Journal of Modern Jewish Studies Vol 7, No. 3 November 2008, pp.

357376
ISSN 1472-5886 print/ISSN 1472-5894 online 2008 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/14725880802405043
Rebecca Kobrin
WHEN A JEW WAS A LANDSMAN
Rethinking American Jewish regional
identity in the age of mass migration
Taylor and Francis CMJS_A_340672.sgm 10.1080/14725880802405043 Modern Jewish Studies 1472-5886 (print)/1472-5894 (online) Original Article 2008 Taylor & Francis 73000000November 2007 RebeccaKobrin rk2351@columbia.edu
My beginnings are in Bialystok, proclaimed Israel Beker, director of the renowned
Habima theater troupe. [But] I am not just from Bialystok, he continued, I am a
Bialystoker, and that means much more (Beker 3). It is tempting to dismiss such a bold
articulation of Eastern European Jewish regional loyalty as exceptional, the mere
theatrics of its thespian author. Yet Bekers sentiments concerning the centrality of
his birth in the city of Bialystok to his understanding of his identity were shared by
thousands of early twentieth-century immigrant Jews, who, despite abandoning
Eastern Europe, continued to assert emphatically their East European urban regional
identities.
1
In fact, in early twentieth-century America, Eastern European Jews contin-
ued attachment to their home city or town saw the formation of over 2,000 landsmanshaft
(hometown) associations claiming over a half a million members. As Isaac Rontch, head
of the Works Progress Administrations Yiddish Writers Group, conjectured, the
depth of these East European regional loyalties pushed one of every five Jews living
in the United States in 1938 to be a member of a landsmanshaft associations (Rontch,
Der itstiger matsev, 9). Their popularity, Rontch continued, captured a striking
[feature of American] Jewish life: whenever two total strangers meet on the street
they immediately needed to know from which region or city did their new acquaintance
[came] from. In the Eastern European Jewish immigrant world, ones religious
sensibilities, political beliefs or even nation of birth mattered far less than ones city of
origin, provoking Rontch to quip on the opening page of his landmark study: when did
every Jew become a landsman (fun vanen iz a yid a landsman)? (Rontch, Der itstiger
matsev, 9).
2
Historians seeking to understand American Jewry have long debated the centrality
of regionalism to American Jewish life.
3
What role do regions and regionalism play in
the development of Jewish life in the United States? Where do American Jews ideas
about regions and regional identity come from? What imagined map, territories and
boundaries have shaped Jews vision of themselves and their relationship to the world
around them? When scholars of American Jewish history address these questions, many
examine the classical regional cleavages defining the American nation, interrogating the
distinctiveness of Southern Jewish life or Jews experiences in the West (Bauman;
Evans; Kaganoff and Urofsky; Proctor and Schmier; Kahn and Dollinger). To be sure,
the divergent cultural, economic and political contexts of these areas molded Jews
J OURNAL OF MODERN J EWI SH STUDI ES 358
self-perceptions and their daily lives, but such a narrow vision of American Jewish
regional identity obscures the sentiments Rontch heard voiced by early twentieth-
century immigrant Jews who narrated their regional identities not in reference to the
Mason-Dixon Line, but rather in relation to the map of Eastern Europe. Rontch
instinctively understood, as Deborah Dash Moore has recently argued, that scholars
must write not just American Jewish history but modern Jewish history through [a lens
of] urban regionalism, seeing this as ultimately more significant than nation states for
Jews (Moore, Regionalism, 117).
The following pages pay heed to Deborah Dash Moores clarion call to place urban
regionalism at the centre of discussions of American Jewish life, exploring the ways in
which early twentieth-century immigrant Jews in both North and South America
summoned, deployed and re-articulated their East European urban regional identities.
Indeed, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the largest volun-
tary demographic shift in modern Jewish history as millions of Jews moved beyond
Eastern Europes geographic borders.
4
Regardless of whether they settled in New
York, Chicago, Milwaukee or Buenos Aires, Eastern European Jews summoned meta-
phors of regional distinctiveness to form associations that helped them gain a foothold
in their new homes and remain connected to their former homes and other Jewish
immigrants scattered throughout the world.
5
These organizations, dismissed by some
Jewish intellectuals as backward or retarded, did indeed constitute an integral
part of the Jewish community (Rontch, Present State, 360). Predicated on the belief
that Jews from a particular city or locale shared distinctive needs, these seemingly
parochial associations created a transnational sphere through their publications in
which Eastern European Jewish migrs debated, discussed and re-imagined the
connection between Jewish identity and urban regionalisms. These organizations high-
light that, far from the classic paradigms of American Jewish history that have cast
Eastern European Jewish migration as a one-way process in which Jewish migrants
relinquish all bonds to their former home as they embraced their new identities as
Americans, Eastern European Jews acted as quintessential transnational migrants, as
they, to use the words of Nina Glick Schiller, forged and sustained multi-stranded
social relations link[ing] their societies of origin with their settlement societies
(Schiller et al., Nations Unbound, 22).
