The Independent Orders of B’nai B’rith and True Sisters: Pioneers of a New Jewish Identity, 1843–1914 by Cornelia Wilhelm (review)

In this compelling study, Cornelia Wilhelm traces the history of the nineteenth-century fraternal order of B’nai B’rith and its female counterpart, the United Order of True Sisters (UOTS) and situates them in a broader framework that connects the founders’ mission to their self-awareness as German Jews in America. The narrative also elucidates the important connection between B’nai B’rith and the birth of Reform Judaism in both Germany and the United States. Other scholars have documented the formation and impressive expansion of B’nai B’rith during this period, but only in Wilhelm’s volume does its centrality within the Jewish communal landscape fully emerge. Indeed, she persuasively argues that her subjects created, or “pioneered,” a new transnational model of modern Jewish identity by using their commitment to German notions of self-betterment and Reform Judaism’s precepts to demonstrate their suitability for civic engagement within the American landscape.

Founded in 1843 by a group of laymen in New York City’s Congregation Anshe Chesed, a synagogue catering to a predominantly German-speaking population, B’nai B’rith formed as a result of the male congregants’ desire to facilitate their greater integration into American society while continuing to promote what they saw as Judaism’s universal moral and ethical teachings. Many of the founders claimed membership in existing fraternal orders such as the Freemasons and Odd Fellows and used their knowledge of lodge rules and rituals when creating their own group. Additionally, the founders’ participation in Anshe Chesed familiarized them with a European model of Reform Judaism through their rabbi, a product of both the German University system and modern rabbinical training, who encouraged his congregants to adhere to a more progressive and humanistic form of Jewish thought and practice. B’nai B’rith, then, became a space in which its members could devote themselves to promoting universal ideals of morality and brotherhood while operating in a Jewish environment that enabled members and, through B’nai B’rith’s efforts, Jews more generally, to better themselves socially and civically.

Female congregants of New York City’s reform Temple Emanu-el familiar with B’nai B’rith created the UOTS in 1846 as a venue of their own, in which they could exert moral authority over their members and organizational identity. The women sought to combine benevolent duties such as charity with what they described as the “nobler goals of humanity,” a guiding mission which complimented that of B’nai B’rith. (46) Through their participation in the UOTS, the order’s members would expand upon Jewish women’s participation within civic life and foster a larger and more visible role for women within Jewish practice. While smaller than B’nai B’rith in numbers due to the women enacting more stringent membership requirements, both groups enjoyed expansion in the first few decades of their founding and appealed to an eager population of German-speaking Jews who sought membership in a fraternal order that appeared American in form, Jewish in membership, and universal in mission.

Wilhelm provides great detail concerning the civic works of B’nai B’rith, demonstrating how its efforts helped facilitate its vision of bettering America’s Jewish community. From its founding, the order supported widows and orphans of its members and expanded this program to help finance and build hospitals and orphanages in locations across the country. Their projects not only provided care to Jews and, particularly in the case of hospitals, non-Jews, in need, but also offered assistance without the Christian missionizing common in most hospitals and orphanages of the time. Another important initiative that exemplified B’nai B’rith’s commitment to self-betterment and Jewish civic service was the creation of public libraries. Through providing access to books and sponsoring programs including lectures, musical offerings...