Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 10, 1940 Page: 3 of 6
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October 10, 1940
THE JEWISH HERALD-VOICE
3
The Organization and Philosophies of
Jewish Communal Life in America
By J. B. LIGHTMAN, A. B., L. L. B., M. S. S.
Executive Director, The Jewish Community Council of
Metropolitan Houston, Texas
A series in four installments on The Organization and Philo-
sophies of Jewish Communal Life in America is presented,
beginning with this issue, under the authorship of Mr. J. B.
Lightman, Executive Director of the Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Houston. Mr. Lightman, a student of
sociology, social service and communal welfare, has devoted
sixteen years to part-time and full-time professional Jewish
social work. He holds the degrees of Bachelor of Arts,
Bachelor of Laws, and Master of Social Service, and received
his education at Pennsylvania State College, University of
Pennsylvania, George Washington University, New York Uni-
versity, the Graduate School for Jewish Social Work, and the
New York School for Social Work, with a period of research
at Columbia University. He was on the faculty of the Gradu-
ate School for Jewish Social Work, traveled abroad exten-
sively, studied and wrote on Jewish communal organisation
in Europe and in America for the JEWISH SOCIAL SERVICE
QUARTERLY, the official organ of professional Jewish social
work in the United States and Canada, of the Foreign De-
partment of which Mr. Lightman was Editor for a number of
years. Before coming to Houston, he was assistant to the
Executive Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee, the largest organizational committee engaged in
welfare work in behalf of Jewish people in overseas countries.
The present article on the organisational aspects of Jewish
life in America, its underlying philosophies and its media of
expression should prove of great interest to readers.—Editor.
INTRODUCTION
Jewish philanthropic, fraternal and educational organizations are
part of the field of community organization which likewise includes
religious, social service, recreational, Zionist and other types of
Jewish organizations. The rise of these is not accidental. They are
all part of an historic process which is literally as old as the Jewish
people itself. While we are primarily interested in the American
aspects of this problem, and more pertinently in its present-day format,
it nevertheless will be of interest to glance quickly into the historic
past with a view toward determining what those factors were which
led to the formation of our present types of Jewish community or-
ganization, particularly as expressed in philanthropic, fraternal and
educational media.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
Organized Jewish life, as we all know, had its inception in the
early days of the people of Israel, beginning some four thousand
years ago, in and around the Land of Canaan. It was formulated as
found recorded in the Bible. After the Jewish people settled down
as an agricultural people, and later also as an artisan people, the
Temple became the center of virtually all Jewish life and activities.
The form of civilization enjoyed by the Jews in the early days of
their history in Palestine being that of a theocracy, matters of a
philanthropic, social and even recreational nature as well as those of
a political nature, were necessarily related to the religious habitat of
the people; namely, the Temple and its forms of expression. Thus
the very term for charity as we call it today, in Hebrew did not have
that same meaning in early Biblical days; it stood rather, for right-
eousness; that is, “tsadakah,” on the theory that all brethren are
God’s children, and therefore entitled to an equality of support, not
as a matter of charity, but as a matter of righteousness. With the
disappearance of the Jewish state and with the exile of the Jewish
people, that is, during the period of the Babylonian captivity in the
sixth century before the Common or Christian Era, a number of
these institutions, interpretations and traditions disappeared among
the Jewish people. A good many of them were, of course, still main-
tained, but were somewhat altered in terms of the new experiences
and the new environment in which Jews found themselves. Thus
instead of the Temple, we later find the synagogue arising as the
center of Jewish life. The synagogue differed from the Temple in
that there was more than one synagogue and it necessarily performed
the function of a central communal gathering place for prayer,
discussion, festivals and even recreation, as well as for matters of
a philanthropic nature in a given community. Now a number of
these institutions for communal expression were carried back to
Palestine at the time the Jews first returned there, but these institu-
tions too gave way somewhat, with the next exodus during the de-
struction of the second Temple, in the year 70 of the Common Era.