6
To appreciate fully the historical significance of these organizations that shaped
how Eastern European Jews (who comprised the vast majority of American Jewry by
the 1930s) conceptualized and theorized regionalism and its relationship to Jewish
identity, I begin with a brief historiographical discussion on the place (or more apt: the
virtual erasure) of Eastern European Jewish regionalism in the annals of American
Jewish life. Then, through a case study of the landsmanshaft institutions and newspapers
created by Jewish migrs from the city of Bialystokone small slice of the landsman-
shaft worldI highlight the diverse forms Eastern European regional identity took as it
was projected onto new landscapes in the Americas. Focusing on the Bialystoker
Center, founded in New York City in 1919, and the Bialystoker Farband, established in
Buenos Aires in 1930, I demonstrate the ways in which the simple act of organizing a
Bialystoker institution raised larger ideological questions about Jewish urban regional
identity: What did it mean to be a Bialystoker Jew outside of Bialystok? What identified
one as a Bialystoker Jew on the streets of New York or Buenos Aires? While these
organizations both articulated a vision of successful adaptation as dependent on its
RETHI NKI NG AMERI CAN J EWI SH REGI ONAL I DENTI TY 359
members ability to rebuild or recreate Bialystok in their new environs, the types of
institutions these immigrant Jews actually built and the meanings they assigned to the
term Bialystoker were diverse, highlighting the complex challenges facing those who
sought to re-map their Eastern European urban regional identity onto the landscapes of
the Americas
Eastern European Jewish regionalism and
American Jewish life
While it was abundantly clear to Rontch to place Eastern European Jewish regional
identity, broadly conceived, at the centre of a narrative on Jewish life in America, the
themes raised by his classic study were rarely engaged over the next fifty years.
7
What
explains the discrepancy between Rontchs appreciation of the centrality of Eastern
European Jewish regional identity to American Jewish life and its limited scholarly
influence in the writing of American Jewish history? To begin with, one must
acknowledge the role American exceptionalism played in molding the narrative arc of
American Jewish history (as in the larger field of American history). The general
tendency in both academic and popular thought, as Thomas Bender observes, to
remove the United States from the domain of the international has encouraged few
scholars to conceptualize or narrate the American Jewish identity as entwined with
European regional sensibilities (Bender 5). Buttressing an American exceptionalist
vision of American Jewish regional identity was the general shift in the larger historical
profession away from examining regions; as Celia Appelgate observes, examinations of
regions or regional loyalties were seen as subordinate to the national history project
and pursued mainly by little-regarded amateurs (A Europe of Regions, 1160).
Taken together, these trends cemented a general disregard for East European urban
regionalism in the annals of American Jewish history; even those scholars who turned
their attention to landsmanshaft institutions, clearly informed by regional loyalties, cast
them as part of an American phenomenon and presented them primarily within the
framework of American voluntary associational life, gliding over their international
entanglements and obscuring the reality that these organizations drew American Jews
into a worldwide debate over the legacy of East European Jewish regionalism.
8
At the same time that American Jewish historians virtually erased East European
urban regionalism from the annals of American Jewish life, they did, however,
constantly advance a vision of regionalism as central to American Jewish life. Echoing
scholars in the larger field of American history, American Jewish historians fiercely
debated how to depict Jews in the South. Should they be portrayed, as Melvin Urofsky
(xii) argues, as the most assimilated part of American Jewry as a result of their
successful integration into Southern culture without forsaking their Jewishness? Or
were Jews in the South shaped only in a marginal fashion by Southern culture, as
Mark Bauman (5) contends, sharing more in common with other Jews in America than
with white Protestants in the South?
9
Despite such ideological differences, these histo-
rians shared a vision of regionalism as a vehicle through which to insert Jews into the
larger conversation surrounding the American South (Franklin et al.; Bauman).
Such debates over the image of Southern American Jewish life obscures the fact that
for most American Jews in the first half of the twentieth century, Europe still exerted a
J OURNAL OF MODERN J EWI SH STUDI ES 360
strong emotional pull, molding their understanding of their Jewish regional identities.
Such a pull surfaces vividly, for instance, in Morris Freemans 1942 autobiography
concerning his life in the southern city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Known as the
umbrella man of Ninth Street from Augustov, Poland, Freeman, a staunch Zionist, left
the Russian Empire in 1906 to avoid military service, settling initially in Boston. He
moved to Chattanooga after the First World War because the areas rainy winters
promised to be good for his business and he quickly became well known throughout the
city (Freeman 35; Grote; Hale). Often submitting articles to the local press, Freeman
offered up a vision of the intricate role that his identity as a Jew from Augustov played
in his encounter with Chattanooga. Despite his appreciation of his neighbours vision of
their home in juxtaposition to Northern cities, when depicting Chattanoogas
favourable economic structure and warm, friendly atmosphere, Freeman summoned
the comparative landscape of Augustov rather than Boston.
10
Chattanooga, Freeman
opined in one piece, is the only place in the world in which a poor man like me could
have accomplished this dream [of economic success]. [I]n [Augustov, Poland] a man
born poor dies poor and his sons have little chance to rise in the world (Hale). Looking
east to Europe, rather than north to his former home in Boston, Freeman was far from
alone in summoning of the landscapes of Europe to describe who he was, his achieve-
ments or his sense of his place in his new home in America. In fact, articulations of
Eastern European regionalism were used promiscuously by Eastern European Jews in
early twentieth-century America, as one can vividly see among Jews from the Polish city
of Bialystok in New York City.
Bialystok on East Broadway: The Bialystoker Center and
Eastern European Jewish regionalism on New Yorks
Lower East Side
Bialystok [is] on East Broadway blared a headline in the 21 June 1931, Forverts (Jewish
Daily Forward) (Sohn, Bialistok af ist brodvey, 3). To be sure, the tens of thousands of
American Jews who read the Forverts understood that Bialystokan industrial city of
90,000 residents in northeast Polandhad not been excised from the Second Polish
Republic and replanted on the Lower East Sides main thoroughfare. Yet they
appreciated why the newspaper would summon the map of Eastern Europe to hail the
consecration of a new building, an edifice that anyone who travels on the bridges
between New York and Brooklyn would easily see and be amazed by its fine architec-
ture and towering presence (Sohn, Bialistok af ist brodvey, 3). While the birth of
two influential modern Jewish ideological movementsZionism and the Bundwere
tied to Bialystok, this Forverts feature proclaimed the citys crowning achievement was
its erection of the Bialystoker Center and Old Age Home on East Broadway. As the
Forverts chronicled, thousands thronged the streets to watch a parade of 25,000
Bialystokers marching down East Broadway, carrying American flags, banners and
ribbons flecked with red, white and blue (Figure 1). Like German-American parades of
the period, this patriotic procession demonstrated its participants collective self-
assurance about their place in America (see Goren 3047; see also Conzen; Jacobson
7882; Davis). The parade culminated in a ceremony during which all marchers
gathered around their new Bialystok, a 10-storey building draped in American flags.
