Abandon us not in our old age: The origins of American Jewish residential services for the elderly

The old age home was the major American Jewish communal response to aged poverty during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A subject largely ignored by historians, this dissertation sheds light on both the practical application of Jewish philanthropic values and a self-conscious public projection of modernity and compassion. Through the establishment of prominent organizations like old age homes, Jews were staking a physical claim on the landscape of respectable American society.; This dissertation explores the origins of residential services for the American Jewish elderly during the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first four decades of the twentieth century. This timeframe spans the establishment of the first Jewish institutions for the aged in the United States to the creation of the federal Social Security program in 1935, which fundamentally changed the context of aging in America. This dissertation is the first full-length study to focus exclusively on institutional services for the American Jewish elderly in historical perspective. In particular, it closely examines the development of old age homes in urban Jewish communities, utilizing case studies of six representative facilities in Cincinnati, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. A work of both social and institutional history, this dissertation addresses a variety of topics, including the evolution of American Jewish philanthropy, intergenerational dynamics within an immigrant community, tensions among different waves of Jewish immigrants, questions of social class, and the professionalization of social work.; The leaders of these homes framed their good works as part of a Jewish code of ethical behavior and called on their co-religionists to answer fundraising pleas on the basis of both compassion and spiritual duty. The history of the American Jewish old age home demonstrates the degree to which communal philanthropy can be a stand-in for religion, when charitable work done by and for a religious community is seen as an extension of faith.