The Independent Orders of B'nai B'rith and True Sisters

The rise of transnational and global history in recent years has made only a limited impact on modern Jewish history. Apart from a few exceptions the field remains committed to the nation state paradigm, even though Jews constitute one of the oldest diasporas with a long tradition of building and sustaining links across cultural and political boundaries. The question as to how emancipated Jews positioned themselves within and between rising nation states, the Jewish Diaspora and the newly emerging transnational sphere during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has not been sufficiently explored. An examination of the role and impact of philanthropic associations such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle, of fraternal organizations such as the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith and of political movements, in particular Zionism, each of which has a membership dispersed in different states on different continents, provides a better understanding how Jews negotiated their national and transnational affiliations after 1800.

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