RETHI NKI NG AMERI CAN J EWI SH REGI ONAL I DENTI TY 361
Applauding the Bialystoker migrs success, one speaker argued that this edifice not
only elevated Bialystoks status in America, but in Eastern Europe as well. Bialystokers
have set the standard for others to go by, maintained David Sohn, the Bialystoker
Centers executive director (Sohn, Bialistok af ist brodvey, 3). Other landsmanshaftn
constituents lack Bialystoker Jews drive and enthusiasm, he continued, and they can
[only] dream of having a center of their own such as our Bialystoker Center (Sohn,
Bialistok af ist brodvey, 3). The successful building of the Bialystoker Center in New
York City, in short, demonstrated to its former inhabitants how distinctive Bialystok
Jewry was (and continued to be) in Eastern Europe.
Source: Forverts Kunst-baylage, 28 June 1931.
The imbrication of New York and Bialystok in this institution, which, in the words
of the Forverts, enabled Bialystoks unique potential to be realized on American shores,
did mark a milestone for this splintered group that supported over 50 Bialystoker
organizations in the United States (and 39 in New York City alone).
11
Despite their
particularistic rhetoric, these organizations functioned like hundreds of other immigrant
associations as they responded to their members pressing material needs, providing
basic financial assistance in times of illness, unemployment or death, and simultaneously
enabling the diverse cross-section of Jews from this city in Poland to carve a niche for
themselves in America, regardless of their religious beliefs, gender, age, political affili-
ation or class loyalty.
12
FIGURE 1 Source: Forverts Kunst-baylage, 28 June 1931.
J OURNAL OF MODERN J EWI SH STUDI ES 362
A few examples provide a glimpse into this diverse network of institutions. There
were two Bialystoker religious congregations in New York CityAnshei Chesed
(founded 1878) and Ahavat Achim (founded in 1884)which catered to the pious
members of the community, who desired, as Louis Cohen (3) observed, to pray and
congregate in the Bialystoker way. For those younger, well-educated members of the
community who valued Americanization above piety, there was the Bialystoker Young
Mens Association, founded in 1906 and whose mission was to provide much-needed
forward-looking educational, cultural and social activities to aid its members in
succeeding economically and melding into America.
13
Class loyalty prompted Jewish
socialists from Bialystok to establish the Bialystoker Branch 88 of the Workmens Circle
in 1905. This immensely popular organization provided aid to workers in New York and
in Russia as part of its effort to foment a workers revolution throughout the world
(Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations, 68). In 1908, middle-class women formed the
Bialystoker Ladies Aid Society of the Bronx and Harlemone of the largest Jewish
womens societies in New Yorkwhich offered aid to the sick and poor as well as
interest-free loans to the unemployed (Albert, unnumbered page).
In 1919 after hearing news of the devastating destruction of the First World War,
these organizations decided to form an umbrella organization called the Bialystoker
Center to coordinate the fundraising efforts on behalf of their former home in Eastern
Europe. The mission of this institution was to serve both the interests of the Bialystoker
landsmanshaftn and the interests of the Jewish population in Bialystok through its
collection and distribution of funds (Sohn, Unzere oypgebn, 1). This it did with great
success. Between 1919 and 1932, the Bialystoker Center distributed over US$9 million
(equivalent to US$64 million at 2007 currency values), which helped rebuild the
schools, hospitals, orphanages and cultural organizations of this Jewish community
destroyed in the First World War and the ensuing unrest. Hailed as saviours by Jews
in Bialystock for their relief efforts, representatives of the Bialystoker Center were
treated by local Polish officials as the powerful political leaders (Kobrin, Contested
Contributions, 4362).
In 1921 the Bialystoker Centers executive director, David Sohn, created the Der
Bialystoker Stimme (Voice of Bialystok), a newspaper whose title reflected the widespread
belief that the Center acted as Bialystok Jewrys mouthpiece.
14
Grasping the power of
print culture, which, as Benedict Anderson (3746) observes, plays a key role in creating
and sustaining group identity among groups who do not share territorial cohesiveness,
Sohn dedicated the Centers resources to producing and disseminating the Bialystoker
Stimme. In every issue Sohn ran editorials debating the contours of this increasingly
dispersed community, articles reporting on current events in Bialystok and updates
chronicling the achievements of Bialystoker migr communities throughout the world.
During its first few decades of publication, the Bialystoker Stimme reached tens of
thousands of Bialystoker migrs worldwide.
15
As Anna Gepner recalled, in Melbourne,
Australia, everyone gathered together regularly to read the Bialystoker Stimme when it
arrived at her uncles home.
16
Yehezkel Aran similarly reminisced how he would also
gather with friends regularly in a cafe in Tel Aviv to share their woes and catch up on
all the news conveyed in the Bialystoker Stimme.
17
With feature articles entitled A New
Bialystok in Argentina or Bialystok in America and America in Bialystok, the
Bialystoker Stimme encouraged Bialystoker migrs around the world to see themselves
as extending Bialystok as they endeavoured to root themselves in their new homes.
