Was the Brotherhood Founded as a Burial Society?

The cover from the 1917 Brotherhood Gala brochure (Courtesy of David Saffan)

The common answer today is: Yes. Even the Brotherhood’s own website indicates that the organization was established as a “volunteer mutual aid and burial society.”

But Ladino publications of the era tell a slightly different story.

During the early twentieth century, economic challenges, political changes, and war compelled many Sephardic Jews to leave the Ottoman Empire. Between 1908 and 1924, about fifty thousand Ladino-speaking Turkinos headed to the United States, especially New York City. There they established new kolonias (“colonies”) defined in relationship to city of origin, as Kastorialis, Monastirlis, Izmirlis, Stambulis, Edirnelis, Selaniklis, etc. Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews from Ioaninna (Yanyotes) followed the same pattern. Local compatriotism prevailed as it did for Yiddish-speaking Jews who embraced the landsmanschaft principle and for other Ottomans, who prioritized the concept of hemşehrilik.

The group that founded what became known as the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America came from Salonica (Thessaloniki), in today’s Greece. The impetus for New York’s Selaniklis to organize themselves did not come from the need to establish a burial plot, but rather to aid their native community during World War I. In June 1915, Isaac Azriel, a 20-year-old laborer, arrived in New York and alerted his fellow townspeople to threats facing their native community. A blood libel accusation on the island of Corfu had spread to Salonica and provided fodder for antisemites seeking to enact violence against the city’s Jews.

In an appeal in New York’s first Ladino weekly, La Amerika, Azriel explained that mentally infirm Jews wandering the streets presented the easiest prey, so he urged his compatriots to raise funds to send to Salonica’s Jewish Insane Asylum (Azilo de Lokos) to remove those in need from the streets, and to restore an honorable public image to the community.^[1] This effort led to the formation of the New York Committee of the Jewish Insane Asylum, which fundraised on a regular basis until World War II—even financing the creation of the American wing of the facility in 1940.^[2] 

But in organizing to support their native city—their patria madre (“motherland”), a term used to describe their city alone—Selaniklis in New York recognized that they ought to support their needs locally, too, especially as the group consisted mostly of working-class people suffering under harsh conditions in sweatshops and other menial jobs. In October 1915, a group of 35 Selaniklis—including some who had gathered to support the Azilo de Lokos—established the foundations for their own mutual aid organization. Maurice Nessim convened the group, as reported in his Ladino newspaper, El Progresso (later known as La Bos del Pueblo), which championed the working class and socialism. The headline ran “La djoventud salonikiota se organiza” (The Salonican youth gets organized)—and the key term is “youth.”^[3] 

Nessim himself was only 23 and the other founding members, who mostly arrived in the US in 1914-1915, were between 17 (Haim [Hyman] Nadjary) and 32 (Moise Attas). The other founding officers, who fell within the same age range, included president Jack Hassid; secretary Issie Pardo; and treasurer Henry Perahia, who had arrived first among the group, in 1910. Membership applications could be filed at Joseph Saltiel’s Salonica Restaurant & Café at 184 Chrystie Street. Within a month, the organization—La Ermandad Salonikiota de Amerika (Salonician Brotherhood of America)—counted over 100 members.^[4]

From its beginnings, the Brotherhood stood out from other Turkino mutual aid organizations. Although Moise Gadol, the Bulgarian-born Zionist editor of La Amerika, opposed Maurice Nessim’s newspaper and his socialist politics, he could not but praise the organization that Nessim had helped to found. La Amerika attributed the special status of the Brotherhood to the founders’ Salonican background: “The Jew of Salonica is developed, intelligent, a man of culture and taste… The city [Salonica], thanks to them [the Jews], really had the character a European city.”^[5] 

According to Gadol, those characteristics were on display with the new Brotherhood, which he viewed as “composed of a quite enlightened element” who sought “moral” and “material” progress for its members and not only to care for the sick and bury the dead. This “progressive” stance, as Gadol called it, was also evidenced in the fact that unlike the other societies at the time, only the Brotherhood invited non-members to attend its annual meetings.^[6]

Cover of the Constitution of the Sepharadic [sic] Brotherhood in Ladino with Hebrew and Rashi characters, along with the corporate seal, 1922. 