This latter marked the final disappearance of the Jewish state or
homeland until comparatively recent attempts to revive it. The
synagogue then, we find, became the almost permanent basis for
Jewish life no matter where Jews found themselves, until about
the time of the French Revolution in the latter part of the 18th
century. The Bible was the statute book for the Jewish community,
and interpretations thereof arose from time to time by way of
commentaries written by various Jewish scholars, one of the most
notable of whom was Maimonides who, in the twelfth century wrote
his famous MISHNEH TORAH. In this, among other things, he
codified eight degrees of charitable giving, in which the highest
form is that whereby a person aids another person to become self-
supporting. This of course took place in the Middle Ages.
Then in the later Middle Ages, we have the rise of what might
perhaps be called Councils or Synods although there were a few
attempts at them in an earlier century. These, in a sense, represented
a crystallization of the restricted Jewish community life of so-called
Jews’ Quarters (or Ghettos, as they were known in other parts of
Europe) that were becoming- entrenched in the sixteenth century.
These synods had for their purpose solving problems that arose in
Jewish life because ot the vast political changes that were taking place
at that time, and because of the restrictive measures that were being
enacted against Jew-ish communities largely in Eastern and parts of
Central Europe, where Jews for the greater part found themselves liv-
ing in cloistered areas, and where it was necessary to have some new
regulations based not only on the Bible and on the commentaries, but
likewise on the surrounding social institutions of the countries in which
Jewish communities found themselves. But still the synagogues
were the center of all this council type of activities, as well as of
the social, welfare and educational and other types of activity other
than commercial, that characterized Jewish life. It is always inter-
esting to note that codes and commentaries have their rise in periods
and eras in which there is an apparent conflict between the traditional
principles of Jewish life and those of its environment. We have
already seen how Maimonides enunciated his principles and in
passing it may be noted that his entire concept of philosophy was
written because of a conflict that existed between previously accepted
Jewish theological philosophy and the Aristotelian or scientific philo-
sophy popular at that time.
Now in the sixteenth century, we find another great codifier. His
name was Joseph Caro, and in his SHULCHAN ARUCH, likewise
a code, he too, outlined one’s obligations to charity and one’s com-
munal responsibility and the like. This, too, had a religious format.
But at this time we begin to witness the gradual breaking down of
the synagogue as the complete center for Jewish communal activity.
We find that poor travelers, who perhaps today might be known as
transients, were given reception in the homes of the wealthy.. In the
seventeenth century, we also find that communal hostelries were
being set up for the Jewish vagrants. Such an institution might per-
haps today be known in some cities as an “hachnosis orchim;’’ that is,
a temporary shelter for traveling knights of the road. Also, special
societies were formed for caring for the sick, for raising taxes, for
burying the dead, for levying assessments for the synagogue, for
collecting donations for Palestine, for Passover relief, for marriageable
girls who could not afford a dowry, for taking care of orphans and
widows, and for numerous other needs in Jewish life very much like
what may still be seen in force in a number of cities in our own
country today. Again it may be noted, the rise of such institutions
in this country is not accidental, but largely an outgrowth of historical
forces set in motion during the Middle Ages.
Now, it may be asked, what caused these special forces to arise
at that time. There were a number of factors, of course, but by
and large it may be said that, for one thing, the Jewish people
increased in numbers, with the result that it became too burd-
ensome for the synagogue to care for all problems of all the
Jewish people. Also a great deal of traveling began to take
place on the part of Jewish people, either because they were
hounded or because they were seeking their fortunes elsewhere,,
or because sheer poverty drove them to seek green pastures in other
regions. We know as a matter of fact that the Crusades, although
in an earlier century during the Middle Ages, caused a lot of havoc
in certain Jewish communities, and set many Jewish people on the
road to refuge. Strangers coming into a community would severely
tax the facilities of that organized community which perhaps nor-
mally would not be prepared for them, and so new societies, new
institutions and organizations arose to be concerned with those prob-
lems in very much the same way as we today might perhaps or-
ganize a refugee aid committee or the like to deal with new prob-
lems of a refugee nature with which our already existing organizations
are not prepared to cope.