18
RETHI NKI NG AMERI CAN J EWI SH REGI ONAL I DENTI TY 363
Yet if all were endeavouring to extend Bialystok, only the Biaylstoker Center,
argued the Bialystoker Stimme, successfully transplanted Bialystok to the new world.
Since at its core, Bialystok was known for its charitable traditions, the Bialystoker
Stimme maintained, the Bialystoker Centers ability to raise and distribute funds estab-
lished it as the new Bialystok (Chaikin 43). Such a vision of Bialystoker identity
was epitomized by the imagery that appeared on the Bialystoker Stimmes cover starting
in 1926 (Figure 2).
19
In the image, one can see on the right Bialystoks famed
FIGURE 2 Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
J OURNAL OF MODERN J EWI SH STUDI ES 364
clock tower, erected in 1742, that stood at the center of the citys main commercial
square; to the left appears a 5-storey building with the words Bialystoker Center and
Bikur Holim etched on its front. Allegorically enabling these icons of European and
American Bialystok to share a sidewalk was a column with the word kultur (culture)
etched on top and hilf (charity) on its base, conveying the view of the Bialystoker
Stimmes editors: charity is the cornerstone of Bialystoker identity, providing the foun-
dation for transnational Bialystoker identity. To be a Bialystoker, in short, meant to be
charitable.
FIGURE 2 Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Such a vision of Bialystokness was inculcated into its readers as this image became
emblazoned on the papers masthead before its regular feature From Here and from
There (Fun danen un dort) that combined Bialystok and New York in its discussion of
current events (Figure 3). The acute crisis faced by impoverished Jews preparing for
Passover in Bialystok shared front-page space with an accounting of the Bialystoker
Centers Ladies Auxiliarys upcoming annual picnic.
FIGURE 3 Bialystoker Stimme 182 (January 1939). Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
The entwining of philanthropy with Bialystokness on its cover and masthead
resonated with the larger American Jewish culture, which over the course of the early
twentieth century began to see the act of collecting and distributing philanthropy as
central to how Jews affiliated, defined their identities and articulated the contours of
their community (Woocher 1-63). Yet unlike larger American Jewish philanthropic
organizations, the Bialystoker Center made clear that their fundraising efforts were not
focused on making donors into Americans, but rather reconfiguring Eastern Europe.
As Zelig Tigel, a correspondent for the Warsaw Yiddish daily Der haynt summed up in
a 1924 article, the new Bialystoker Center with its deep pockets enabled Bialystok to
emerge as a new Jewish cultural centre in Eastern Europe. While Warsaw may have
been viewed as the most vibrant Jewish community in Poland prior to the Great War,
he argued, Bialystoks rebirth after the war, thanks to its extension located on the
Lower East side, forced all in Poland to look at this industrial city with newfound
respect.
20
Ironically, the Bialystoker Centers success enacting the essence of Bialystok by
raising vast sums for this city ultimately drove its lay leaders to contemplate ways in
which they could demonstrate Bialystoks legacy (and their newfound economic
power) on a stage closer to home (Soyer, Between Two Worlds, 8). While in 1923,
the Centers Board of Trustees emphasized that the Bialystoker Centers first goal [was
to] succeed in organizing a smooth functioning new Bialystok on the shores of America
so that the traditions and spirit of Old Bialystok are preserved, by 1927 this group
agreed to transform their Bialystoker Center into the Bialystoker Center Old Age
Home, an elderly care facility open to any immigrant Jew in need. As David Sohn
summed up:
FIGURE 3 Bialystoker Stimme 182 (January 1939). Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
RETHI NKI NG AMERI CAN J EWI SH REGI ONAL I DENTI TY 365
Soon all active in the Center realized that extending aid to compatriots overseas was
not enough. They realized that Bialystoker children, growing up, faced the
vexing question: how could they avert the embarrassment of placing mother or
dad, advanced in years, into a charity Old Age Home? They hit upon the
answer: set up a Bialystoker Home for the Aged in which the Bialystoker old folks
would feel at home among their compatriots. The decision in Jan. 1927 to erect a
Home for the Aged was greeted with an enthusiastic response. (Sohn, History and
Achievements, 5, 10)
Maintaining a focus on giving charity, but expanding its mission to include elderly
Bialystoker Jews and, by 1933, even elderly Jews who possessed no link to Bialystok,
the Boards recasting of the Bialystoker Center from a philanthropic institution focused
on Bialystok to a welfare organization intended to aid the elderly marks a monumental
shift in this migr communitys projection of their regional Bialystoker identities.
21
The call to create an old age home was far from unique in New Yorks Eastern European
Jewish immigrant world as demographic shifts pushed regional groups connected to
Warsaw and Mohilev to erect similar institutions.
22
No longer seeing themselves in the
crucible of their foreign regional attachments, and overwhelmed by the financial strains
of the Great Depression and familial responsibilities, the Bialystoker Centers Board of
Trustees, led by David Sohn, argued that a commitment to financially supporting the
home demonstrated ones devotion to maintaining Bialystoks legacy as a centre for
charitable activity (Sohn, Elter problemen, 28). However, this shift did not mark the
demise of a distinctive Bialystoker Jewish identity, but rather its radical reformulation
in response to circumstances in America. In the eyes of the Bialystoker Centers Board
of Trustees, Bialystokness had become a question of spirit, conviction and purpose, not
only of birthplace; anyone who joined wholeheartedly in the Bialystoker Centers
missionproviding funds to care for the elderlycould proclaim they had successfully
helped plant Bialystok on East Broadway.
