A landsmanshaft (, also landsmanschaft; plural: landsmans(c)haftn or landsmans(c)hafts) is a

mutual aid society A benefit society, fraternal benefit society, or fraternal benefit order is a voluntary association formed to provide mutual aid, benefit, for instance insurance for relief from sundry difficulties. Such organizations may be formally organized with ...

benefit society A benefit society, fraternal benefit society, or fraternal benefit order is a voluntary association formed to provide mutual aid, benefit, for instance insurance for relief from sundry difficulties. Such organizations may be formally organized with ...

, or hometown society of

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

immigrants from the same European town or region.

History

The landsmanshaft organizations aided immigrants' transitions from Europe to America by providing social structure and support to those who arrived in the United States without the family networks and practical skills that had sustained them in Europe. Toward the end of the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th centuries, they provided immigrants help in learning English, finding a place to live and work, locating family and friends, and an introduction to participating in a democracy, through their own meetings and procedures such as voting on officers, holding debates on community issues, and paying dues to support the society. Through the first half of the 20th century, meetings were often conducted and minutes recorded in

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

, which was the language that all members could understand. As Jewish immigration declined, most landsmanshaft functions faded into the background, but the organizations nevertheless continued as a way of maintaining ties to life in Europe as well as providing a form of life insurance, disability and unemployment insurance, and subsidized burial. Members paid dues on a regular basis, and if they lost their jobs, became too sick to work, or died, the society paid the member or their family a benefit to keep them afloat during that time. When the funds were not needed to support members, landsmanshaftn frequently invested the money in funds that supported the Jewish community in others ways, such as

Israel Bonds Israel Bonds, the commonly known name of Development Corporation for Israel (DCI), is the U.S. underwriter of debt securities issued by the State of Israel. DCI is headquartered in New York City and is a broker-dealer and member of the Financial ...

. Most landsmanshaftn were based in New York City, where the majority of Jews settled and conditions were conducive to sustaining these types of organizations, though they sometimes relocated as the membership migrated to the suburbs.

Types

There were different types of landsmanshaftn, including Jewish burial societies known as ''

chevra kadisha The term ''chevra kadisha'' () gained its modern sense of "burial society" in the nineteenth century. It is an organization of Jewish men and women who see to it that the bodies of deceased Jews are prepared for burial according to Jewish tra ...

'', societies associated with a particular synagogue or social movement, and "ladies auxiliary" societies for women. (Landsmanshaftn frequently admitted only men as members, with the understanding that their wives and children were covered by their membership and received equivalent benefits, or had a ladies' auxiliary group for women). The Workers Circle or ''der Arbeter Ring'', formerly "The Workmen's Circle", is a mutual aid society with more than 200 branches. Still, because it is not based on geography or members' hometowns, it is not strictly a landsmanshaft although it functions as one. In 1938, a federal

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

project identified 2,468 landsmanshaftn in New York City, where the overwhelming number in the United States were located. The number of landsmanshaftn began to decline in the 1950s and 1960s as their members died and were not replaced by the next generation of their members' children. The vast majority became defunct, though some societies continue to meet regularly into the 21st century, and operate scores of burial plots in cemeteries in the

New York metropolitan area The New York metropolitan area, also called the Tri-State area and sometimes referred to as Greater New York, is the List of cities by GDP, largest metropolitan economy in the world, with a List of U.S. metropolitan areas by GDP, gross metropo ...

Records

Some records of defunct landsmanshaftn are in the archives of

YIVO YIVO (, , short for ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Estab ...

References

Bibliography

* Schwartz, Rosaline and Susan Milamed, '' From Alexandrovsk to Zyrardow: A Guide to YIVO's Landsmanshaftn Archive'', New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1986. * Soyer, Daniel, ''Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939'', Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001. * Weisser, Michael R., ''A Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landsmanshaftn in the New World'', Cornell University Press, 1985, .

External links

* JewishGe
Landsmanschaft - Immigrant Benevolent Organizations
*
New York Landsmanshaftn and Other Jewish Organizations
. Jewish Genealogical Society, New York
Landsmanshaftn Records finding aid
at