Harry Gersh’s previous informal sociological explorations in COMMENTARY have addressed themselves to such various aspects of American Jewish culture as home cooking, kochaleins, and “paintners.” He turns here to another of the basic institutions of Jewish life—the landsmanshaften, those characteristic Jewish immigrant societies.
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My Grandfather Berl, olav hasholem, worried a lot about the younger generation. He worried about their losing their religion, about their forgetting their Jewishness (which has nothing to do with religion), and about their losing their geshmak in living. And I found out that Grandpa had reason to be worried when I recently overheard some Jewish businessmen discussing Jewish societies. It was apparent that they were confusing family circles with landsmanshaften. They wouldn’t confuse the Dodgers and the Centerville Cubs. Grandpa was right. What Jew, living a Jewish life, could make such a mistake?
What is the difference between a landsman “verein” (society) and a family circle? We had a family circle once. Once each year we met in a Rumanian restaurant off Second Avenue. (The restaurateur guaranteed a haimish cook who knew what to do with eggplant and green peppers.) At the meeting all the new sons and daughters-in-law were introduced and the new grandchildren were displayed and lied about. We overate, had a wonderful time, and faithfully promised to see each other more often. After all, we were of the same blood, the same people.
The family circle was an attempt to conquer time and distance. Its sole bond was sentiment—sentiment trying to overcome the natural growing apart of people developing new interests and friends. It is some kind of crime among all peoples not to love your relatives. Among Jews it is a capital crime.
A landsmanshaft is different. Sentiment is there, but the major motivations are religious, economic, social, and psychological. Are there stronger motivations? The society insures its members against all catastrophes that occur to man—sickness, accidents, death, economic disaster. The religious side isn’t as important as it was when the verein supplied shuls, but it’s there. As for the social, now that the parvenus have gone through bridge and gin to that new Argentine game, where can a man find a decent pinochle game except at the verein? As for a quiet home life—this is psychology—watch the tensions building up in the man next door as the monthly meeting of his society comes closer. Then see him come home at peace with the world. He has settled the affairs of the world, with special reference to the Jews, purged himself of all his bitterness, aggressiveness, argumentativeness, all in one evening.
There are about two thousand landsmanshaften in the United States. It took the WPA Jewish Writers Project a long time to dig them out and they didn’t exhaust the supply. Name a town between the Oder and the Urals, inside the old Russian Pale, and you’ll find its transplanted Jews holding monthly meetings somewhere south of Central Park.
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When the immigrants of 1880-1910 landed in America they looked first for a place to sleep. If a landsman didn’t meet them at the dock they had an address to go to, a landsman‘s address. And if there were five recent arrivals bedded down in the big room, still they made a place for the newcomer. A pallet of some kind could be borrowed. And if the last arrival hadn’t brought his own perineh, his featherbed, from home, he shared the landsman‘s, sleeping alongside.
The second and third necessities were a place to work and a place to pray. The priority depended on the age and background of the individual immigrant. But most newcomers needed both. Work was a matter of landsman connections. And prayer with landsmenner was more satisfying.
The need to pray, and the desire to pray among known faces and names, led to the creation of hometown congregations. Many verein started as, or in, shuls. Today few societies are linked to places of worship, now that the old neighborhoods are gone. But when the Litvaks lived back of Cherry Street, and the Galitzianer were east of Avenue A, and Rivington Street was little Rumania, each gubernia and each shtetel had its own synagogue. Of course, the Lodzer shul and the Kishinever shul were not the same as the shul in Lodz and the shul in Kishinev. After all, this was America.
In the old country there had been three castes of shul members. You knew to which group a man belonged by where he sat in shul, by when he came to services, and by what Aliyah he was given. (An Aliyah is the portion of the day’s chapters from the Torah read by members of the congregation called to the bimah for the reading.) The Mizrach (east, therefore holy) Yiden were the very learned, and, of course, the rich. The Marev Yiden were the shopkeepers, the middle class. Then there were the Erev Rav, the plain people.
In the new shuls on the East Side every landsman faced the East When everyone worked in a shop or at a pushcart, economic caste lines were wiped out With little time for study, learning too was equalized.