The singing looms of Villa Lynch: Bialystoker
organizational life in Buenos Aires
In Buenos Aires, many would contest the Bialystoker Centers new definition of
Bialystoker identity as entwined with charity and the disbursement of money. No new
Bialystok, they would contend, could be defined by the act of giving charity because
many Bialystoker Jews, like those who found themselves in Argentina, could not
afford to give charity. As one migr reminisced:[W]ho could give money away or
even have time to worry about supporting a Bialystoker [organization] when ones
family did not have anything to eat? (Pat 10). Residing in a city with few industries for
employment, many Bialystoker Jews in Buenos Aires lived in a precarious economic
state that left a deep imprint on their personal psyches as well as their collective lives:
the first Bialystoker organization founded in Argentina in 1923 was forced to close in
1924 as a result of lack of funds. As one Bialystoker Jewish migr summed up: No
one had any time or money to spare (Pat 10). It was not until 1930, after a new influx
of migrs arrived in Buenos Aires from Bialystok, that the Bialystoker Jewish migr
community had a quorum to support their own organization (Munacker, Der
J OURNAL OF MODERN J EWI SH STUDI ES 366
bialistoker farband, 86). Responding to the lack of government support for industrial
development, this Bialystoker organizations primary mission was to help migrs
build up the local textile industryan industry whose workings many were familiar
with from Bialystok. Accordingly, they named it the Bialistoker Farband un Credit Coop
La Textil (Bialystoker Organization and Credit Union for Textiles, hereafter referred to
as the Bialystoker Farband)an organization devoted to granting loans to migrs to
maintain themselves, acquire property and [achieve] general [economic] progress
(Reisman 7).
The Bialystoker Farband played an integral role in the economic advancement of
this migr community in Buenos Aires by offering loans to help its members establish
their own factories. Similar to Jewish loan associations in Europe and the United States,
the Bialystoker Farband expedited the process of upward mobility in this migr
community by supplying the necessary capital to start and expand businesses (Tenen-
baum 6777). With the aid of these loans, several Bialystoker families founded small
spinning and weaving textile factories on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, primarily in a
neighbourhood called Villa Lynch. These factories soon prospered, providing employ-
ment for later waves of Bialystoker Jewish migrs. By the late 1930s, Villa Lynch
became a dense settlement of Bialystoker migrs, with factories and homes existing
side-by-side (Pinkus 94102).
The configuration of Villa Lynch and the success of its factories prompted some
Bialystoker migrs to call Villa Lynch the Manchester of Argentina, harkening to not
only the paradigmatic industrial center in England, but also the well-known nickname
of Bialystokoften called the Manchester of Lithuania (Pinkus 7). By binding migrs
together as employees and employers, buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers, the
Bialystoker Farband not only helped these Jews alleviate their financial situation, but also
reinforced the ties of their regionally based community.
23
In contrast to New York,
where the defining acts of Bialystoker organizations was their dedication to maintaining
connections to Bialystok and transplanting its values to America, in Buenos Aires, what
it meant to be a Bialystoker became entwined with replicating Bialystoks industry in
Argentina. As the Bialystok-born, New York-based Yiddish journalist Hayim Shoshkes
remarked after visiting Villa Lynch in 1946, the singing of the machines and the
beating of the weaving looms makes one think one has stumbled into Bialystok, where
the symphony of textile manufacturing always filled the air. Remarkably, Shoshkes
observed, the Farband had recreated the essence of Bialystok in South America: even
though Bialystoks textile industry now lay in ruins, all Bialystokers did not have to
worry that their former homes industrial legacy was losta replica of Bialystoks
textile industry [could be] found in Villa Lynch (Shoshkes 16).
As it dispensed funds to build up textile factories, the Bialystoker Farband
addressed the larger ideological question of what it meant to identify oneself as a
Bialystoker in Argentina. From its inception, the organizations focus on acquiring
capital cultivated among Bialystokers in Argentina an understanding of their identity as
intricately linked to the politics of the often unemployed factory worker and issues of
class. The leaders of the Bialystoker Farband stressed that in order to be a true
Bialystoker one had to know how to improve oneself through hard tireless work
(Reisman 7). The Bialystoker Farbands concept of self-maintenance became central to
how Argentine Bialystoker migrs began to view the greatest attributes of their city of
origin. As Moyshe Reisman, founding member of the Bialystoker Farband, noted:
RETHI NKI NG AMERI CAN J EWI SH REGI ONAL I DENTI TY 367
Bialystoks historical past teaches all the benefit of hard work [and] that Jewish
workers can achieve success despite daunting obstacles (Reisman 7). Their experi-
ences in Bialystok, Reisman (9) continued, led to the foundation of the Bialystoker
Farband and other cooperative banks illustrating the ways in which people must help
themselves.
The actions and rhetoric of the Bialystoker Farband tried to convince its members
that the values of tireless work and economic self-improvement were the central
defining attributes of Bialystok regional identity. Soon migrs in Buenos Aires began to
see themselves as more authentically Bialystoker than the allrightniks (the derogatory
Yiddish term applied to those immigrants who were seen as abandoning their morals in
order to achieve rapid material success) who had left Bialystok to settle in the United
States. In contrast to their compatriots who settled in the United States, became quick
successes, forgot the lessons of life in Bialystok and supported bourgeois welfare insti-
tutions that served constituencies far beyond the Bialystoker community, migrs in
Buenos Aires continued the traditions of the working-class city of Bialystok by
concerning themselves with the problems of the labourer (Reisman 7). Supporting
libraries and reading circles to educate Jewish workers, the members of the Farband
saw themselves as maintaining the legacy of Bialystok as a centre of worker activism
(Resiman 7). They may have not been quick successes like their compatriots in
America, but they similarly deployed their Bialystoker institution to make an imprint
beyond the narrow confines of their regional migr community.