Only in 1916 did the Brotherhood acquire a burial ground, the same year the organization officially incorporated. At a gala held on Allen Street that year, 900 attendees raised enough funds to purchase seven plots at Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens. The addition of the cemetery enhanced the organization’s responsibilities, which clearly drew inspiration on an Ottoman precent: taifes, groups of workers who prayed together, maintained funds for sick-benefits and burial expenses, aided widows of deceased members, and even distributed a bottle of raki to each member for his weekly consumption.^[7] But the Brotherhood added to its program educational, cultural, and even political activities, which nearly fissured the organization. Leader Yuda Saady (a socialist himself) called for unity at the 1917 gala: “Zionists and socialists, come together in the Brotherhood, forget your ideologies for a moment to fulfill the program of this organization.”^[8]

In the wake of World War I, the fate of the Brotherhood was transformed as it became the first major Turkino mutual aid organization to open membership to those from any town of origin as it reincorporated in 1922, with a new name, as the Sepharadic Brotherhood of America (Ermandad Sefaradith). An experienced leader, Albert Amateau from Milas, near Izmir, became the first non-Salonican president.^[9] The bilingual English and Ladino constitution and by-laws of the reformulated Brotherhood clarified the organization’s priorities: “To promote the industrial, social, educational and religious welfare of its members and to engage in philanthropic endeavors for the welfare of Sepharadic Immigrants…” “Industrial” welfare included assistance in securing employment; “social” included the establishment of recreational centers, sick care, and legal advice; “educational” involved “Americanization” like teaching English and naturalization support, as well as “to promote and cultivate the study of literature, art and the sciences.” Buried (pun intended!) within the organization’s “religious” remit was the responsibility to organize religious services and to provide burial plots for members.^[10]

In 1922, the first issue of El Ermanado, the Brotherhood’s annual magazine (and the predecessor of La Djente), emphasized how the organization’s leaders initially organized in 1915 to support the Azilo de Lokos followed by demands for mutual aid and the need for a cemetery in 1916.^[11] But the organization soon began to rewrite its origin story, perhaps to render its development parallel that of other Turkino organizations. In 1927, El Ermanado declared: “The Brotherhood was born out of the need for a cemetery… That was its first need and for this idea the first members of the Brotherhood labored day and night until they purchased a cemetery. That was in 1915 [sic]…”^[12]

The simplification of the organization’s origins as a burial society alone has had tremendous staying power, but it prevents us from recognizing the multidimensionality of the Brotherhood from its foundations—a multidimensionality once again on display in the current program of La Ermandad. 

^[1] Isaac Azriel, “Letra de Ellis Island,” La Amerika, June 11, 1915, 8 and "Esto solo mos mankava," La Amerika, August 30, 1915, 4 ; “Lista de los donatores,” La Amerika, September 8, 1915, 3.

^[2] Devin E. Naar, “‘You are Your Brother’s Keeper’: Rebuilding the Jewish Community of Salonica from Afar,” in The Holocaust in Greece (Cambridge, 2018), 273-303.

^[3] “La djoventud Salonikiota se organiza,” El Progresso, October 10, 1915, 2.

^[4] “La Ermandad Salonikiota en New York,” La Amerika, November 26, 1915, 5.

^[5] “La emigrasion de Salonik,” La Amerika, October 1, 1915, 2.

^[6] “El progreso de la Ermandad Salonikiota,” La Amerika, November 10, 1916, 3-4.

^[7] Donald Quataert, “The Workers of Salonica, 1850-1912,” in Workers and the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic(New York, 1995), 59-74.

^[8] Yuda Saady, “Meldad!” Souvenir of the Salonician Brotherhood of America (New York, 1917), 11.

^[9] Nessim Behar, “The Defunct Sephardic Community and the Hermandad Sepharadith,” El Ermanado (1923): 17.

^[10] Konstitusion i leyes de la Ermandad Sefaradith de Amerika (New York, 1922).

^[11] Alberto Levy, “Istoria de la Ermandad Sefaradith de Amerika, 1915-1921,” El Ermanado (1922): 1-3.

^[12] “Lavoro Sosial,” El Ermanado (1927): 7.