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Jewish philanthropy and Jewish credit cooperatives in Eastern Europe and Palestine up to 1939: A transnational phenomenon?

2008; Routledge; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13531040802284049

1744-0548

Nahum Karlinsky,

Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

Abstract At the end of the nineteenth century, and more pronouncedly between the two World Wars, Jews in Eastern Europe created wide networks of credit cooperatives, which at their peak supported about a third of the non-Soviet Jewish population in Eastern Europe. The establishment and continuous management of these cooperatives were greatly assisted by the two major Jewish philanthropic organizations of the period, the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). These organizations acted as charitable institutions but also as third-sector organizations which aspired both to assist and to socially engineer East European Jewish society. In British Mandate Palestine a Zionist branch of the movement was established, which was, however, free from the influences of these philanthropic organizations. The article describes and analyzes this little-researched phenomenon while seeking to place it within the theoretical frameworks of philanthropy and transnationalism. It concludes with an observational comparison between the political context in which Jewish credit cooperatives were created, namely East European ethnic regimes, and the Israeli ethnic democracy. Keywords: Jewish philanthropyphilanthropythe American Joint Reconstruction FoundationJewish credit cooperativestransnationalismJDCJCABernard KahnYishuv Acknowledgments It is my pleasure to thank the staff at the Archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for the invaluable and friendly assistance I received from them while I was conducting my research there, and especially: Sherry Hyman, director of the Archives and Records Department; Pamela Cumberbatch; and the Archivist Misha Mitsel. I also would like to thank Professors Nachum T. Gross and Jacob Metzer for their comments on an earlier version of this article. Notes 1. The conference, “East European Jewish Modernity: Legacies, Dialogues, Comparisons,” was held on 5–6 June 2006 at the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, Tel Aviv University. 2. The authoritative economic history study of the origins of credit cooperatives in Europe and their subsequent development and spread belongs to Timothy W CitationGuinnane. See, for example, his “Regional Organizations.” 3. CitationKotsonis, Making Peasants Backward; CitationMerl, “The Cooperative Movement”; CitationJanowski, “Ha-ko'operatziyah ha-ashrayit”; CitationLöwe, “From Charity to Social Policy.” 4. CitationNorman, An Outstretched Arm, 42–52; CitationJewish Colonization Association, Rapport de l'administration centrale. 5. CitationHausleitner, “Jewish Cooperatives in Bessarabia”; see also the references in nn. 3 and 4 above. 6. CitationPowell and Steinberg, “Introduction,” 3. 7. CitationChiswick, “An Economic Analysis of Philanthropy,” 5. 8. CitationOstrower, Why the Wealthy Give, 4. 9. CitationAndreoni, “Philanthropy”; idem, “The Economics of Philanthropy”; Chiswick, “An Economic Analysis of Philanthropy.” 10. CitationAndreoni, “Philanthropy,” 1220; Chiswick, “An Economic Analysis of Philanthropy.” 11. Chiswick, “An Economic Analysis of Philanthropy”; Ostrower, Why the Wealthy Give. 12. CitationSalamon and Anheier, “Social Origins of Civil Society”; CitationAdam, “Introduction”; CitationGidron, Bar, and Katz, The Israeli Third Sector. 13. CitationMetzer, “Economic Structure and National Goals”; Citationidem, Hon le'umi le-vayit le'umi. 14. CitationPenslar, Shylock's Children, 174–262. 15. Norman, An Outstretched Arm; CitationBauer, My Brother's Keeper, 57–104; CitationDekel-Chen, Farming the Red Land. The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, “one of the foremost academic research centers in the world concentrating on the nonprofit sector and civil society,” which began its research mission on these issues already in the early 1980s, is a major source of information and methodology with regard to the histories and current situation of nonprofit organizations and of civil societies around the world (see http://www.jhu.edu/∼ccss/). 16. CitationMendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe. 17. CitationLorenz, “Introduction.” See also, CitationAlbrecht, “Nationalism,” and the other articles collected in that volume. 18. CitationOz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, 186. 19. Bauer, My Brother's Keeper. 20. Bauer, My Brother's Keeper, 3–29; CitationHyman, Twenty-Five Years of American Aid; Harry Viteles, Reconstruction Report: Activities of the Reconstruction Dept., JDC Archives, Long Island, NY (hereafter JDCA), collection 21/32, file 143; Herbert H. Lehman, “‘From Relief to Reconstructive Efforts,’ A Report delivered at the Constructive Relief Conference of the Joint Distribution Committee and the United Jewish Campaign, Chicago October 22–23, 1927,” JDCA, collection 21/32, file 150. 21. Viteles, Reconstruction Report; CitationSzajkowski, “Disunity in the Distribution of American Jewish Overseas Relief;” Citationidem, “Budgeting American Jewish Overseas Relief”; Bauer, My Brother's Keeper, 3–29. 22. For example: “Every effort must be made to safeguard the past investments or present commitments.” Viteles, Reconstruction Report, 233. 23. Viteles, who worked in the European Department of the Reconstruction Committee, claimed that “what was really meant was not liquidation but reorganization” (ibid., 227). See also ibid., 227–45; Lehman, “From Relief to Reconstructive Efforts”; Bauer, My Brother's Keeper, 3–29; CitationSzajkowski, “‘Reconstruction’ vs. ‘Palliative Relief’.” 