The cover page of the Bialystoker Farbands magazine Bialystoker vegn (The Ways of
Bialystok) expresses a proletarian, as opposed to bourgeois, charitable vision of
Bialystoks legacy (Figure 4). The image on this 60-page publications cover begins in
the top left corner with a visual representation of a group of factories from which a long
winding road emerges. This road then curves and meanders past a representation of the
destroyed Bialystoker Synagogue and Bialystoker clock tower, before ending at the
name Bialystoker Farband emblazoned under a picture of a quill in an ink jar. Echoing
the magazines stated goalto preserve Yiddish culturethe cover sought to connect
Bialystok directly to the mission purported by many Jewish socialist or worker-oriented
organizations in this era (Munaker, Farvos bialistoker vegn, 2).
24
From its inception
in 1897 in Russia, the Bund (the abbreviated name for the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund
in Lita, Poyln un Rusland [General Jewish Workers Union in Lithuania, Poland and
Russia]), an illegal Jewish socialist political party, supported the development of Yiddish
language materials to further educate the Jewish working masses. The title page of Bial-
istoker vegn reiterated this message as its editors claimed that Bialystoker Jews were
charged with a mission to cultivate Yiddish culture in all their new homes (Munaker,
Farvos bialistoker vegn, 2). In contrast to their American compatriots commitment
to spreading a bourgeois charitable culture, these Argentine Bialystokers saw the road
from (or legacy of) Bialystok stemming from its factories where Yiddish culture was
nurtured. Bialistoker vegn fulfilled this mission on each of its sixty pages by publishing
reports, poetry and stories from Bialystoker Jews living around the world, and encour-
aging migrs to see their Bialystoker identity in their new world as entwined with a
devotion to working-class politics and Yiddish.
FIGURE 4 Bialistoker vegn 1947. Courtesy of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
The vision of Bialystoker identity articulated in this publication and through its
sponsoring organizationnot only in relation to Eastern Europe, but in juxtaposition
to the perceived bourgeois Bialystoker culture in the United Statesdeserves
J OURNAL OF MODERN J EWI SH STUDI ES 368
attention because no longer was Eastern Europe the primary touchstone to which
migrs turned to define themselves. They could not explain what it meant to be a
Bialystoker by looking only at Bialystok; they also had to define themselves against
the perceived class-status and achievements of their former compatriots living in New
York. Argentine Bialystokers saw their counterparts in the United States as a looming
presence who demanded they articulate a corrected vision of Bialystoks essence.
Contrasting their faithfulness to Bialystok with the questionable loyalty of Bialystoker
migrs who settled in the United States, the members of the Bialystoker Farband
would ultimately turn their attention to erecting the Y. L. Peretz Folkshulea
Yiddish elementary school that opened in 1949. They understood their support of
Yiddish education as continuing the efforts undertaken by Jewish workers in Bialystok
who had embraced Yiddish as they strove to inculcate in its members the need to over-
throw the Tsar (Cassedy). To sustain itself, however, this school ultimately drew
students from beyond the Bialystoker migr community. Appreciating the striking
FIGURE 4 Bialistoker vegn 1947. Courtesy of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
RETHI NKI NG AMERI CAN J EWI SH REGI ONAL I DENTI TY 369
similarities with the Bialystoker Centers Old Age Home, the leaders of the
Bialystoker Farband still steadfastly adhered to the vision of themselves as the true
Bialystokers upholding their citys legacy. A vast sea of difference, they argued,
existed between an old age home and a Yiddish educational institution that taught
lessons of self-reliance and an appreciation for the plight of the working man. Yet the
irony of their argument was lost on few in the transnational Bialystok community who
recognized the shared trajectories of the Bialystoker Center and the Bialystoker
Farband as a warning to those who sought to glorify Bialystok by transplanting it. Ulti-
mately, their efforts undermined Bialystoks distinctiveness. As Sonia Rapolovsky of
Chile summed up, there could never be another Bialystok. Her former home was a
fortress of Jewishness and Jewish culture a true barrier against assimilation like no
other city in the world (Rapalovsky 8). Tragically, this seemingly impenetrable cita-
del that inspired such an intense regional collective identity went up in smoke along
with the thousands of Jews who had kept it alive.
Conclusion
The Bialystoker Center in New York and the Bialystok Farband in Argentina demon-
strate the long-term resonance of Eastern European urban regionalisman essential
mode of Jewish self-identification in Eastern Europe that assumed new forms in the age
of mass migration. While sharing the same moniker and rhetoric of regional distinctive-
ness, the Bialystoker Center and Bialystoker Farband viewed their Bialystoker heritage
through strikingly different lenses: in New York, the Bialystoker Center projected its
Bialystoker identity by providing charitable services to Jewish elderly in the larger
immigrant community; the Bialystoker Farband in Buenos Aires, on the other hand,
maintained that supporting industrial development, working-class politics, education
and Yiddish culture perpetuated Bialystoks true legacy. To be sure, the Bialystok
migr community represents only one small slice of the Jewish immigrant world, but
it was far from exceptional. Jews from cities as large as Warsaw or as small as Lomza
enmeshed themselves in similar debates as migration forced Eastern European Jews
regional vision of their identities to be mapped onto new terrains. While Eastern
European Jews urban regional identities may not have supplanted other political or
religious allegiances, it did dovetail with these convictions and frame their articulation.
Thus, as Isaac Rontch noted in 1937, one cannot fully understand Eastern European
Jews encounter with America, or any place in the new world, unless one appreciates
the ways in which it was shaped by their mentalities of urban regionalism forged in
Eastern Europe (Rontch, Der itstiger matsev, 912).
