Jews in New Mexico Since World War II

4: The Growth of Secular Organizations

| 36 The earliest Jewish religious and social organizations came into existence in New Mexico in the 1880s—about forty years after the first Ashkenazic Jews settled in the new American territory. However, it was nearly a century after their original arrival before national secular organizations began to make a serious mark on the New Mexico Jewish population. The events of World War II and the immediate postwar years drew these Jews out of the isolation that so long surrounded them by virtue of New Mexico’s geographic location. Their strong assimilation and small numbers offered grounds for the relative absence of concern with the larger American Jewish world, although individuals did contribute to broader causes. Attachment to extended family and business concerns, as well as local issues, for the most part seemed to satisfy their social needs as Jews and citizens. However, it should be noted that students of Jewish organization in the United States have found that, in general, a significant minority of American Jews long remained apart from larger group endeavors.1 This separation CHAPTER FOUR The Growth of Secular Organizations the growth of secular organizations | 37 may have been particularly true in areas where Jewish numbers were small. With new post–World War II issues and perspectives and a rapidly growing and changing population, New Mexico’s Jews began to move beyond their prewar condition into closer contact with other Jews both locally and nationally. Before the United States entered the war, an American Jewish Year Book list of Jewish national organizations occupied sixty-eight pages of text. They ranged from educational and youth organizations (e.g., Hillel at universities) to ethnic groups (e.g., Council of Roumanian Jews), to labor-oriented organizations (e.g., Jewish Labor Committee), to professional organizations (e.g., Jewish Physicians Committee), Zionist organizations, and to the organizations of the religious branches of Judaism.2 Given prewar New Mexican Jewry’s narrow cultural, social, and economic base and its relative uniformity, as well as the state’s geographic isolation, the absence of a broad spectrum of Jewish organizations such as existed in large centers where recent European immigration had been the rule for nearly a half century was understandable. In prewar New Mexico, religious congregations and their internal offshoots, such as sisterhoods, comprised virtually the only dimensions of organization. B’nai B’rith was the sole notable noncongregational exception. After the war a new array of secular demands that affected all Jews arose alongside the traditional religious ones. The change reflected the powerful awareness of the painful condition of Jews elsewhere and the felt obligation to organize locally to aid their brethren. American Jews in general also had to consider their own condition within the context of change. By the year 2000 the range of activities had expanded sharply in New Mexico, reflecting the growth of the population and their interests | chapter four 38 and needs. Whereas before World War II New Mexican Jews had sought to fit into the local culture in which they lived, the new set of conditions added a strong dimension of concern with the fate of the outside Jewish world as well as with the continuing issue of adapting themselves to New Mexico. The same American Jewish Year Book that listed the plethora of Jewish national organizations prior to World War II noted only one for New Mexico in 1938—the Federation of Jewish Charities (Albuquerque and vicinity)—with Leopold Meyer as its chairman.3 TheAJYBmighthaveaddedothers,suchastheZionistOrganization of America, which had old roots among members of Congregation B’nai Israel.4 The year 1948 saw the formal establishment of a new secular organization when the Albuquerque Jewish Welfare Fund (AJWF) incorporated itself, although it had organized informally several years earlier.5 The efforts of its fund-raising went primarily to the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), a national organization that had been created in 1939 out of several Jewish organizations to deal solely with the collection and distribution of funds for local, national, and international purposes. By that action the AJWF linked itself with the single American Jewish fund-raising organization for relief work in Europe, for immigration to and settlement in Palestine, and for refugee aid in the United States.6 Over the half century since World War II the response of New Mexico’s Jews to the requests for funds grew considerably. During the first five years of the postwar period (1946–50) the AJWF...