B'nai B'rith - The Beginning of The 20th Century

The Beginning of The 20th Century

In response to the Kishinev pogrom in 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay met with B'nai B'rith's executive committee in Washington, D.C. B'nai B'rith President Simon Wolf presented the draft of a petition to be sent to the Russian government protesting the lack of opposition to the massacre. Roosevelt readily agreed to transmit it and B'nai B'rith lodges began gathering signatures around the country.

In the first two decades of the 20th century B'nai B'rith launched three of today's major Jewish organizations: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Hillel and BBYO (originally B'nai B'rith Youth Organization). Later they would take on a life of their own with varying degrees of autonomy.

A growing concern in the 1920s was the preservation of Jewish values as immigration slowed and a native Jewish population of Eastern European ancestry came to maturity. In 1923, Rabbi Benjamin Frankel of Illinois established an organization on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to provide both Reform and Orthodox Sabbath services, classes in Judaism and social events for Jewish college students. Two years later, he approached B'nai B'rith about adopting this new campus organization. B'nai B'rith sponsorship of the Hillel Foundations enabled it to extend throughout the United States, eventually become international and to grow into a network of more than 500 campus student organizations.

At virtually the same time as Hillel was being established, Sam Beber of Omaha, Neb., presented a plan in 1924 to B'nai B'rith for a fraternity for Jewish men in high school. The new organization was called Aleph Zadik Aleph in imitation of the Greek-letter fraternities from which Jewish youth were excluded. In 1925, AZA became the junior auxiliary of B'nai B'rith.

In 1940, B'nai B'rith Women adopted its own junior auxiliary for young women, B'nai B'rith Girls (BBG, then a loose-knit group of organizations) and, in 1944, the two organizations became the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization (BBYO).

B'nai B'rith has also been involved in Jewish camping for more than a half century. In 1953, B'nai B'rith acquired a 300-acre camp in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Originally named Camp B'nai B'rith, the facility would later be named B'nai B'rith Perlman Camp in honor of the early BBYO leader Anita Perlman and her husband, Louis. In 1976, a second camp was added near Madison, Wis. Named after the founder of AZA, the camp became known as B'nai B'rith Beber Camp. In 2010, Beber Camp became independent of B'nai B'rith. Perlman Camp functions as both a Jewish children's camp and as a leadership training facility.

In 1938, in response to rampant employment discrimination against Jews, B'nai B'rith established the Vocational Service Bureau to guide young people into careers. This evolved into the B'nai B'rith Career and Counseling Service, an agency that provided vocational testing and counseling, and published career guides. In the mid-1980s, the program was dissolved or merged into other community agencies.