The above analysis of the global network of Jewish immigrant associations suggests
that a renewed engagement with Jewish urban regional identityan engagement sensi-
tive to the transnational constructions of this identitycan productively destabilize our
vision of the nation state in modern Jewish history as well as our narration of the Eastern
European Jewish immigrant experience. Most American and modern Jewish historians
operate in dichotomous frameworks dictated by nationalist paradigms, privileging the
territorial boundaries imposed by nation-states in their discussions of the relationship
between space and identity in modern Jewish life. The fact that millions of Eastern
European Jews scattered throughout the United States, South America and Europe
J OURNAL OF MODERN J EWI SH STUDI ES 370
steadfastly held onto their urban regional identities long after they had left Eastern
Europe, and debated with one another over the definition of these identities, suggests a
need to rethink whether the city, rather than the nation-state, may be a more useful
analytical framework through which to study modern Jewish life. To be sure, this article
has highlighted the centrality of the city to Jews self-perceptions in a specific historical
momentthe era of mass Eastern European Jewish migrationbut even after lands-
manshaft memberships dwindled in the postwar period, the mode of identification these
organizations introduced to American Jewish life continued to make a deep imprint. As
Deborah Dash Moores study of postwar American Jewry illustrates, when Jews were
lured from New York and Chicago to cities such as Los Angeles and Miami, regional
affiliation continued to be a defining feature of Jewish communal life, albeit now in
terms of New York or Chicago, rather than Bialystok or Warsaw (Moore, To the Golden
Cities). American Jewish historians could provide a useful model to the larger field of
American history not only by emphasizing that urban regions matter just as much as
large swaths of territory, but also by continuing to look more seriously across the
Atlantic, rather than just at the Mason-Dixon Line when theorizing the types of regional
loyalties that molded American life (Moore, Regionalism, 115). While American
historians rarely look beyond the North American continent when discussing their
subjects regional identities, perhaps they must acknowledge as historian David Thelen
(436) observes, that instead of assuming that something was distinctively American, we
[must] assume that elements of it began or ended somewhere else. A new vision of
American Jewish regionalism, which looks beyond the map of the United States, would
highlight that American Jews, like America itself, were never isolated or exceptional;
immigrants, like nations, have always been molded by foreign mentalities, international
networks and global processes.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Aviva Taubenfeld and all the participants in the Jews in the
Modern World: Beyond the Nation conference for their feedback and insights.
Notes
1. Regional identity provided a cornerstone for Jewish identity in Eastern Europe;
it played a similar role in identity definition throughout Europe (see Lederhendler
1522). For the role of regional identity in the larger European context, see
Applegate (A Europe of Regions); also see Applegate (A Nation of Provincials);
Confino; Green; Jenkins.
2. This is my translation. Rontch renders this vignette in English in his 1939 article, The
Present State of the Landsmanschaften, where he translates this phrase as from
whence is a Jew a landsman? (360). Note that even Rontch felt it was unnecessary to
translate the Yiddish term landsman, which was the common word used by Yiddish
speakers to refer to someone (man) from the same hometown or region (land), with
whom one would share a deep intimate connection. Since no precise equivalent term
exists in English, I have chosen to leave landsman in its original form.
RETHI NKI NG AMERI CAN J EWI SH REGI ONAL I DENTI TY 371
3. Issue 93(2) of American Jewish History (June 2007) is devoted to regionalism At the 2006
Biennial Conference of American Jewish Historians (Charleston, SC), 46 June 2006,
a panel was devoted to the topic of regionalism in American Jewish life. Moreover,
numerous additional panels delved into this topic through such angles as comparing
city-Jews and country-Jews, or discussions of the specific contours of Southern
Jewish life. Much of the heated debate surrounding the question of regionalism still
centres on Baumana work that argues against the distinctiveness of Southern Jewish
life. Baumans thesis sparked an enormous response: assessments of his work have
dominated the last two conferences of the Southern Jewish Historical Society (2004
and 2005), with Marc Lee Raphael dedicating his keynote address to the 29th Annual
Conference of the Southern Jewish Historical Society in 2004 to a critique of Baumans
work. Moreover, a forthcoming issue of American Jewish History will be devoted to the
proceedings of the 2006 Scholars Conference and will include several discussions of
the issue of regionalism.
4. The mass migration of Eastern European Jewry marks the largest voluntary demo-
graphic shift in modern Jewish history (Lestchinsky; Editorial staff; Glazier vxxi;
Stampfer). For the ways in which Jewish internal migration transformed Jewish life in
specific cities in Eastern Europe, see Zipperstein; Corrsin.
5. A vast international literature exists on immigrant associations and the role they play
in facilitating immigrants economic adaptation to their new homes. For an excellent
overview, see Moya.
6. Schiller, Basch and Blanc have worked collaboratively on theorizing transnationalism,
producing several excellent overviews of this concept (see, e.g., Schiller et al.,
Towards a Transnational Perspective; Schiller et al., From Immigrant to Transmigrant).
7. Prior to the Second World War, several writers surveyed the landsmanshaftn
movement (Rontch (Der itstiger matsev); Wald; Zhitinsky, all focus on Argentina;
see also Szajkowski). Aside from these works, there few other major scholarly
treatments of these institutions appeared until the 1980s. In 1985, Hannah Kliger
completed her dissertation entitled Communication and Ethnic Community: The Case of
Landsmanshaftn, and Michael Weisser, a popular writer, penned Brotherhood of Memory:
Jewish Landsmanshaftn in the New Worlda work that argued that landsmanshaftn,
because of their use of the Yiddish language, acted as obstacles to Eastern European
Jewish immigrant acculturation. A special issue of American Jewish History in 1986
focused on landsmanshaftn and included the following pioneering articles: Milamed;
Kliger (Traditions); Soyer (Between Two Worlds). Soyer (Jewish Immigrant
Associations) provides the most extensive, rigorous, nuanced and insightful analysis of
landsmanshaftn and their role in Jewish communal life in the early twentieth century.
