation and fi rst book in transatlantic history on the Nazis’ attempt to utilize
German Americans as an element in their larger po liti cal plan.1 Working
in this context, I noticed a large absence of works on German Jews in the
United States. Th eir immigration history was well documented; however,
beyond their immigration, many aspects of their relationship with American
Jewry and with the non- Jewish German community as well as their cultural
ties to Germany w ere rarely discussed.2 As a result I chose to explore the B’nai
B’rith, the oldest secular Jewish org an iz at ion with its fascinating history, for
a second book (and German habilitation).
vii
PREFACE
A newcomer in Jewish history, I had a lot of encouragement to pursue
the project from my mentors Reinhard Doerries and Berndt Ostendorf as
well as Michael Brenner, who just arrived at the University of Munich in
time to become my Habilvater. I would particularly like to thank Michael
A. Meyer, Karla Goldman, and Jonathan Sarna, who, from day one, accom-
panied me throughout my research with continuous critical interest and
numerous suggestions, providing me with their full intellectual support.
Th ey quickly helped me fi nd my way around a research fi eld that represents
far more than mere “ethnic history.”
Th e collection of the archives of B’nai B’rith International in Washing-
ton, DC, proved to be particularly signifi cant and useful, and formed the
organizational- historical framework of this study. Burt Lazarow, Sidney
Clearfi eld, and Dan Mariashin not only have allowed me to use these materials
but also have actively encouraged me to pursue my research. Likewise, the
Klutznick Museum’s curators Ori Soltes and Diana Altman and particularly
Hope Miller, who worked in the museum in 1997 and 1998 and was assigned
to help me around the collection, rendered me great active support in my work
on a day- to- day basis. Here I found predominantly printed sources, namely,
the annual proceedings and reports of the seven American grand lodges and
the reports of the order’s general assemblies, which are not to be located in
such density and completeness in any other American archive. My research
there also uncovered material from the order’s early years, the minutes of the
New York lodge, the individual correspondence of the found ers and compre-
hensive data of the order, and statistical surveys from the individual districts—
information that is often contradictory and incomplete and that was only
published up to the mid- 1870s and thus cannot be used for the preparation of
extended statistical equations. Although B’nai B’rith never systematically ar-
chived its materials, alongside the proceedings and reports there is a collection
of leafl ets, memoranda, letters, and brochures stored in Washington in ap-
proximately 130 Hollinger boxes. Th is material is categorized according to
subject, although it unfortunately no longer states the original provenance of
the fi le material. Th e collection was pro cessed, ordered, and indexed by the
former archivist Hannah Sinauer. Among other things, this collection in-
cludes ritual books, constitutions of the order, membership lists, and docu-
ments of individual institutions of the order. All of this was reviewed during
the writing of this study. In this context it is worth mentioning the almost
completely intact correspondence books of President Leo N. Levi, which pro-
vide an entirely new insight into an epoch of the order’s work with eastern
Eu ro pe an immigrants. Th ese books have been a vital source for understanding
the order’s situation in the years between 1903 and 1905.
viii
PREFACE
However, despite this source basis, the lack of correspondence and pa-
pers from individual leaders from the order’s early period allowed only for
a structural examination of the order, making it diffi cult to understand it
within the complex network of the emerging American Jewish communi-
ties. Th e source base did not allow me to identify internal confl icts in a
subtly diff erentiated way, to distinguish between individual opinions and
the order’s identity and thus to evaluate the order’s developmental dynam-
ics as a central factor of American Jewish identity. Nor w ere the fi les of
individual departments or committees systematically collected. Th us the
development of intellectual advancement, the order’s expansion to Eur ope
and the Middle East, and the discussions among Jewish representatives
within the order remained largely hidden, or e lse they could only be labo-
riously reconstructed on the basis of other sources. Such a source base is
also lacking in regard to the relationship between B’nai B’rith and Zion-
ism. While the order’s publications surprisingly avoided the discussion of
Zionism, one gets the impression that this movement was not only looked
down upon but almost completely hushed up. However, on this issue in par-
ticu l ar one must make a distinction between the offi cial “opinion of the or-
der” and the individual opinions of its members. Clearly, no blanket judg-
ments on the position of “German Jews” are permissible; the studies by Mark
Raider and Tobias Brinkmann have pointed out and emphasized that a
distinction must be made between an abstract relationship to Palestine as
the site of an ethnic Jewish identity and pol itic al Zionism. Th is caveat also
applies to this study, which only presents the position of B’nai B’rith as an
organization—a nd only on the basis of existing sources—b ut cannot re-
construct the undoubtedly wide- ranging positions of individual spokes-
men or lodges on this topic, which stretched from categorical rejection all
the way to simultaneous membership in the Zionist Federation of Amer-
ica, as in the example of Bernhard Felsenthal, and which changed continu-
ally after 1890.3
Between 1997 and 2002, Hebrew U nion College, the Jewish Institute of
Religion and the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, and the Klau Li-
brary became much more than just research centers but instead turned into
a unique home away from home, intellectually and personally. Th is was due
not only to the outstanding research conditions but also to the many per-
sonal encounters on campus and its family-l ike atmosphere to which so many
of the staff contributed. I would like to express special thanks to Gary Zola
and his team, who reached far beyond the American Jewish Archives to help
me gain access to numerous smaller collections in the possession of Jewish
congregations and organizations.
ix