and Pittsburgh, and many Midwestern communities such as Detroit,
Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Chicago. Typically, these Jews started out
as peddlers and improved their position, becoming shopkeepers. A handful of
them prospered, becoming major commercial magnates, such as Levi Strauss.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, there was a growing sense
that the openness of life in America was not conducive to the preservation of
traditional Judaism. In response, there were Jews who attempted to create
some sort of organizational framework to maintain a sense of solidarity among
Jews, notably Isaac Leeser (1806–68). Leeser tried to adapt traditional
Judaism in such a way that it could survive in America.
Born in Germany, Leeser moved to the United States in 1824, and served
as the hazzan(cantor) for Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. In lieu
of a rabbi, he delivered the weekly sermon, and was the first to first to intro-
duce an English-language sermon. In 1838, he wrote the first Hebrew primer
for Jewish children in the New World. In 1843 he founded the first Jewish
newspaper, the Occident. In 1848, he published the first English translation of
the Sephardic prayer book. In 1849, he founded the first Hebrew high school.
Despite these successes, Leeser was unable to create any sort of umbrella orga-
nization for American Jewry.
Two other organizations had greater success in this regard: Bnai Brith and
the American branch of Reform Judaism. Bnai Brith was a Jewish fraternal
organization founded on November 5, 1843, by twelve men who had con-
cluded that the synagogue could not provide a meaningful Jewish life. Instead,
they founded the Independent Order of Bnai Brith, modeled after other frater-
nal orders such as the Masons, to foster some sense of Jewish solidarity outside
the synagogue. Like the Masonic orders, they blended their religious beliefs
and the educational philosophy that their German forebears had known as
Bildungwith the civic religion of America: monotheism, rationality, active
charity, exemplary morality, dedication to self-improvement, and “moral ele-
vation that comprised the education of heart and mind.” They stressed group
identity, defined the Jewish community as a “distinct moral community,” and
adopted the mission theory that Geiger espoused for Reform Judaism. One
had to be Jewish to join, but Jewishness was interpreted very liberally.
In 1868, Bnai Brith issued a manifesto comprising five principles: (1) all
men are brothers, sons of one God, vested with the same inalienable rights;
(2) social relations should be dictated by love, and not only by law; (3) charity
and enlightenment are the choicest gifts of love, and sons of the covenant
(i.e. Bnai Brith) are specifically charged with the practice of the former and
the diffusion of the latter; (4) the best interests of humanity are promoted by
combined efforts of associated philanthropists; and (5) divine and everlasting
doctrines of Judaism are the basis of all civilization and enlightenment, of
universal charity and fraternity. Until 1873, Bnai Brith was the only nation-
wide Jewish organization in America. By the end of the 1870s, it would be
joined and complemented by the spread of Reform Judaism.
166 The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880