B'nai B'rith Founded: Oldest Jewish Service Organization Established

Henry Jones and eleven other German-Jewish immigrants gathered in a Lower East Side cafe in New York City on October 13, 1843, to found B'nai B'rith, creating what would become the oldest Jewish service organization in the world. The founders were motivated by the precarious position of Jewish communities in mid-nineteenth-century America: synagogues provided religious services but offered little in the way of mutual aid, social welfare, or organized response to the antisemitic discrimination that Jewish immigrants faced in employment, housing, and civic life. B'nai B'rith was modeled on the fraternal lodge system then popular among Protestant Americans, using ritual, membership degrees, and mutual assistance pledges to build solidarity among Jewish men who often had no other institutional support. The organization expanded rapidly from its New York base, establishing lodges across the eastern seaboard and into the Midwest within its first decade. By the turn of the century, B'nai B'rith had grown into an international network operating hospitals, orphanages, and community centers. In 1913, it created the Anti-Defamation League in response to the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia, giving the organization a direct role in combating antisemitism and hate crimes that it continues to fulfill today. B'nai B'rith's evolution from a small immigrant mutual aid society into a major global advocacy organization reflects the broader arc of Jewish American civic engagement over nearly two centuries.