<ORGANIZATION OF MUTUAL ASSISTANCE
ON AN INTERNATIONAL SCALE
[1860: Foundation of the
Alliance Israélite Universelle - Anglo-Jewish
Association - Hilfsverein]
Western and Central European Jews were thoroughly
emancipated by the end of the 1860s. While increasingly
involved with the culture and society of their
environment, they could not remain unmoved by the plight
of their unemancipated brethren in Eastern Europe, in the
Balkan states, and in the Ottoman Empire. The rebuffs met
with by many of the assimilationists in gentile society,
and their own emotional and intellectual inability to
adhere strictly to the rationalist (ahistorical) dogmas of
the enlightenment, caused Jewish assimilation to remain
paradoxically a specific phenomenon, in both Jewish and
Christian societies.
Cumulatively, these factors led in 1860 to the creation of
the *Alliance Israélite Universelle, an international
organization of assimilated Jews. These united their
efforts, for the sake of religious brotherhood, to help
their oppressed and inarticulate coreligionists, despite
national differences. The activities of this organization
included diplomatic action and the establishment of
schools and welfare institutions in the countries of
"backward" Jews, thus subconsciously expressing Jewish
solidarity.
Its many successes in part provided a challenge that led
anti-Semites to readapt ancient libels about Jewish
strivings for world domination into a malignant and
influential myth through the forgery of the Protocols of
the Learned *Elders of Zion. In a relatively short time
the international structure of the Alliance began to
weaken under the strain of national solidarities.
Anglo-Jewry created its own *Anglo-Jewish Association, and
German Jews eventually established their own *Hilfsverein
der deutschen Juden [[Help association of German
Jews]].> (col. 725)
