Photography, philanthropy, and the politics of American Jewish identity.

Historians and sociologists of American Jewish life have identified a tension between the American Jewish impulse towards integration and Jewish group survival. Philanthropy, however, as an expression of the Jewish values of righteousness and charity has interceded to mitigate these competing values and, in fact, has functioned to strengthen American Jewish solidarity. This dissertation investigates Jewish self-representation in the photographic campaigns sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in the aftermath of World War Two through the mid-1990s. It posits the photographic production of these philanthropies as an alternative medium through which we may investigate the fabrication of American Jewish identities.Although these photographic campaigns have had the alleged function of charting the rescue and rehabilitation operations of the UJA and the JDC, I suggest that these images indirectly represent the centrality of American Jews to modern Jewish existence. Two general questions frame this inquiry: (1) to what extent is Jewish identity in America inscribed within Jewish philanthropy? and (2) how does the photographic practice of Jewish philanthropies reinforce the imperatives of the organized sector of American Jewry, and participate in the fabrication of American Jewish identities? Analysis of the interface between the visual and written texts suggests that these photographs not only document the rescue efforts of oppressed and impoverished Jews abroad, but equally illustrate how many American Jews anchor their identities in the task of philanthropic relief.This study probes how this self-definition responds to a Jewish identity that has ruptured into a multiplicity of identities, exacerbated by the competing impulses of integration and survival in the modern world. I suggest that the photographic production of mainstream American Jewish philanthropies charts a dual journey of rehabilitation, restoring not only the threatened existence of Jews who inhabit hostile counties, but also the faltering identities of American Jews. My dissertation thus argues that through philanthropy, many American Jews renew their commitment to the Jewish religion and establish their centrality to Jewish survival, while defining a more holistic and organic Jewish community.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1998.School code: 0031