Conflicting diasporas, shifting centers: Migration and identity in a transnational Polish Jewish community, 1878--1952

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, millions of East European Jews made the decision to abandon their places of birth and migrate to larger cities throughout the world. This dissertation examines how mass migration prompted the development of new forms of Jewish communal organization and identification. Focusing on one city in Poland, Bialystok, this dissertation explores the strategies and organizations Jews developed as they tried to cope with the challenges of migrant life. When inhospitable conditions forced Jews to leave Bialystok in their search for better living conditions, they transplanted and reconfigured the institutions and strategies they had developed in Bialystok to facilitate their adaptation to their new homes. Through a cross cultural analysis of the institutions, philanthropic organizations and writings of Bialystoker Jewish emigres in the United States, Argentina, and Palestine, the three main places of Bialystoker emigre settlement, this dissertation highlights the shared and distinct forces that shaped East European Jewish migration, adaptation and acculturation at the turn of the century.; As Bialystoker Jewish emigres settled throughout the world, they still maintained a close relationship with their former home. While both popular folklore and scholarship have portrayed Jewish life, culture and identity as primarily shaped by Jews' diasporic mentality rooted in their dispersal from the biblical land of Israel, this dissertation illustrates how the institutions, philanthropy and writings of the transnational Bialystoker Jewish community belie the standard, static view of the Jewish diaspora. These East European Jews saw themselves as part of a diaspora stemming from Eastern Europe and the created new strategies to remain connected with their former home. This examination highlights how in its contemporary context, and in the perspective of history, the generalized notion a Jewish identity informed by one dispersal rooted only in Zion overlooks many of the complexities which informed the geographies of East European Jewish identity in the age of mass migration.