Golden land or no golden land, almost at once the landsmenner started to have their troubles. Some got sick and needed help. Some old folks died and needed burial. Some lost their jobs or went on strike or went bankrupt and needed money. In each case, they, or their relatives, went to the shul to tell the sad story and to take counsel with the landsmenner. A few days or weeks later (with the Litvaks it might take months) the Chevra Anshei Shem of Old Constantin or the United Lutzker Young Men’s and Ladies’ Association or the Independent Prushnitzer K. U. Verein or the Samachwalowitzer Progressive Benevolent Association was born.
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First order of business for the new verein was the buying of a cemetery or a large plot in an existing burial ground. This came first because death gives little advance notice and you can’t hold off death by passing around the hat in shul. A place to rest among friendly names was a necessity, and an attraction for new members besides. Next the society attacked the problem of sickness. They set up a fund to pay weekly cash benefits for total disability. Some vereins made arrangements for free medical service to members. After that came free loans and other benefit features.
As soon as the organization was well established it split As soon as the seceding section had all, or most, of its benefits running, it split And so on. The splits may have been a healthy method of propagation, as in amoeba, but healthy or unhealthy, they seem endemic among landsmanshaften to this day.
A fertile cause of splits was family feuds. During the first years in America everyone from your home town was your brother, everyone from your gubernia was your cousin. But after a few years in the verein, during a heated debate, Joe remembered that his mother never liked Jake’s mother and that she had called Jake “Yankel der Shmutz.” Natural that he should lapse into the old appellative. Jake remembered that in his family Joe was called “Yosele Nuchshlepper.” Then the feud was back in circulation. Eventually the other members of the society took sides and a split was in the making.
Religion, as always, created some schisms. Not that there were arguments on theology—not unhappy arguments, anyway—but the social complications of the Aliyahs could cause trouble.
All of the Torah, understand, is holy. All of the Torah must be read each year, a portion each day. Some chapters became socially more holy than others. Grandpa Berl, whose piety, learning, and position in the shul were beyond question, sneered at the differences in the portions. But most people worried about them.
The first chapter of the day is read by the Kohen. The second chapter belongs to the Levi. The third chapter is Shalishi and a special mitzvah to the man who says the bruchah over it. A famous visitor might be asked to read it, or a very learned man, as a mark of respect. Or a rich man who contributes for the privilege.
Further down in the day’s portion is Shishi, the sixth reading and second best part. And last is Maftir, usually saved for the Bar Mitzvah yingele. The plain folk read the Aliyahs left over between the three specials. Every day there is an unspoken competition for the good Aliyahs, every day a decision as to who gets them. And every day someone is disappointed. Eventually this led to a split.
Does a dead man care where in the cemetery he lies? Well, his relatives do. Eventually this led to a split.
Does the society know whether Brother Levy is well enough to go back to work—and off the sick benefit? Brother Levy knows—and some machers in the verein think they know. Eventually this led to a split.
And who is responsible for the young people not joining the society? Who will make a better president. Brother Grossman or Brother Gross? Shall we have knishes or kreplach at the next banquet? Shall we allow the Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Trotskyites, Lovestoneites, Zionists, Poale Zionists, Freelanders, Vegetarians, Shachtmanites, Cannonites, Fieldites to speak at the meeting? Eventually all these lead to splits,
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Take the case of the Kanliper. Kanlip is a small, Jewish town in Bessarabia. In the old days it had a population of one thousand. Some two hundred Kanliper came to America. The original group was too small to start its own shul so some worshiped with the Kishinever shul and some with another Bessarabian congregation. But they were not at ease with the people from the big town and they worried that they would lose their identity as Kanliper. So the Kanliper Benevolent and Sick Benefit Society of New York was born.
The Kanliper B&SBS of NY was a fine society. It did a good job. Then there was a fight. One old timer thinks it had to do with an old Kanlip quarrel between the partisans of two rabbis. Anyway, there was a split. And the Independent Kanliper Benevolent and Sick Benefit Society of New York was bom.
The original Kanliper didn’t take this secession lying down. By constitutional amendment, duly passed at two meetings, with proper notification of the vote to be taken given to all members, the name of the original organization was changed to the First Kanliper Benevolent, etc.
The Independents were radicals, in an organizational sense, of course, and having tasted schism, fell prey to it again. This time it was over cemetery allocations. And the Progressive Kanliper Circle was formed.
The inclusion of the words “circle” and “progressive” in the title was an indication of the way things were going.
