Jewish Social Welfare Groups, 1871–2012

Nineteenth-century Jewish immigrants brought to Minnesota long-standing religious traditions of aiding the poor and needy. Beginning in the 1870s, German-Jewish immigrants, followed by Jews from Eastern Europe, founded an array of charitable and philanthropic groups. Women were the prime movers, though men held directors’ roles.

When local governments began providing relief payments in the 1930s, the Jewish aid groups focused on social services. By the end of World War II, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth each maintained a community-wide social service agency and community federation. This model persisted into the twenty-first century.

The first Jewish charity group in Minnesota was the Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society (HLBS). Women members of the predominantly German-Jewish Mount Zion Temple founded it in 1871. Shaarei Tov (later, Temple Israel) in Minneapolis and Temple Emanuel in Duluth founded their own women’s benevolent societies in the early twentieth century. Like Mount Zion, both were Reform temples.

Eastern European Jews began to arrive in Minnesota in large numbers in the 1880s. Most were poor. Benevolent society staff inspected aid recipients’ homes. They determined if recipients were truly needy and thus “worthy” of charity. Charity workers also wanted to prevent the newcomers from becoming a burden on the established Jewish community.

Many members of temple-based charities also joined Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth chapters of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), founded in Chicago in 1893. The HLBS and St. Paul NCJW founded Neighborhood House on the West Side river flats in 1897. In the 1920s, Minneapolis NCJW founded South Side Neighborhood house.

Eastern European Orthodox Jews soon set up their own self-help groups. Two of the earliest were Sisters of Peace Benevolent Society (1882) and Charity Loan Society (1890). Together, they founded the Jewish Home for the Aged in 1907. Another group, the Daughters of Abraham (1918), established Sholom Residence. The two homes for the elderly merged in 1971.

Benefit and loan societies were another immigrant self-help strategy. Benefit societies collected small monthly payments from members to pay for insurance policies and burial plots. The most prominent was B’rith Abraham (Covenant of Abraham). At its peak around 1917, the group had chapters in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, and the Iron Range. Total membership numbered about two thousand.

Gemelus Chesed (later Sharei Chesed synagogue) was a loan society that held religious services. The socialist Workmen’s Circle included the services of a loan society among its member benefits. Other groups, such as the Jewish Loan Society in Minneapolis, were independent. In St. Paul, the Women’s Free Loan Society (1915) lent immigrant women money to furnish their homes or start a business.

Jewish immigrants continued to arrive in Minnesota into the early twentieth century. As they did, the Jewish community founded more social service groups. Examples included the Jewish Sheltering Home for Children in Minneapolis, homes for transients in the Twin Cities, and employment agencies. Free- or low-cost pharmacies and medical clinics sprang up.

A committee appointed by the B’nai Brith looked at the idea of uniting fundraising efforts for the many Jewish charities. The result was Associated Jewish Charities, founded in 1910. It collected and then distributed funds to United Hebrew Charities, Jewish Loan Society, and other groups.

In 1918, Associated Jewish Charities became a charter member of the Community Chest, forerunner of the United Way. The charity then gave up fundraising in support of local groups. It concentrated instead on providing social services and raising money for national and international Jewish groups. It changed its name to Jewish Family Welfare Association (JFWA) to reflect its new mission. At the end of World War II, JFWA took the name Jewish Family and Children’s Service—still its name in 2014.

Similar streamlining occurred in St. Paul and Duluth. Associated Jewish Charities of Duluth, a union of charitable societies, formed in 1921. It was renamed the Northland Jewish Fund in 1998 to reflect its geographic reach and the fact it did not provide social services. It survived until 2001. In St. Paul, four women’s charity groups incorporated in 1910 to form Associated Jewish Charities of St. Paul. The forerunner of the Jewish Family Service of St. Paul, it continues to operate in the twenty-first century.

The Minneapolis Federation for Jewish Service was founded in 1930 at the advent of the Great Depression. Its two-fold mission was to fundraise and promote Jewish community unity by integrating the work of local Jewish agencies. The agencies represented disparate communities based on neighborhood, place of origin, mode of worship, and class.

Initially, Federation funds supported hospitals, orphan homes, and religious schools in Europe and Palestine. The Talmud Torah was the only local beneficiary. Other local Jewish social service groups were still funded by the Community Chest.

Even as umbrella organizations formed, single-mission Jewish relief groups continued to multiply. By 1936, some ninety-four separate groups existed in Minneapolis alone. St. Paul and Duluth were not far behind.

The Depression made it more difficult to raise money. Still, the Minneapolis Jewish community was reluctant to turn its relief role over to the new public relief agencies. Public relief payments were lower than what the JFWA had tried to pay in the past.

JFWA refocused its efforts on the pressing issue of helping people find work. The effects of anti-Semitism and the Depression led to the expansion of the Jewish Free Employment Bureau, renamed the Jewish Employment Service in 1936. In the late 1930s, the Federation responded to the problem of anti-Semitism by creating the Minnesota Jewish Council, today the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

St. Paul’s first united fundraising appeal on behalf of causes not supported by the Community Chest was held in 1935. In 1943, fundraising and community planning functions came together under the United Jewish Fund and Council of St. Paul. Social planning also became a major focus of the Minneapolis Federation after World War II. To aid the effort, the Minneapolis Federation took the first of its periodic censuses of the local Jewish population in 1937.

At the end of World War II, St. Paul founded the Jewish Vocational Service. It joined the other Twin Cities social welfare organizations to help returning veterans and young people plan careers. Resettling displaced persons from Nazi Europe soon took center stage. For the next ten years, a large proportion of Jewish social welfare efforts were devoted to refugee resettlement.

In the 1970s, another wave of Jewish settlers arrived in the Twin Cities. This group, from the Soviet Union, was permitted to emigrate after years of refusal. Resettlement programs were again developed. These efforts continued into the 1980s and 1990s, when the breakup of the Soviet Union brought more immigrants.

Jewish Family and Children’s Service, located since its inception in downtown Minneapolis, opened its first suburban branch in 1979. When it celebrated its centennial in 2009, it was located in Minnetonka. Jewish Family Service of St. Paul, located in the Highland Park neighborhood, celebrated its centennial in 2010. Both family services serve all in need.

In the post-World War II era, the Minneapolis Federation has become the dominant Jewish agency in Minnesota because of community size and amount of money raised. It participates in planning for Jewish agencies of all kinds, including those funded by the Jewish community, the United Way, and federal grants. St. Paul's United Jewish Fund and Council plays a similar role. It changed its name to the Jewish Federation of Greater St. Paul in 2012.