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115 C h a p t e r 3 The Lodges at the Center of Jewish Identity Formation Community Building, Self-definition, and Representation While the discussion of the order’s role within American Judaism took place on the leadership level of B’nai B’rith, on the local level the lodges displayed great activism by founding urgently needed community institutions . Whereas in central Europe these institutions were organized by one large corporate Jewish community, this was not the case in America, since such traditional communities did not exist. The Reform movement had resulted in the fragmentation of community life, and America’s small congregations were financially and organizationally unable to finance and maintain their own community institutions. Nevertheless, despite the deep conflicts that were fought out at the top, in its early years between 1850 and 1875 the order succeeded in integrating and motivating its base for its own purposes through the establishment of community institutions. Particularly after the end of the Civil War, B’nai B’rith successfully inspired and focused religious energies and the desire for civic integration, allowing members to present themselves as American Jews. The fundamental principle of the order’s identity, namely, brotherly and neighborly love, became the mainspring of socio-religious modernization and acculturation processes. Unlike the oldfashioned and, it was felt, humiliating concept of tzedakah (social justice), to which every Jew is obliged, the principle of brotherly and neighborly love placed one’s personal service and spirit of emotional dedication center stage. This made the order the first Jewish organization that put an emphasis on the “principle of love” as the driving force of Jewish philanthropy and mission , with the hope of thus solving the general social problems of the day.1 C H A P T E R 3 116 By internalizing this principle, each brother of the order was forced to interact with his environment on a personal level and develop a unique feeling of responsibility within society. This principle of mutual support, just like the idea of mutual aid, was intended to render tzedakah superfluous for the brothers and generate a new system of Jewish solidarity that would strengthen the self-confidence and independence of the individual.2 The popularity of B’nai B’rith as the embodiment of a new community experience grew so much that the order became the model for the founding of other Jewish lodges. However, orders such as the Free Sons of Israel, the Kesher Shel Barzel, or the B’rith Abraham never achieved the popularity and the extraordinary sense of mission that B’nai B’rith enjoyed.3 Even groups in partial competition with B’nai B’rith, such as the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, recognized the potential of B’nai B’rith to be a tool for national integration and a vehicle for the veneration of the educational ideal among America’s Jews. The Board of Delegates expressed its desire for the order to become a platform for urgently needed cooperation for the common good and for education in the broadest sense, while the board itself concerned itself with representing Jewish interests toward the outside.4 In late 1873, shortly before the Chicago General Assembly, the Jewish Times proudly recalled the lodges’ success on the community level and underscored the goal of the order’s social involvement, namely, to prepare immigrant Jews for their duties as citizens.5 Deborah Dash Moore has presented the order’s dedication to large philanthropic projects as a consciously pursued charitable policy on the part of the order’s leadership that underscored the declining influence of the intellectual radical Reform leadership elite in the 1860s.6 She thus reduces the call to establish public social institutions, such as hospitals and orphanages, to the order’s intention to carry its teachings into civil society through the principle of brotherly love. However, this activism formed the basis for an identity-generating, individual experience that was part of a larger process of educating humanity (Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts) and therefore transcended the boundaries of traditional Jewish charity.7 Moore has overlooked how closely the “principle of love” was linked with the intellectual elements of the Enlightenment within the order and how both were utilized to construct a modern civil Jewish identity for American Jewry and to put the mission idea into practice. According to this concept, the lodges functioned as training grounds and educational centers for brotherly solidarity and civic ideals such as tolerance...

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