The Progressives were an unstable bunch. They split even before they had time to settle down and pay sick benefits. The Progressives were victims of a common error among early landsmanshaften. They thought that ideas, comradeship, discussions were more important than benefits. They aren’t. After the split half the society went back to the Independents because they were too small to buy a cemetery and besides they felt lonely. The other half joined the Workmen’s Circle, which had a cemetery, and became Kanliper Progressive Branch #000.
In the reunited Independents all was serene for a while. Until a particularly hot election. The group that was counted out in the fight for the presidency claimed foul and seceded. And the United Kanliper B&SBS of NY was born.
By this time the original incorporators, mostly in the First and Independent, were getting old and dying off. New members weren’t coming in fast enough to make up for the losses. So an organizational shadchen was brought in and the original society and its first-born were reunited. Neither group would concede the use of the other’s name. And the Kanliper-Bessarabian Society was bom.
The story of the Kanliper is typical, except for one thing. Neither the original society, nor any of its offspring, had “Young Men’s” in its name. So many societies proudly carry those words as part of the title, even when the youngest member is a grandfather. We are a patriarchal grouping, we Jews, and it may have been a symbol of revolt from the old order, or of new freedom in a new land, or a selling point for new members, to include “Young Men’s” in the title. The Kanliper slipped up.
For the arithmetical minded who might be worried about the decreasing numbers with each split: it’s nothing to worry about. The original verein had one hundred and fifty members. Each division was followed by a flurry of organizing zeal. And soon both halves had one hundred and fifty members. And so it goes, with the membership of each splinter verein somehow numbering one hundred and fifty, more or less.
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No One remembers when the first society was formed. Some of the old German and Austrian societies, the Noah Society comes to mind, are more than one hundred years old. So no one remembers who had the first constitution. But there seems to have always been Jewish groups with a set of bylaws. When new organizations were formed the constitution committee went shopping. They asked the Kishinever for a look at theirs, they asked the Pinsker, the Minsker, the Borditcher, and the Radomysheler. They reported back the best parts of each as the finest, most liberal, most democratic constitution in any landsmanshaft. Oddly, all the constitutions are alike.
After the constitution was adopted—it was promptly lost. This is not a canard. With one hundred to two hundred members, and money tight, do you print copies of the constitution? The secretary carries it. But what with dues books and minutes and communications and ledgers and registered letters to delinquent members and the kids at home making a mish-mash of everything, how can you expect him to have the constitution when the next secretary takes over? So it’s lost. What’s so terrible?
Not only are we Jews a patriarchal society, we are a legalistic one. The People of the Book, the Keepers of the Law, the Children of the Covenant. So try to run an organization where the constitution (unhappily lost) is constantly invoked and the only appeal is to the memory of the disputants. Ach, the points of order.
The United States has a written constitution. Great Britain has an unwritten constitution. The vereins have memorized constitutions. This gives rise to a peculiar form of “protocol.” Under landsman “protocol” you do whatever you wish, in a parliamentary sense, without regard for Robert’s, Cushman’s, or Congressional Rules of Order. If challenged you prove your correctness by the constitution of the society.
It would appear that under this system of “protocol” the older members would have a decided advantage because they were around—or could say they were around—when the constitution was adopted. It’s not so. Actually, membership in the verein is divided into three classes. Smallest group are the zitzer, maybe about ten per cent. They come to meetings fairly regularly, sit in back of the room and never say a word. They like the atmosphere, the sound of Jewish forensics. It’s haimish and a lot cheaper than the movies for chapen a driml—catching a nap.
The second group is made up of young members forced to join by family pressure—usually the wife’s family pressure—and of arufgearbeter too rich or busy to attend. They pay dues and never come to meetings.
Third and largest group is the redner. They are all lawyers—expert constitutional, admiralty, brief, and trial counselors—without benefit of bar. Study the backgrounds of the great pleaders of our day. Either they are verein members, or sons of verein members, or they sat next to verein members in law school.
Another aspect of “protocol” has to do with language. Constitutions, laws, and verein are serious, therefore formal, business. Formal business requires formal language. And formal language in a Yiddish-speaking verein means getting as close to German as is understandable to the members.
In the Yiddish-speaking locals of a trade union or the Workmen’s Circle it’s all right for the chairman to announce the passage of a motion with, “Es iz beshlosen gevoren . . .” In the verein, unless he’s a grubbe ying, he says, “Es vurde beshlosen. . . .”