Drawing on expansive research, Soyer argues that landsmanshaftn facilitated Jewish
immigrant acculturation by introducing them to American civic culture through their
modes of operation.
8. Michael Weissers 1985 Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landsmanshaftn in the New World,
located the new world exclusively in the United States and argued that landsman-
shaftn failed because of their use of the Yiddish language that did not help its Eastern
European Jewish immigrant membership learn English. While Daniel Soyer chal-
lenged this assessment of these organizations, suggesting that landsmanshaftn actually
facilitated Jewish immigrant adaptation, he saw landsmanshaft organizations as consti-
tuting an American phenomenon (Soyer, Between Two Worlds, 492).
9. Eric Goldstein points out that Bauman must be credited with complicating many of
the central paradigms shaping the writing of southern Jewish historical writing, such
J OURNAL OF MODERN J EWI SH STUDI ES 372
as the assimilationist tendencies of southern Jews that basically erased Eastern
European Jews religious traditionalism, their strong support of Zionism and even a
devotion to Yiddish culture in the South (see Goldstein; I would like to thank the
author for sharing this paper with me).
10. Freeman Fears Nazis in Poland Have Brutally Slain His Mother, undated article
clipped from Chattanooga News-Free Press (Hale, 9 June 1948, included in file).
11. Space does not allow for close analysis of the Bialystoker organizations mentioned
above or various others founded by Bialystoker migrs to address their needs. For
more on these different organizations, see Kobrin (2002, Chapter 2); also see the
overview provided in Kliger (Traditions, 359).
12. For a list of Bialystoker organizations in America, see Shmule tsh et al. (1667);
Sohn (A History). Bialystoker Jews were far from exceptional among Jews or other
ethnic groups (see Milamed 41; Moya 8604).
13. Many landsmanshaft groups had similar organizations (see Milamed 41).
14. Thus far, I have rendered Yiddish words, phrases, titles and names of organizations,
places and persons according to the transliteration scheme of the YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research, except I must note that I make no attempt to standardize nonstand-
ard orthography such as Der Bialystoker Stimme, mentioned here, which possesses a
Yiddish title that was transliterated at the time of publication by its editors who did
not follow the YIVO guidelines for either spelling or capitalization.
15. According to the personal files of David Sohn, director of the Bialystoker Center and
editor of the Bialystoker Stimme, during the 1920s and 1930s, 4,000 Bialystoker Stimmes
were published in each run and by the 1940s the number published reached 5,000 (see
Bialystoker Stimme 239 (November 1945), p. 1; Sohn, History and Achievements of
the Bialystoker Center). In many communities, one or two Bialystoker migr
families would receive the Bialystoker Stimme and they would share their copy with all
the other Bialystoker families in the community.
16. Interview with Anna Gepner, 21 August 1997, Melbourne, Australia.
17. Interview with Yehezkel Aran, 15 April 1999, Tel Aviv, Israel.
18. Bialistok: a koloniol macht, Bialystoker Stimme, 8 (February 1924), p. 1; Der ameri-
kaner royter kreys in bialistok, Bialystoker Stimme 2 (January 1922), p. 1; Bialistok in
argentine un argentine in bialistok, Bialystoker Stimme, 13 (March 1926), p. 32; Di
bialistoker in berlin, Bialystoker Stimme, 4 (June 1922), p. 12. The regular column on
Velt barimte bialistoker debuted in the Bialystoker Stimme (4 (June 1922), pp. 79),
while the Unzer eygene velt column debuted in the Bialystoker Stimme (3 (March
1922), p. 12). Both soon became regular features (see, e.g., Bialystoker Stimme, 4
(June 1922), p. 14; Bialystoker Stimme, 6 (February 1923), p. 22).
19. This cover appeared on every Bialystoker Stimme between 1926 and 1930 (nos 1422)
except for those celebrating specific organizations anniversaries, such as the Bialystoker
Young Mens Association (1926) or the Bialystoker Centers Ladies Auxilary (1928).
20. Bialistok, nyu york, patersun, Bialistoker Relif Journal, 1925, p. 1.
21. The handwritten Annual Report of the Bialystoker Center Old Age Home reports that close
to half of the homes 23 residents were born in Bialystok.
22. The Warschauer Haym Solomon Home for the Aged was founded in 1922 (see
Warschauer Haym Salomon Homed for the Aged Souvenir Journal, 19221938, 1938; also
see Souvenir Journal: Tenth Anniversary Dinner of the Mohilev-on-Dnieper and Vicinity Home
for the Aged, 1937). The proliferation of eldercare facilities in the 1920s reflected not
only shifting demographics, but the growing concern among many immigrant groups
and the larger urban working class about how to care for aging family members who
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RETHI NKI NG AMERI CAN J EWI SH REGI ONAL I DENTI TY 373
could no longer earn wages. Many Jewish leaders feared that if poor immigrant Jews
flocked to municipal poorhouses, there would be antisemitic repercussions (see
Katz).
23. See the similar conclusion reached by Tenenbaum (77).
24. On the larger role socialist organizations played in developing and spreading Yiddish
culture, particularly in the postwar era, see Fishman (Chapters 4, 6, 8).
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Rebecca Kobrin, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Columbia University,
works in the field of American Jewish History. Her forthcoming book Jewish Bialystok
and Its Diaspora: Between Exile and Empire (Indiana University Press) was awarded the
Center for Jewish Historys Fred Rose Young Historians Award. She has been awarded
a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies for 2008/2009 to begin a new
project on Jewish speculation, financial failure and the remaking of American capital-
ism. Address: Rebecca Kobrin, 4633 Delafield Avenue, Bronx, NY 10471, USA. E-mail:
rk2351@columbia.edu