The Jewish Community Center, which now plays an important role in American Jewish life, has sprung from efforts exerted by young people and latterly, by older people on behalf of youth.
Like the Young Men’s Hebrew Associations, Jewish Educational Alliances and Jewish Settlements, the Jewish Center is to a large extent a development peculiar to American Israel. All these organizations represent a conscious effort either to adapt the Jewish immigrant to the new environment or to adjust old Jewish cultural traditions and aspirations to America’s community life and ideals.
TWO STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
For forty years prior to 1915 or 1916 the Jewish Center movement lacked any philosophy or deliberate plan of playing a constructive role, in Jewish communal life. Some sixty years ago groups of young people under the names of Young Men’s Hebrew Associations and Young Women’s Hebrew Associations started in New York and Philadelphia a movement with the aim of self-improvement along moral and intellectual lines. Perhaps the real motive was to have a good time, for then as now they could not socialize easily with people of other faiths or other national groups.
A radically different point of view in the “Y” work developed about twenty years ago. Then these organizations passed out of the hands of the young men themselves into the hands of more prominent people in the community to be managed and financed from above for the benefit of the lower sections of American Jewry. Thus the Y. M. H. A. work took the aspect of a philanthropic communal institution.
The aim of the “Y” at that time was to develop in American Jewish men the Jewish consciousness as a means to the highest type of spiritual life.
Thus in the first stage of the movement, the “Y” was just a club for Jewish young men of the middle classes. The second stage, which began about 1915, was marked by a conscious movement for “Judaization,” and the “Y” organization became an instrument to Judaize Hebrew young men into Jewish young men.
EFFECTS OF THE WORLD WAR
This change coincided with the World War crisis. American Jewry learned, after severe trials and errors, that the task of sustaining the morale of Jewish boys in the military and naval forces was not the function of individual or competing organizations. A new instrument was called for, a body which would express Jewish collective interest and will, forming in a way a counterpart to the Salvation Army, Young Men’s Christian Associations, and Knights of Columbus—all of which helped our country to prepare its soldiers.
At the time, when the government called upon the Jews to do their part, the Y. M. H. A.’s were only young and weak organizations, which could not themselves undertake to care for the responsible work among Jewish soldiers and sailors. Then the Jewish Welfare Board came into being. It was built up of many organizations and became representative of American Jewry as a whole. The Council of Young Men’s Hebrew and Kindred Associations became part of the J. W. B.
This new organization would build in the camps and cantonments so-called Jewish Centers, and in this way this new thing under the sun made its appearance on the American Jewish scene.
OUTGROWTH OF WAR
Jewish soldiers derived renewed courage and heightened resolve from the deep spiritual influence of the Jewish Centers in the camps. Soon the leading Jewish communal workers discovered that constructive work of this type can and must be done by Jewish Centers for Jewish youth and for the community itself at all times.
Thus, at the end of the war, it was considered an urgent duty of the Jewish Welfare Board to help build up and maintain Jewish Community Centers in all communities of the country. Of course, the J. W. B. had more influence, more authority and more power than the Council of the Hebrew Young Men’s and Kindred Associations. Just for that reason the two organizations merged and formed one potent influence for the attainment of Jewish unity.
The responsibilities which the American Jewish community assumed in the World War and which originally were assigned to the Jewish Welfare Board have been and are now discharged through the Department of Army and Navy Activities of this board.
After the war a sum was left over to the Jewish Welfare Board, which was constituted a trust fund for peace-time efforts. At that time, Jewish communities were better organized for cultural work by the J. W. B. than they had ever been before the war emergency took place.
FUNCTIONS OF CENTERS
The Jewish Community Centers, established since 1918 in hundreds of places all over the United States, function not only in behalf of young men and women, but for the children and older people as well. Very often facilities for business and professional groups in the community are also provided. Through the Jewish Center our communities are able to find self-expression and organize their efforts, both for themselves and for the whole of American Israel.
The newly established Y. M. H. A.’s are decided efforts in the direction of working with the community as a whole; of giving the community, through the association, a machinery for community welfare for the entire Jewish population.
The preamble of the constitution of the Ninety-second Street Y. M. H. A. in New York, promulgated in 1874, has the following wording as to its aims: “to promote the religious, intellectual and social well-being and development of young men.”
The 1928 constitution of the Jewish Welfare Board, it is interesting to observe, has the same wording with one change only as follows: “the well-being and development of Jews.” It is, in other words, not confined to young men alone, but includes Jews of all kinds.
In this significant change the whole development of what originally was the “Y” work and which now is designated as Jewish Center work is fully reflected.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