The business meeting follows a pattern also. The chairman opens the meeting with, “In numen der Progressive. . . .” The sekretar reads the protokolen. (A very handy word. This time it means minutes.) The finantz sekretar reads bills and communications—mostly requests for contributions. Then the first member gets up and complains.
Most of the complaints, and most of the business of the meetings, have to do with the cemetery or sick benefits. Few of the societies allocate plots in the verein cemetery. Plots are on a first-come-first-serve basis. That means that a bad spot—against a fence or overlooking a dump or factory—might fall to the uncle of an important, or loud, member. This can lead to two types of discussion: for the uncle and against. The nephew has a complaint: after all, the uncle was one of the first arrivals from the old country and a charter member of the verein. On the other hand, if uncle is given a good spot out of turn, then someone else is sure to complain—shall we allow such favoritism?
As for sick benefit problems, remember these are democratic organizations—no secrets can be withheld from the members. If a man collects sick benefit, it’s no crime. But if, on the other hand, a member wants to know where the society’s money is going, it’s no crime either. So they talk about the man, the money, and the sickness.
There are no malingerers on the society’s sick benefit roles. The convalescences are long enough—but not too long. But it’s better if a man stays home while he’s collecting benefits. If he should happen to walk to the corner for a paper and to see if his legs have firmed up, at the next meeting there will be a member sitting on the aisle who won’t bother to ask for the floor but will merely remark to his neighbor, “He’s still collecting benefit? I saw him myself on the street.” Since the neighbor will be deaf, the member will have to shout. The business meeting is rushed through, but not at the expense of discussion. Everyone who wants to, speaks. After the meeting, the members play pinochle and sometimes a casino. It’s a hard way to make a dollar.
One phase of verein life has passed. Some where, somehow, the societies picked up the idea of fancy ritual and secret passwords. Rituals are the same in any lodge or society, a bit silly, a bit boring. But secret passwords in Yiddish, they’re like potato latkes, untranslatable. (Potato pancakes never taste the same as potato latkes.) For instance: Kugel auf Shabes is a fine password. We used it a lot in the Kishinever. But it sounds silly as “Hoecake for Saturday.” And try translating (spiritually, not literally) “Gut Morgen Reb Chaim” or “Di Rebitzen trugt a grinem shaitel.” It’s too bad they don’t use passwords any more.
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The fact that societies all have annual elections for officers is not, necessarily, proof of their democracy. The real reason for the maximum twelve-month period between elections is banquets. If you didn’t have elections every year, you couldn’t have installations every year. And if you didn’t have an installation, how could you have an installation banquet? Can you have banketen glat in der velt arein?—just so?
The elections are bitterly fought, except for the offices of financial secretary and recording secretary. Candidates for recording secretary are scarce and are often co-opted rather than nominated. The recording secretary sits up front and takes and reads minutes of the meetings. He needs a clear head and hand and an agile pen. He must come to all meetings, understand what people say. But he never gets a chance to do any talking himself because he’s always one man behind in recording the minutes. For some reason most recording secretaries are insurance men.
The finantz sekretar is a character. The constitution says he holds office for twelve months, but the normal term is for life or during the period of good behavior and health. He collects dues, keeps books, receives and answers mail, and advises on all money transactions. He has a large, heavy brief case given to him by the verein on the occasion of his 10th anniversary in office. On his 25th anniversary he gets an inscribed wristwatch. When he dies or retires the new sekretar inherits the old brief case.
The finantz sekretar‘s job requires a lot of night work on the books and correspondence. For this he gets a semi-nominal fee. It usually runs between one and two dollars per member per year. With the fee he gets standing, prestige, and a reputation as a shrewd businessman. He also gets all the headaches proper to a man working for one hundred and fifty bosses. To be sure the treasurer is the official keeper of the moneys, but that’s merely honorary. The checks are signed by the treasurer and the financial secretary. If the society has had an unhappy experience, the checks are signed by the treasurer, the financial secretary, and the president. As a part-time employee of the organization, the sekretar takes care of the investments. Once a year he goes to the bank and buys some US bonds. Sometimes he cashes a bond. Practically a “Wall Streetnik”—therefore the adviser on finance to all members.
