Landsmanshaftn, mutual aid associations made up of immigrants from the same Eastern European town, were an important form of organization among turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish immigrants in the United States. At one time, thousands of landsmanshaftn provided their hundreds of thousands of members with health and death benefits, loans, and help in securing jobs and housing. They also served as arenas for social interactions, and evolved their own colorful internal culture. In this illustrated talk, Daniel Soyer discusses the development of these unique organizations, and the important role they played in the Eastern European Jewish community between the 1880s and the First World War.

Bio: Dr. Daniel Soyer is professor of history at Fordham University in New York. With Annie Polland he is author of The Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840-1920 (NYU Press, 2012), volume 2 of City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. His previous book, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939 (Harvard University Press, 1997) won the Saul Viener Prize of the American Jewish Historical Society.

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