Unabhangiger Orden Treuer Schwestern
American Jewish fraternal order, supposedly America’s first order for women only. The Unabhangiger Orden Treuer Schwestern (UOTS) (Independent Order of True Sisters) was founded on April 15, 1846, by a group of young German Jewish women of the newly founded Temple Emanu-El in New York City.
The initiative was launched by Henriette Bruckman, the wife of a German Jewish medical doctor in New York’s Little Germany. The founding of the UOTS was the result of the young women’s fascination with the mission, work, and self-awareness of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith, founded only three years earlier by several of their husbands and fathers.Encouraged by the success of early Reform Judaism and the B’nai B’rith, these women sought to pioneer a new role as Jewesses in the American public sphere. The issue of women’s role in modern Judaism had been an important but hotly contested issue within the German Reform movement, which separated moderate and radical reformers from each other. Although the Reform movement wanted to integrate Jewish women into synagogue life, radical and moderate reformers disagreed over the appropriate role for Jewish women within the public sphere. When Bruckman attempted to establish a Jewish women’s order similar to the B’nai B’rith within the congregation, it was first rejected. Only after radical reformers, who were members of the congregation and the local B’nai B’rith, supported this idea, were women able to found an equivalent order as a secret organization: the Unabhangiger Orden Treuer Schwestern.
Unlike existing Jewish women’s organizations, such as the chevrot, or local benevolent societies, the UOTS was from the outset not limited to the local level, focused on the women’s character building and Bildung, stressed the effort to transform them into new moral personalities, and sought a new role for Jewish women in the public sphere.
Although Jewish in outlook, the UOTS stressed its universalism as well as confessional and political independence. During its first years, the order was guided by a small group of male supporters. In 1851 when women had gained enough management and organizational skills, men retreated from the order. Women, who had already founded lodges in New York City, Philadelphia, Albany, and New Haven, had enough experience toform a Constitution Grand Lodge and their own jurisdiction. In 1874 the founding of a lodge in Chicago was a first step toward larger national growth and a national role. In the same year, the order was officially acknowledged as the “equivalent” women’s organization to the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith, which added to its growth and importance.
In 1882 the UOTS members founded the first suborganization, the Cacilie Lorsch Fortbildungsverein, a special educational league that prepared women for public appearances—for example, with speech training. In 1888 the UOTS members organized the New York Philanthropic League, in which they coordinated the charitable work of its many New York lodges. Both in New York and Chicago the order became a key player in the wider Social Gospel and Settlement House movements. Most notably, the UOTS edited and published the first German Jewish women’s newspaper Der Vereinsbote (The Association Messenger) under the guidance of Dr. Emanuel Friedlein in 1884. After Friedlein’s death in 1897, it was continued as Das Ordens Echo (The Order Echo). When the B’nai B’rith officially acknowledged the formation of women’s auxiliaries in 1894, the UOTS cut its official ties with the men’s order. The UOTS supported the founding of the first national Jewish women’s mass organization at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 but did not merge with it. In 1918 the organization switched to English as its official language and since then carries the misleading anglicized name of United Order of True Sisters. In 2005, the order is open to members of all denominations.
Cornelia Wilhelm
See also B’nai B’rith
References and Further Reading
Ratner, Sadie Platcow. “United Order True Sisters, New Haven Number 4: 117 Years of Sisterhood and Beneficience.” Jews in New Haven. Vol. III. Eds. Barry E. Herman and Werner S. Hirsch. New Haven, CT: Jewish Historical Society of New Haven, 1981, pp. 50—63.
Wilhelm, Cornelia. “The Independent Order of True Sisters: Friendship, Fraternity and a Model of Modernity for 19th-century American-Jewish Womanhood.” American Jewish Archives 54 (2002): 37—63.