The other officers are as in any organization. Sometimes a born leader will hold on to the presidency for a number of years. But he has to fight for the office every year. There is one peculiarity of the verein presidency. Normally the president of a verein is a native or the son of a native of the name town of the organization—a Minsker is president of the Minsker, a Lodzer is president of the Lodzer, etc. When the president is a non-native of the old-country town, he’s always a Bessarabian.
How can that be? Well, Bessarabians are gregarious, born leaders, expert organizers, and administrators. (It so happens the author is a Bessarabian.) When a Bessarabian marries into a Minsker, Pinsker, Bialystoker family he might, out of desire to see the world or please his father-in-law, join his in-laws’ verein. Chances are he’ll become president.
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The aktivitet of a verein is often determined by the women’s auxiliary. As befits an organization that started in a shul, the regular society is for men only. Some radical groups allow women into regular membership, but it’s not a good idea. They vote the way their husbands vote anyway. So what do you need them for? Let them have an auxiliary.
The auxiliary meets the same night as the parent verein. It makes it easier for the men to get away. The auxiliary usually has a lot more business to take care of—and less complaints—than does the society. Mostly, it’s raising money. Or preparing for a banket. They raise money for the old home town, they raise money for yesoimim (orphans), for an old folks home, for Eretz Yisroel, and sometimes just to be raising money. They make banketen for installations, for the sekretar on his tenth and twenty-fifth anniversaries, for any member on his fiftieth or sixtieth birthday, for the member who brought in the most new members, for the prezidenteche of the auxiliary. And they make banketen to raise money.
Today the old areas of verein concentration are gone, they’ve moved uptown. The Forward Building is the last stronghold in the deep East Side. They’ve moved up Second Avenue and into Academy Hall on Union Square. And there’s a well-established beachhead in the Times Square area in the Fraternal Clubhouse.
But, uptown or downtown, they still argue the same questions. Sick benefits have receded a bit in importance since the amounts are small and most members have additional coverage through the Blue Cross and the ILGWU and Amalgamated health plans. But the cemeteries have become more important than ever. The members are older and closer to dying.
Most of the verein cemeteries were bought long ago. Many were bought with overambitious ideas of future growth and need. The postwar boom in all real estate, especially cemetery land, has made some vereins rich landholders. There may be only one hundred members left, only a couple of hundred dollars in the bank, but they may own thirty thousand or forty thousand dollars worth of cemetery land. They’re big shots.
On the other hand some vereins under-bought on plots. Now they have to buy more land. Aside from the financial considerations, the new cemeteries raise another problem. Out of superstition or some obscure religious reason, a cemetery must have a body in it. But it’s not particularly good luck to be the first inhabitant. So, immediately after taking title to a new cemetery, the members scurry around looking for a body. If you’re looking for a bargain in a cemetery plot, and have a body to put in it, you can get the first plot of a verein cemetery for almost nothing.
The gemilis chasudim (literally a favor which cannot be repaid, therefore the only holy favor, used to designate the society’s free loan) still does business. Someone al ways needs money. There is no questioning of these loans and no recriminations in the very rare case when a loan turns sour.
Periodically all the Galitzianer societies, all the Bukoviner vereins, etc., get together and form federations. It’s a constant challenge to anyone with organizational sense, especially a Bessarabian, to get all the societies into a monster verein. The federations usually appear in response to a call for help from the old country—after a pogrom, a fire, a war, a famine. The federations raise enormous amounts of money, ship boatloads of food and clothing, then fall to quarreling. So they split too.
Every Jewish son has stories to tell about the old man’s verein. He has heard them during the long arguments while Pop was trying to get him to join. It’s hard for a father to believe that when he dies his children will have no ties to the old place. Mostly Pop uses the wrong arguments. A cemetery is meaningless to someone in his 20’s. The sick benefits are low. But Pop somehow never tells him that the verein was more than a sickness and burial society. He doesn’t tell his son that the vereins were Jewish life for thirty or forty years; that they were the Jewish immigrant’s unique self-created, self-administered agency of protection in a harsh, new world. But that argument probably wouldn’t work either.
Some of the young folks join up. It’s good for business, it pleases the old folks. But most young people do not join the verein, even if Pop offers to pay all the dues. The Elks, Masons, Moose, Knights, etc., have nicer clubhouses. Ach, America.
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