Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939 (review)

I cannot imagine my parents' lives without the New Cracow Friendship Society, a landsmanshaft (association of immigrants from the same hometown) comprised of Holocaust survivors from Cracow, Poland. Side-by-side with Jewish holidays, the Society's annual events--general meetings, Hanukkah and Israeli Independence Day celebrations, a commemoration of the Cracow ghetto liquidation, and a pre-Rosh Hashanah gathering at their Long Island cemetery Holocaust monument--marked my family's calendar. While the New Cracow Friendship Society is part of the successor generation to the landsmanshaftn of the East European immigrant era described by Soyer, his excellent book helps locate this Holocaust survivors' organization in a broader historical context. With its philanthropic orientation toward Israel, emphasis on collective memory, and provision of a comfortable and secure space, the New Cracow Friendship Society looks much like the other post-World War II landsmanshaftn depicted in this work.

Soyer begins with an analysis of how East European Jewish culture and the new American context shaped the formation of landsmanshaftn. The immigrants' prior participation in traditional hevrot (voluntary associations) and modern Zionist and Socialist organizations provided them with blueprints for creating thousands of hometown associations in New York City. At the same time that they relied on Old World patterns, Jewish landsmanshaftn resembled mutual aid societies formed by other American ethnic groups, including European immigrants and African-Americans, suggesting a distinct American model. "Immigrant organizations in the United States resembled each other so remarkably that it is hard to escape the conclusion that they were largely American in form, if not in inspiration. Their membership requirements, leadership structures, benefits, activities, even in many cases, their names all followed like a pattern" (pp. 43-44). Landsmanshaftn even adopted the rituals of the secret fraternal orders popular in late-nineteenth century America. Their initiation rites included dramatic scripts based on biblical motifs complete with elaborate props, instruction about secret handshakes and passwords, and lectures extolling the virtues of Judaism and American patriotism. For Soyer, landsmanshaftn actually "reflected the influences of the surrounding culture more clearly than they mirrored Jewish communal traditions (or innovations) in Eastern Europe" (p. 30).

Through their landsmanshaftn, then, East European immigrants exercised a high degree of agency in their emerging identification as American Jews. Late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Jews made decisions about what parts of their traditional cultures to retain and which aspects to discard. Similarly they selected American practices and ways of organization that best suited their new lives. For example, landsmanshaftn members chose to structure their societies according to democratic principles and as a result adopted constitutions and by-laws. By highlighting how East European Jewish immigrants actively defined their own group identity, Soyer counters a dominant historical perspective that views immigrants as resisting, or at best passive recipients of, Americanization forces.

Landsmanshaftn, like all ethnic institutions, were dynamic, not static. During the period of mass immigration, landsmanshaftn expended much of their energy helping members adjust to American life. Every society provided a set of benefits that included medical care by an affiliated physician, reimbursement for wages lost during illness, life insurance, emergency assistance, interest-free loans, funeral expenses, and burial in the society's cemetery. The major landsmanshaft federations sponsored hospitals and social service institutions. For example, the Federation of Galician and Bucovinean Jews of America dedicated its Har Moriah Hospital in 1908, while the Federation of Bessarabian Organizations opened its Hebrew National Orphan Asylum in 1914. Even the politically radical Workmen's Circle groups increasingly adopted the elements of mutual aid common to most landsmanshaftn, despite fears voiced by some members that larger revolutionary political issues were being subverted by practical material concerns.

For landsmanshaft members, death benefits were of great importance and purchasing a cemetery was usually one of a society's first acts. Since the cemetery was typically the only property owned by either...