24. Penslar, Shylock's Children; CitationGal, “Brandeis's View.” 25. Viteles, Reconstruction Report. 26. Viteles, Reconstruction Report; American Joint Reconstruction Foundation, Report of Activities, May 15th, 1924–December 31st, 1926 (hereafter AJRF, Report of Activities), 9–10, JDCA, collection 21/32, file 156. On the institution of the Foundation as a philanthropic organization see CitationAnheier and Toepler, “Philanthropic Foundations”; CitationBulmer, “The History of Foundations”; CitationLeat, “British Foundations.” 27. Viteles, Reconstruction Report; and various protocols of the Foundation, 1924–1937, at the JDCA, collection 21/32. 28. Penslar, Shylock's Children, 201–202, 236–38; Bauer, My Brother's Keeper, 21–22; a 1924 short biographical sketch of Kahn, JDCA, collection 21/32, file 50B; Kahn's Biographische Notizen [1921?], Leo Baeck Archives, New York, Bernhard Kahn Collection, AR-416. 29. On the Warburgs and especially on Felix Warburg and his philanthropic activities, which were not limited to Jewish affairs alone, see Bauer, My Brother's Keeper, 3–27; CitationFarrer, The Warburgs, 93–108; CitationFeingold, A Time for Searching, 155–88; and CitationChernow, The Warburgs. 30. Bauer, My Brother's Keeper, 37–41. 31. AJRF, Report of Activities, 9–10 (emphasis added). 32. AJRF, Report of Activities, 7–9. 33. AJRF, Report of Activities, 10. 34. AJRF, Report of Activities 35. AJRF, Report of Activities (emphasis added). 36. AJRF, Report of Activities, 11. 37. See, for example, the discussion at the JDC's Reconstruction Committee with regard to the transfer of its assets to the future Foundation, Viteles, Reconstruction Report, 227–93. 38. Bauer, My Brother's Keeper, 57–104; Feingold, A Time for Searching, 161–88; Dekel-Chen, Farming the Red Land. 39. Szajkowski, “Budgeting American Jewish Overseas Relief”; Bauer, My Brother's Keeper, 305–6 (Appendix, “Income and Expenditure of JDC: 1914–1939”); Norman, An Outstretched Arm, 295–305 (Appendix C, “JCA's Accounts”). 40. See, for example, Paul Baerwald's letter of 3 July 1931, marked as “Very Confidential,” addressed to what we may term, following Bauer, as the JDC's “inner circle,” Warburg, Lehman, Rosenberg: “I have become convinced that there are assets, first in the Foundation, second, in the Agrojoint, third, in the Gemilath Chessed Kassas, from which we can make substantial recoveries.” And then he continues: “unless we could make a recovery from our assets within the very near future, I mean within a year … we would be compelled to reduce the J.D.C., which we have newly reorganized, to nothing.” JDCA, collection 21/32, file 1A. See also ibid., file 152. (For the Gemiloth Chessed Kassas, see p. 160 below.) 41. The Foundation's policy in that regard and the way it managed it relationship with the kassas is clear to anyone who reads the protocols of its council's semi-annual meetings. 42. A memorandum from Kahn to JDC headquarters, 28 October 1931, JDCA, collection 21/32, file 155 (10F2); Der Tog, 4 April 1932, ibid., file 152. The official newspaper of the major Jewish cooperative organization in Poland, Di Kooperative Bavegung, published regularly during the interwar years articles that reflected the changing relationship between the Foundation and the Jewish cooperative movement in Poland. 43. Statement by Alter to the annual general meeting of the Foundation, 16 December 1931, JDCA, collection 21/32, file 155 (10F2). 44. The quote is from “Agenda of the seventh ordinary annual general meeting of the Foundation, June 13th, 1931,” JDCA, collection 21/32, file 155 (10F2). See also Viktor Alter “to the Members of the American Joint Reconstruction Foundation” [1925?], ibid. Viktor Alter's opposition to the Foundation's policy and authority began almost immediately upon the establishment of the organization in 1924 and caused constant tension in its work. See, for example, the reference above and ibid., files 1A, 151, 153 (10F2). Bauer briefly discusses this affair, mainly from its political perspective, in My Brother's Keeper, 45–46, 48. 45. JDCA, collection 21/32, files 151, 152, 155 (10F2), 155 (20F2), 153 (10F2), 153 (20F2). 46. AJRF, Report of Activities; JDCA, various protocols of meetings of Foundation's council and executive committee. See, for example, collection 33/44, files 401, 400 (20F2), 402 (10F2); collection 21/32, file 153 (10F2) 47. There is a wealth of material on the Gemiloth Chessed Kassas. See, for example, JDCA, collection 21/32, files 399 and 398. 48. CitationTroen, “Frontier Myths”; CitationCohen, Global Diasporas; CitationSafran, “The Jewish Diaspora.” 49. CitationLevitt and Glick Schiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity.” 50. CitationKatz, Tradition and Crisis; CitationMeyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew; CitationSorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry. 51. See references in n. 29 above. 52. This section is based on my article, “Ha-ko'operatziyah ha-pratit bi-tkufat ha-mandat”; and, among others, on the credit cooperatives' organ, Ko'operatziyah; archival sources; CitationGross, “Ha-Banka'ut”; CitationGross, Lo al ha-ruah levadah; CitationMetzer, The Divided Economy; CitationBialik, The Cooperative Credit Movement. 53. Metzer, The Divided Economy, 103–16; CitationNadan, “The Competitive Advantage.” 54. CitationEngel, “Ha-meser ha-kaful”; CitationGröschel, “Causes and Applications of Anti-Semitism.” 55. , “Ethnic Democracy”; idem, “Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel.” 56. For Gruenbaum, see David Engel's article in this issue, “Citizenship in the Conceptual World of Polish Zionists, 191–99.”