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.6 Charity was also one of the fewrealms in which Jews could exert leadership in the public sphere, since Jew-ish political participation was restricted by the state (especially on the mu-nicipal level, where Jews lacked representation even after they had receivedthe right to vote for the State Duma in 1906).And the  model institutionsthey founded were indeed intended to be shining examples for the city, theregion, and the entire empire: the Jewish Hospital was declared one of Kiev sfinest; the Brodsky Trade School was patterned after the best educational in-stitutions in Europe; the OPE s kindergarten adopted the latest pedagogical VARIETIES OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPY 213methods of Friedrich Fröbel, its German educational reformer and founder ofthe kindergarten.Not coincidentally, this new Jewish welfare network borea good deal of resemblance to similar networks emerging across Europe inLondon, Berlin, Vienna, and other great cities with established Jewish com-munities and large influxes of Jewish migrants or immigrants.In all theseplaces,the philanthropists motives combined humanitarianism and self-interest,[as] trepidation about antisemitic reactions to the presence of vast pools ofimpoverished and unmistakably foreign Jews combined with a sincere con-cern for the welfare of Jews struggling to make ends meet and crowded intofilthy and unsanitary slums.7On a wider level, the institutions that Kiev s Jews created were nearly iden-tical in their organization, goals, and methods to analogous hospitals, schools,shelters, and relief agencies then being established throughout the empireand elsewhere in Europe; more Russian (or European) than Jewish, the onlything they had in common with traditional Jewish brotherhoods or hevrotwere some nomenclature choices, such as calling poor relief  Tmikhe. 8 Theonly differences, it seemed, were the kosher food and, in schools, the teach-ing of  Divine Law (religion classes) in Judaism and not Christianity.Thus,the civil society that was developing throughout imperial Russia, and espe-cially in its urban centers, was being replicated within Russian Jewish so-ciety as well.A good example is the introduction of district committees for Passoverrelief by the Representation for Jewish Welfare in 1895, clearly modeled afterMoscow s district guardianships (popechitel stva), introduced in the 1880s.(As we shall see, a form of the popechitel stvo model was put into use asearly as 1881 by Kiev s Pogrom Aid Committee.) The evaluation of appli-cants on a case-by-case basis to determine their need and merit a practiceunknown in premodern Jewish charity was a pillar of modern scientificphilanthropy.It is no surprise, then, that some Kiev Jews protested this newdevelopment in the administration of welfare.Later, other Jewish welfareagencies also adopted the guardianship model.9Paradoxically, however, the Jewish welfare system that many hopedwould facilitate acceptance and integration helped to maintain the separate-ness of Jews from non-Jews.10 While it is true that some non-Jewish in-stitutions did not serve Jews, by the early years of the twentieth centuryJews could and did turn to general charities for various types of assistance.214 JEWISH METROPOLISFor their part, Jewish benefactors could also participate in charitable giv-ing outside the Jewish community.Nonetheless, the Jewish philanthropicsector expanded steadily, serving the material needs of growing numbers ofJewish poor as well as the social needs of the Jewish haute bourgeoisie.AsBenjamin Nathans has noted in the case of St.Petersburg, philanthropy, in new and large-scale forms, became  a defining communal activity. 11 Italso provided employment to increasing numbers of Jewish professionals, es-pecially medical professionals (doctors, physicians assistants, and midwives)and educators but also economists and statisticians.In this way, with everyJew playing a role, charity united the socioeconomically differentiated Jew-ish community as perhaps no other cause or activity could.At the same time, however, it pointed up the differences between havesand have-nots, serving as a framework within which the wealthy and edu-cated could attain prestige while wielding power over the less fortunate.Some tried to use this power to transform the poor in their own image intohealthy, civilized, cultured Russian subjects, similar to the Bildungsbürgertumthat German Jews strove to become (perhaps in the Russian case it is moreappropriate to speak of a  Bildungsproletariat ); as we saw in chapter 4, othersseemed to want to petrify poor, uneducated Jews in their  traditional roles,withholding progressive, secular education for the sake of the preservationof Judaism.12 A third way was to narrow the charitable focus to those withpromise, since it was simply impossible to give any more than the most cur-sory assistance to all those in need; here, donors promised  productive assis-tance to artisans who proved themselves industrious and capable of inde-pendence.In all cases, the indigent now had to apply for support and provethat they deserved it; indiscriminate distribution of charity to all comers wasa thing of the past.As community secretary G.E.Gurevich put it,  incoher-ent giving creates parasites and beggars. Gurevich warned anyone think-ing of entering communal service that it was  not easy to refuse many, assistmost only partially, and satisfy very few. 13Jewish philanthropy in Kiev was characterized by projects on a grandscale: the Jewish Hospital was endowed with building after elaborate build-ing; the Brodsky School was  more like a palace than a school; the Jewishcemetery was lavished with expensive stone edifices; and the list of struc-tures costing tens and even hundreds of thousands of rubles went on.Thisemphasis on large-scale capital projects could be found among the city sChristian patrons as well, but sources suggest that it had special significancefor prosperous Russian Jews [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]