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Philanthropy

Mon, December 17, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Harborview 2 Ballroom

Abstract

Philanthropy in modern Jewish history is ultimately about the exercise of power within Jewish society, what Derek Penslar has termed “Jewish social policy.” It is about Jewish politics in practice, rather than in theory. The study of philanthropy thus illuminates and connects Jewish political, economic, and social history and has the potential to include a greater range of actors than a narrow definition of political history could—like women, professional experts (e.g. doctors and social workers), or recent immigrants. When the study of Jewish philanthropy takes a transnational turn, the way in which philanthropy functions as Jewish social policy comes into sharper focus. Jewish philanthropy, money provided by Jews to help other Jews in its most basic definition, has rarely confined itself to political borders, and has instead traveled from wealthy, secure Jews in some part of the world to imperiled or poorer Jews elsewhere. Following the flow of money across borders over time directly reflects the way power has shifted across the Jewish Diaspora in modern times, incorporating the effects of major international events and social transformations. Transnational Jewish philanthropy thus arguably defines the counters of the Diaspora itself. In my research, International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War, Jews in the West, especially America, provided tens of millions of dollars, as much as the biggest American international philanthropies like the American Red Cross, to aid Jews during and after the crisis of the First World War. I argue that the American Jewish philanthropic response to the First World War created the enormous shift in Jewish international leadership, from Europe towards America, that persists today. Only by following Jewish philanthropy wherever it goes can scholars really access and assess its major political and structural impact on Jewish society across the Diaspora.

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