B'nai B'rith - International Affairs

International Affairs

By the 1920s, B'nai B'rith membership in Europe had grown to 17,500—nearly half of the U.S. membership—and by the next decade, the formation of a lodge in Shanghai represented the organization's entry into the Far East. This international expansion was to come to a close with the rise of Nazism. At the beginning of the Nazi era, there were six B'nai B'rith districts in Europe. Eventually, the Nazis seized nearly all B'nai B'rith property in Europe.

B'nai B'rith Europe was re-founded in 1948. Members of the Basel and Zurich lodges and representatives from lodges in France and Holland who had survived the Holocaust attended the inaugural meeting. In 2000, the new European B'nai B'rith district merged with the United Kingdom district to become a consolidated B'nai B'rith Europe with active involvement in all institutions of the European Union. By 2005 B'nai B'rith Europe comprised lodges in more than 20 countries including the former Communist Eastern Europe.

In response to what later become known as the Holocaust, in 1943 B'nai B'rith President Henry Monsky convened a conference in Pittsburgh of all major Jewish organizations to "find a common platform for the presentation of our case before the civilized nations of the world". During the next four years, the conference established the machinery that saved untold numbers of lives, assisted in the post-war reconstruction of European Jewish life and helped spur public opinion to support the 1947 partition decision granting Jews a share of what was then Palestine.

Just prior to the creation of the State of Israel, President Harry S. Truman, resisting pressure by various organizations, declined meetings with Jewish leaders. B'nai B'rith President Frank Goldman convinced fellow B'nai B'rith member Eddie Jacobson, long-time friend and business partner of the president, to appeal to Truman for a favor. Jacobson convinced Truman to meet secretly with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in a meeting said to have resulted in turning White House support back in favor of partition, and ultimately to de facto recognition of Israeli statehood.

B'nai B'rith was present at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco and has taken an active role in the world body ever since. In 1947, the organization was granted non-governmental organizational (NGO) status and, for many years, was the only Jewish organization with full-time representation at the United Nations. It is credited with a leading role in the U.N. reversal of its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism.

B'nai B'rith's NGO role is not limited to the United Nations and its agencies. B'nai B'rith also has worked extensively with officials in the State Department, in Congress, and in foreign governments to support the efforts of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to combat anti-Semitism. With members in more than 20 Latin American countries, the organization was the first Jewish group to be accorded civil society status at the Organization of American States (OAS), where it has advocated for democracy and human rights throughout the region. B'nai B'rith's role in Latin America dates to the turn of the 20th century and grew considerably with the influx of Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.

In addition to its advocacy efforts, B'nai B'rith maintains an extensive program of community service throughout Latin America. In 2002, in cooperation with the Brother's Brother Foundation, B'nai B'rith distributed more than $31 million worth of critically needed medicine, books and supplies to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela following the economic disaster that struck much of Latin America. Through 2011 the program had distributed more than $100 million in medicine and supplies.

In addition to founding the Jerusalem Lodge in 1888, life in Israel has been a prime focus for the organization. Among the Jerusalem lodge's most noted contributions was the city's first free public library, Midrash Abarbanel, which became the nucleus of the National and University Library; the first Hebrew kindergarten in Jerusalem; and the purchase of land for a home for new immigrants, the village Motza near Jerusalem. In 1936 B'nai B'rith donated $100,000 to the Jewish National Fund to buy 1,000 acres in what was then Palestine, followed by an additional $100,000 in 1939. Following Israel's declaration of independence, B'nai B'rith members in the Unites States sent several ships loaded with $4 million worth of food, clothing, medical supplies, trucks and jeeps to the port of Haifa.

In 1959, B'nai B'rith became the first major American Jewish organization to hold a convention in Israel.

Only six weeks after the signing of the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978, B'nai B'rith was the first Jewish group to visit Egypt at the invitation of President Anwar Sadat.

In 1980, nearly all nations removed their embassies from Jerusalem in response to the passage by the Knesset of the Jerusalem Law extending Israeli sovereignty over the entire city. B'nai B'rith responded with the establishment of the B'nai B'rith World Center in Jerusalem to serve as "the permanent and official presence of B'nai B'rith in Jerusalem".