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In the aftermath of the December 1947 anti-Jewish riots in British Colonial ‘Aden, local community leaders formed the Jewish Emergency Committee (JEC). The Committee embraced the tasks of rehabilitating the ‘Adeni Jewish Quarter and its residents, representing ‘Adeni Jewry to world Jewish organizations, and advocating for Yemeni Jewish refugees caught on the multitiered Yemen-‘Aden border. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) spearheaded the global Jewish effort to revitalize ‘Aden’s Jewish Quarter. Its relationship with the local Jewish community, however, quickly soured. The JDC, like the Alliance Israélite Universelle in North Africa, attempted to leverage its control of foreign monies to transform the culture, leadership, and gender dynamics of ‘Adeni Jewry. Ultimately, the JDC staff lost the trust of the local community, and the Jewish Quarter was never fully revitalized. Instead, the JDC grudgingly paid the migration costs of ‘Adenis whom it had failed to rehabilitate locally. The JEC fought the JDC’s cultural interventions by mobilizing popular protest, threatening violence, and exploiting fault lines between Jewish philanthropic organizations. Unable to convince the British Board of Jewish Deputies to hold the JDC accountable, the Committee turned to the disaffected World Jewish Congress (WJC), finding in it an organization willing to act as a gadfly against larger, better-established Jewish institutions. The ‘Adeni Jewish story is thus not only a case study in the cultural incompetence of philanthropic institutions in colonial contexts, but also an example of the ways in which indigenous Jewish activists found a voice in the international arena.

Drawing on hitherto neglected archival materials, Zohar Segev sheds new light on the policy of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) during the Holocaust. Contrary to popular belief, he can show that there was an impressive system of previously unknown rescue efforts. Even more so, there is evidence for an alternative pattern for modern Jewish existence in the thinking and policy of the World Jewish Congress. WJC leaders supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine but did not see it as an end in itself. They strove to establish a Jewish state and to rehabilitate Diaspora Jewish life, two goals they saw as mutually complementary. The efforts of the WJC are put into the context of the serious difficulties facing the American Jewish community and its representative institutions during and after the war, as they tried to act as an ethnic minority within American society.

June 1911: the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the premier Jewish philanthropic organization, created in 1860, holds elections for its Central Committee. What had been a staid, largely pro forma procedure for decades turned into an international drama as competing lists, presented by the incumbent Central Committee in Paris and the leaders of the German Alliance committee in Berlin, vied for the votes of tens of thousands of members on four continents. While historians have usually thought of the Alliance as a Franco-Jewish organization and understood it primarily within the context of French Jewish and French colonial history, throughout its existence and until World War I, the largest group among the dues-paying affiliates of the Alliance were in fact German Jews, who outnumbered their French counterparts three to one. During the crisis of 1911, all sides accused one another of betraying the “universal” cosmopolitan ethos of the Alliance and of pursuing narrow, nationalistic, “chauvinistic” goals instead. This essay will explore the battle fought over the Alliance in 1911 to demonstrate how Jewish internationalism persisted throughout the age of emancipation and all the way to the Great War, resisting the homogenizing logic of the European nation-states.

This paper presents a macro-social perspective on Jewish populations and societies in the Americas, arguing for a broad transnational view of several different fundamental demographic and ideational processes and trends. The goal is to detect broad commonalities versus regional differences in the Jewish experience on the American continent beyond local national frameworks. Commonalities and differences between Jews in the different parts of the Americas emerge through observing Jewish population distribution and its relation to local human development levels, inter- and intracontinental migration, levels and modes of Jewish education, and patterns of Jewish identification, socialization, and assimilation. I address Jewish interactions with the majority of society by examining frequencies of antisemitism across different countries. Interactions within the Jewish collective itself are assessed by looking at mutual influences through the worldwide institutional network. Conclusions are suggested at the pancontinental level. A variety of quantitative analytical tools are used. Sources are large-scale sociodemographic surveys, compilations of annual data series, and observations of the global networks of Jewish community organizations.

This article explores early modern practices of cooking and hospitality, both in and out of homes, in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt am Main. The focus is on Garküchen (eateries) and communal ovens, which were increasingly regulated by the community. Communal leaders employed creative strategies to find solutions for nourishing a growing local and visiting population in the limited space of the early modern Jewish ghetto. Their attempts to expand were propelled by concrete historical events, particularly by a series of fires, which shaped the physical spaces in which this process unfolded. Looking at these institutions allows for a reconsideration of the spatial boundaries of the Jewish ghetto.

In the last two decades, journalists have chronicled a contemporary “Yiddish Revival,” focusing in particular on the language's popularity among a subculture of young Jews. But, while the Holocaust and other circumstances threatened Yiddish on a global scale by the mid-twentieth century, youthful pursuits of, in, and for Yiddish are by no means new. Indeed, each American-born generation has produced a group of young activists who continued to produce, perform, and engage with Yiddish language and culture, adapting the ideals of the Yiddishist movement to new cultural, linguistic, and historical conditions. Chronicling this generational project through the lens of the Yiddishist youth movement Yugntruf and the Yiddish-speaking farm that grew out of it, this article demonstrates how Yiddishism has evolved to mirror the needs, desires, and visions of each North American cohort at its helm, taking on new forms through the lived experiences and relationships of its activists.

This paper seeks to examine the way in which the Canadian Jewish polity has defended communal interests linked to policy disputes involving the intersection of domestic and transnational Jewish concerns. The case of Canadian Jewry is of note given a relatively high degree of integration and a high degree of retention of Jewish culture and identity. The defense of communal interests has used both traditional and deferential forms of actions, as in the apparently discredited shtadlanut response, along with newer more militant forms of mobilization and action. The episodes reviewed here suggest that, contrary to current thinking, both forms of response may play a legitimate role in defending those interests. Comparative research involving Jewish communities in the United States and Latin America can determine whether similar distinctions are relevant there.

Religious enclaves have a long history of relying on internal organizations to care for the vulnerable. Yet very occasionally they avail themselves of the services of those who are not community members. Police agencies working in these enclaves also often rely on community organizations to disseminate information, assist in maintaining public order, and increase police legitimacy. Using the framework of community-society and social control, this study identifies a shift of religious organizations toward greater integration into the public sphere. Under certain social conditions, religious organizations serve as agents of socialization for the enclave community and allow members of the community to participate in public actions, resulting inevitably in higher integration. This study suggests that the boundaries between community and society are flexible and may adjust under certain circumstances, even as religious constraints may pose obstacles for advancing community cooperation with such state organizations as the police.

[...]we offer a portrait of the Jewish “innovator”: an emerging category of Jewish leader who draws on philanthropic support to add to the menu of institutionally-mediated forms of Jewish self-expression. [...]of particular significance for this analysis, neoliberal ideology valorizes market principles as virtues that should serve as the primary “guide to all human action.” [...]critical social scientists have focused more on the state, or on global financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, and their role in promoting policies that, despite promises of prosperity for all, have largely resulted in extreme wealth and extreme wealth inequality. First established with seventeen donors, and designed to support and connect funders who give at least $25,000 to causes guided by their Jewish identity, the agency has grown exponentially since its founding.