Jewish General Practitioners and Consultants between the World Wars

2003 ◽  
pp. 68-92
Author(s):  
John Cooper
Keyword(s):  
General Practitioners ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Teaching Hospitals ◽  
Royal Infirmary ◽  
East European ◽  
Immigrant Background ◽  
The World ◽  
Jewish Students ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
European Jewish

This chapter looks at Jewish general practitioners and consultants between the world wars. It shows that the massive influx of Jews into the medical profession started during the First World War and continued into the 1920s and 1930s. Although there is a widespread belief among Anglo-Jewish historians that discrimination made entry into the medical profession difficult for Jews, finding a place in an English medical school was in fact—apart from a few isolated incidents—relatively straightforward for Jewish students during the inter-war period. However, problems arose when Jews from an immigrant background tried to obtain house appointments and staff positions in the leading London and provincial hospitals. Even the top students, if they were the children of east European Jewish immigrants, sometimes found it difficult to obtain these positions in the London teaching hospitals or such institutions as the Manchester Royal Infirmary during the 1920s, though it became slightly easier in the following decade.

Jews at the Bar from 1918 Until the End of the Second World War

2003 ◽  
pp. 112-134
Author(s):  
John Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Social Skills ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
East European ◽  
Immigrant Background ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Second World

This chapter assesses whether the lack of Jews in the higher echelons of the legal profession had exclusively domestic causes or was connected with the rising tide of antisemitism in Europe. If the number of Jews practising at the Bar increased in the years 1918 to 1939, very few of these new barristers came from east European Jewish families, and the chapter explains why this was the case. In England, between the world wars, the legal professions were ‘the exclusive spheres of the aristocracy and plutocracy’. There was a reluctance among solicitors and their clients to entrust their private and confidential business to a Jew, especially one from an east European immigrant background, who was regarded as a foreigner. Thus, unless the aspiring barrister was a member of the Anglo-Jewish elite and sufficiently Anglicized, he would not have the manners or the social skills to win the confidence of instructing solicitors and their clients.

Economic Opportunities and Some Pilgrims' Progress: Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe in the U.S., 1890–1914

1978 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 235-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arcadius Kahan
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
East European ◽  
Economic Opportunities ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Proper Perspective ◽  
Original Habitat ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
The U.S

The purpose of the following essay is to evaluate the existing economic opportunities for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and to indicate the pace of their economic progress during the period 1890–1914. This purpose can best be achieved by viewing the mass migration of these European Jews in the proper perspective, that is, in terms of the dynamics of their situation at the places of original habitat; second, by differentiating successive cohorts of immigrants in terms of their skill composition, literacy, and degree of experienced urbanization, all elements important for the adaptability to and utilization of existing economic opportunities; third, by analyzing the structure of the U.S. industries that provided employment opportunities to the East European Jewish immigrants; fourth, by assuming the income level and standard of living of the native-born labor force as the yardstick for measuring the economic progress of the immigrants. Such an approach may broaden our understanding of the mechanism of adjustment that enabled the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe both to take advantage of existing economic opportunities and to create new ones.

Jacob Jay Lindenthal, Abi Gezunt: Explorations into the Role of Health and the American Jewish Dream. Brighton, Mass.: Academic Studies Press, 2017. xxix + 187 pp; together with The Lindex: A Companion to Abi Gezunt. xi + 341 pp.

2020 ◽  
pp. 307-309
Keyword(s):  
Decisive Role ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
American Jews ◽  
East European ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
Crucial Effect ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
European Jewish

Is there a causal relationship between the remarkable economic success and rapid upward mobility of American Jews and behavioral patterns on their part that promoted health and the prevention of disease? Jacob Jay Lindenthal offers what he terms “a conjectural analysis” (p. xiii) to suggest such a causality, and he supports his argument with an impressive array of medical sources that scholars of American Jewry have rarely utilized. Lindenthal maintains that Jewish “values, beliefs, traditions, attitudes, and behavioral patterns” have all had a crucial effect on Jewish health (p. xv). He highlights such cultural factors among the Jews as awareness of and concern for health; an emphasis on cleanliness as mandated by Jewish law (halakhah); a cohesive family life; the promotion of education; specific childrearing practices (among them, circumcision, breastfeeding, and maintaining longer time intervals between births); a low rate of alcoholism; and communal charitable institutions and solidarity as playing a decisive role in keeping East European Jewish immigrants in America in relative good health. As he notes, Jewish immigrants in early 20...

‘An Actual Working Out of Internationalism’: Russian Politics, Zionism, and Lillian Wald's Ethnic Progressivism

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie N. Feld
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
East European ◽  
Progressive Reform ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Russian Politics ◽  
Working Out

Students of the life of Lillian D. Wald (1867–1940) know her best as a Progressive activist. A trained nurse and advocate for East European Jewish immigrants on New York's Lower East Side, she founded Henry Street Settlement House there in 1893 and worked for state intervention in public health issues concerning women and children. Though she lived until 1940, historians have focused almost exclusively on her achievements before 1920: her founding of Henry Street, her key role in the formation of the Children's Bureau, her anti-militarism during World War I. This is not surprising, given that Wald' s rhetoric is that of a dyed-in-the-wool Progressive. She consistently cited her actions as in line with her universalist philosophy of human interdependence, which she referred to as “mutuality” and defined as a vision in which “no one class of people can be independent of the other”. Wald's mutuality echoes the Protestant social gospel movement's call for a “brotherhood of man” which inspired so many – including so many middle-class women – to work for various currents of Progressive reform.

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