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

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By chronicling the history of the landsmanshaftn in American consciousness, Soyer successfully argues against the idea that Americanization was a process imposed upon from above; rather, that Americanization was pursued independently by Eastern European immigrants, thus granting them agency. The changing economy, increased industrialization, and growing populations as well as anti Semitism in Russia and Romania forced Jews from across Eastern Europe to migrate to New York. It was in America that the Jewish immigrant populations first came across ideas of fraternal orders, mutual aid societies and other democratic systems, thus transforming the structure of their own societies. In America, Jews learned the importance of voluntary organizations in perpetuating culture. The landsmanshaftn came to incorporate fraternal rituals by binding members and giving them a sense of shared experience, simultaneously reconciling loyalties to native lands with a newfound American identity. The landsmanshaftn differed from other societies in that their central concern was religious observance. Through informal contracts and advertisements, the landsmanshaftn grew rapidly. At first renting rooms in tenements for meetings, eventually the landsmanshaftn would rent meeting halls to perpetuate themselves as "defenders of Old-World religion" (page 50). While using religion as a framework, the landsmanshaftn's primary mission was Americanization. While they differed from each other in respects to the amount of influence of fraternal lodges, ideological orders and independent societies, the landsmanshaftn all shared the same disciplinary structure and membership criteria. The common missions of all landsmanshaftn were to provide medical care, reimbursement of lost wages during illness, life insurance, funeral costs, emergency assistance and small interest-free loans. These basic benefits remained the same for Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century. The landsmanshaftn maintained the principle of mutual aid rather than a hierarchical notion of charity, mirroring the distinctly American notions of independence and self-reliance. In chiefly supporting benefits and activities related to death, the landsmanshaftn were also unique to America, and they further mirrored the American notions of proper burial and dignity at death. Although they were only a one-generation phenomena, the landsmanshaftn were distinctly American in that they adopted American principles of democracy and mutual aid. They were testaments to the pervasive desire for Eastern European Jewish immigrants to adopt American principles in order for them to move about the host society with greater ease. Daniel Soyer's Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity: 1880-1939 is an ambitious, dizzying volume of American Immigrant History. It offers many examples of how the landsmanshaftn incorporated the American ideology of mutual aid, and how they grew from supplying simple community benefits to endorsing political reform. The growth and expansion of the landsmanshaftn ultimately proves to be a metaphor of the American experience, and a greater understanding of the landsmanshaftn leads to a deeper comprehension of the American experience.