„Parlamenty matek i sióstr”. Żydowska Żeńska Służba Społeczna w getcie warszawskim

“Parliaments of Mothers and Sisters”: Jewish Women’s Social Service in the Warsaw Ghetto The article explores a broad range of social and aid activities of Jewish women in the Warsaw Ghetto under the aegis of the Jewish Organization for Social Care, known as Jewish Social Self-Help (JSS). Due to hard living conditions, those women were forced into increased outside activities, as well as taking protective actions in aid of strangers, individuals, and families alike. They founded women’s clubs in every house, alongside with many public soup kitchens, common rooms, day care centers and so-called children’s corners, the staff of which would consist mainly of women. All these facilities together formed the largest chain of self-help centers, next to the numerous ghetto House Committees.

Connecting the Dots

This introductory chapter presents the author’s personal journey to study the history of Jewish organized crime. Its story begins with family lore before ballooning into a history of West Side Jewish gangsters, who sometimes allied and sometimes fought within a backdrop of organized crime largely dominated by the Italian and the Irish. From there, the West Side criminal world slowly coalesced from a series of gangs competing with each other into a final independent Jewish organization headed by Benjamin “Zukie the Bookie” Zuckerman. Then, during the early 1990s, Lenny Patrick became a household name, at least for a few months. Patrick was a gangster in his late seventies, described in many places as the head of the Jewish wing of the Syndicate. In a city notorious for Italian American gangsters, Patrick stood out as an anomaly. He was a Jew who had remained important in organized crime long after the crumbling of the West Side Jewish world.

Introduction

Carrying signs and banners proclaiming “Jewish People Yes, Zionism No,” in November 1973 hundreds of Arab American autoworkers and their supporters picketed an event in Detroit at which the Jewish organization B’nai B’rith was honoring United Auto Workers’ president Leonard Woodcock. Plans for the protest had been building for several weeks, emanating from demonstrations held in reaction to the war fought between Israel and several Arab nations in October 1973. The October demonstrations that took place in Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States, focused on championing the Arabs’ fight along with protesting American support for Israel. In Dearborn and across the country, Arab American political mobilization on behalf of Palestine had escalated since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel had defeated its Arab opponents and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians....

B'nai B'rith on the European continent after World War Two

The focus of this paper is on the oldest international Jewish organization founded in 1843, B’nai B’rith. The paper presents a chronicle of B’nai B’rith in Continental Europe after the Second World War and the history of the organization in Scandinavia. In the 1970's the Order of B'nai B'rith became B'nai B'rith international. B'nai B'rith worked for Jewish unity and was supportive of the state of Israel.

B'nai B'rith – Children of the covenant

B’nai B’rith is the oldest international Jewish organization. In contrast to most other Jewish organizations, BB has no hierarchy, nor is it an umbrella organization. It is totally democratic, it is still the only major Jewish organization, in which every individual member has the right to vote. From the beginning, BB was an order for Jewish men. The main purpose of BB has been to serve the Jewish people. BB was founded in United States, but rapidly expanded to Europe. In order to fulfil this great mission, different agencies have been established in the course of time.