Now in Eastern Europe during part of the fifteenth, and during
the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jewish com-
munity life became fairly well consolidated and took on pretty much
of an autonomous political form under the aegis, of course, of the
particular state in which the Jewish community found itself. These
were fairly autonomous units for the reason that these Jewish com-
munities, known as “kchilloth,” had their ow'n officers, their own
board known as the “Kahal,” their own system of taxation enforced
by the law, and in many respects their own form of political as well as
theological control, consistent of course with the regulations of the
state. It is important to note this by way of seeing further how many
forms of this type of organization were carried on ahnost intact
except for some of the political aspects of community organization in
Eastern Europe that forms part of Russia, virtually down to the
Russian Revolution in 1917. In many respects, it may be said that
the Middle Ages in Russia did not come to an end until that Russian
Revolution of 1917. And because many of the people of that genera-
tion are still living, and have in fact settled and even prospered in
this country, many of those forms of organization were carried over
into Jewish communal thinking and expression in our own country
today, and virtually constitute, what sociologists would term primary
areas of social behavior. One thing that must of course be pointed
out, is that no matter what form Jewish community organization may
take in America, under our form of government, it can never
function as that autonomous political-legal body that the “Kehillah”
was in parts of Eastern Europe.
Now in Western Europe, Jewish communal behavior pretty much
mirrored itself after its non-Jewish surroundings, with an infusion of
Jewish traditional practices. But that, too, really only took place
after the French Revolution of 1789, and did not attain any real
tangible form, as we understand it today, until the latter part of the
19th century and the early part of the 20th century. However, it
would take too long at this point to analyze Jewish communal or-
ganization as it had developed in England, France and Germany,
particularly so, since this treatise is concerned rather with the form
Jewish community organization takes in America. Insofar as it is
necessary, however, the occasion may be taken to glance at the
European situation by way of throwing background light on the
American scene.
(This marks the first installment of this series on the organization
and philosophies of Jewish communal life in America. The second
installment next week, will be concerned with Jewish communal life
in America; its development through the periods of Spanish-Portu-
guese, German and East European immigration to this country.)
—
FLASH! FLASH!! THE
MEMBERSHIP DRIVE IS ON
Yea. The National Council of
Jewish Juniors is alive with New
Ideas and Rarin to use them.
Come all Girls . . . Join our
group.
You! You! You! Don't want to
be left out of the Big Event.
And the Big Event is none
other than the Membership Dance
which is to be held in November
. . . Watch for the date . . . for
all members and their escorts.
Did you know . . .?
The National Council of Jew-
ish Juniors was founded as early
the year 1883. Up to that time
there was no large Jewish Wom-
en's organization that was pre-
pared to deal with National Prob-
lems. or cooperate with non-
Jewish efforts in behalf of a
program for social welfare.
The membership of forty-
thousand women located in two
hundred communities carries on
an intensive social service pro-
gram which comprises support of
settlement houses. recreation
centers, health classes and nursing
schools and camps.
The National Council has been
particularly active in helping to
organize and educate its member-
ship for Peace.
This is only the beginning girls
... we have gobs more know-
ledge . . . plus.
Attend our next meeting to be
held at the Community Hall, Hoi.
man and LaBranch, November 15.
1840.
We will be looking for you all.
Miss Ann Berman is our memb-
ership chairman:
BRITISH JEWS . . .
(Continued from page 1)
services. Special services were
arranged for Jewish soldiers in
PoLsh army camps in Scotland.
Premier Jan Sramek of the
Czechoslovak Govemment-in-ex-
ile issued a New Year message ex-
pressing the hope that Jewish
rights would be restored and that
they would secure a peaceful
home.
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White, D. H. Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 10, 1940, newspaper, October 10, 1940; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1101971/m1/3/: accessed June 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .