B'nai B'rith (Sons of the Covenant)
The Independent Order of B’nai B’rith is the oldest and largest Jewish fraternal order.
B’nai B’rith was founded on October
13, 1843, in New York City by eleven German Jews (Henry Jones, Isaac Rosen- bourgh, Isaac Dittenhoefer, Joseph Seligman, William Renau, Michael Schwab, Ruben M.
Rodacher, Henry Kling, Valentine Koon, Samuel Schafer, and Jonas Hecht). Most of them were immigrants and belonged to the traditional German Jewish congregation Anshe Chesed. Following the foundation of the order, the majority of this group broke away from the congregation and founded a Kultusverein (religious association). This association formed the basis for the Reform congregation Emanu-El of New York City. The latter became a symbol of the German Jewish desire to add decorum, worship, and respectability to traditional Jewish religiosity. In the United States the majority of the founders were active members of American lodges, such as the Masons and the Odd Fellows. Although several Jews were rejected by American fraternal orders, Henry Jones, the president of the congregation and a high-ranking member of the Odd Fellows, argued that not antisemitism but the lack of American religious forms and middle-class respectability of those applicants was the cause of their rejection. To remedy this problem and to improve the image of Jews and Judaism in the United States, he suggested the founding of a Jewish fraternal order, where the growing number of immigrant Jews could improve each other and practice a sense of community while developing a respectable American civic identity.Indeed, the founding of a Jewish fraternal order served several needs of the quickly growing American Jewish community. First, it provided a modern platform for Jews of different backgrounds who missed a sense of social community in the American synagogue, which was a spiritual rather
than a social center.
Second, the founding of the order was closely connected with the introduction of the German Reform movement in the United States, which triggered increased factionalism in American Jewish congregational life and thus threatened the ethnic unity Israel was commanded by the Covenant to observe. Third, the order actively tried to familiarize immigrant Jews with the challenges of American modernity by bridging the division between community and society through its organizational setup and teachings; it actively promoted integration and the rejection of religious particularism in favor of a new civic American and Jewish identity.The idea of the B’nai B’rith, its “civic Judaism” and construction of an American Jewish civil religion, was closely linked to the Reform movement in Judaism. Both placed Judaism in the middle of the human family and stressed the brotherly nature of human relationships, helping Jews in modern times seek universalism, take on an active role in society, and overcome traditional particularism. Nevertheless, B’nai B’rith strictly guarded its organizational and religious independence from the Reform movement, its congregations and ecclesiastic life to be able to serve as a platform to unite all Jews, no matter their religious affiliation.
The order’s commitment to secrecy was subject to continuous criticism from inside and outside, especially since it did not seem in line with the universalist mission of the organization. In fact, however, its secrecy protected mainly the details surrounding the order’s charitable support. This charitable engagement followed the tradition ofJewish chevrot (communal mutual aid societies). Although the fraternal ritual was also kept secret, as in other fraternal orders, proceedings and reports of annual meetings were regularly published.
Soon after its founding, the order rapidly grew into a national organization, long before a national religious platform could be established. Therefore, the order had a tremendous impact on the shaping of an American Jewish identity and on the founding and support of the first Jewish charitable and communal institutions. These hospitals, orphanages, and manual training schools could not have been established by individual congregations given their size.
Among the best know of these institutions are the Cleveland Orphan Asylum; the Philadelphia Jewish Hospital; the Chicago Jewish Hospital; the Touro Hospital in New Orleans; the National Jewish Hospital for Jewish Consumptives; the Leo N. Levi Hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas; the Philadelphia Jewish Orphan Asylum; the Atlanta Jewish Orphan Asylum; the Jewish Orphan Asylum in New Orleans; the Manual Training School in Philadelphia; and the Jewish Home for the Aged in Yonkers, New York.The organization was a strictly male order until 1895, when the men’s organization started offering membership in women’s auxiliaries. However, between 1874 and 1895 the B’nai B’rith officially recognized the Unabhangiger Orden Treuer Schwestern (United Order of True Sisters) as its sister organization.
In 1882, B’nai B’rith’s success in the United States and the service of former B’nai B’rith president Benjamin Peixotto as U.S. consul in Romania (1870—1873) prompted the organization to create a network for international Jewish solidarity. Demonstrating its close relationship to German Jewry, its first lodge abroad was founded as Deutsche Reichsloge (German
Imperial Lodge) in Berlin in 1882. The German lodges served as a European stronghold and organizational center for the spreading network of lodges across Europe and the Orient, such as Cairo (1886), Jerusalem (1888), and Romania (1889). By the 1930s B’nai B’rith had grown to be the single most important international Jewish organization, providing with its “civic Judaism” a transnational network of Jewish solidarity in modernity.
After the Nazis took power in Germany, B’nai B’rith was forced to close its lodges in 1937. Because of the Holocaust the order was almost extinguished in Europe. After the Holocaust the order changed its focus to Zionism and became a staunch supporter of the newly founded state of Israel, where it established a strong foothold. During the 1960s, the order slowly started rebuilding lodges in Germany and is currently present in fifty-seven countries throughout the world.
Today the organization has its headquarters at B’nai B’rith International in Washington, D.C.In the twentieth century B’nai B’rith played a major role in American Jewish social and political life through the founding of several suborganizations, which reflect its core values of civic service and commitment. Among them are the AntiDefamation League of B’nai B’rith (1913); the Hillel Organization of B’nai B’rith (Jewish campus organization, 1923); and the youth organizations Ahava, Zedakah, Achdut (Love, Justice, and Unity, 1924), and B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (1948). B’nai B’rith Women was established in 1909 but remained an auxiliary until 1947, when it finally gained equal membership status. In 1995 it had changed its name to Jewish Women International.
Cornelia Wilhelm
See also Antisemitism; German Jewish Migration to the United States; Judaism, Reform (North America); Unabhangiger Orden Treuer Schwestern
References and Further Reading
Moore, Deborah D. B’nai B’rith and the Challenge of Ethnic Leadership. Albany: SUNY Press, 1981.
Wilhelm, Cornelia. “Community in Modernity: Finding Jewish Solidarity within the Independent Order B’nai B’rith.” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow- Institut fur judische Geschichte und Kultur 1 (2001): 297-319.
------. “Shaping American Jewish Identity: The Independent Order B’nai B’rith.” German-Jewish Identities in America: From the Civil War to the Present. Ed. Christof Mauch and Joe Salmons. Madison: Max Kade Institute, 2003, 64-87.