Violent Balabustes and the Tuition Crisis

Sephardi Lady has a new post about the tution crisis in which she refers to an article on the subject in Jewish Action. The authors survey the current problems and proposed solutions.

Some have suggested that a communal tax be enacted, the proceeds of which would be used to subvent Jewish education. This plan has a number of major fatal flaws. Without detailing these flaws, I would only like to remind the authors that the last time American Jews attempted to organize a communal tax the results were not pretty.

In 1888, the recently-established Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations imported R. Jacob Joseph, the maggid (preacher) of Vilna, to serve as chief rabbi of New York. (Trivia: an earlier attempt to give the job to the Malbim was not successful.)

To fund his activities, the Association proposed that a one-penny tax be assessed on every slaughtered chicken. This proved to be highly controversial and tempers were not assuaged when the tax was expanded to include flour for Passover matzah.

The opposition to the Association’s taxation policies—note that R. Jacob Joseph himself had opposed the proposals—was so great that it gave birth to an unlikely coalition of capitalists and socialists, galitzianers and hassidim, and even balabustes (housewives). This opposition ultimately brought down R. Jacob Joseph, the first chief rabbi of New York.

The balabustes remained in the background during much of this unrest, but fourteen years later they took control of the situation when meat prices began to rise as a result of consolidation among abbetoirs. However, whereas the men who dominated the earlier controversy of 1888 protested with mass meetings and newspaper articles, their wives preferred violence. Literally (click on images below to read more).



(So be nice to your wife.)

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The classic article on R. Jacob Joseph is Abraham J. Karp, “New York Chooses A Chief Rabbi,” Proceedings of the American Jewish Historical Society 44.3 (Mar. 1955): 129-98. Karp’s article has been supplemented recently by Kimmy Caplan, הרב יעקב יוסף, הרב הכולל ליהודי ניו-יורק: היבטים חשדים in Hebrew Union College Annual 67 (1996): 1-43 (Hebrew section). RJJ's le-vet Yaakov has been reprinted together with other writings that appeared in various publications as Sefer le-Vet Yaakov me-Et . . . Rabbenu Yaakov Yosef, ed. David Abraham Mandelbaum (New York: Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Press, 2002); a biography by Mandelbaum appears on pp. 380-471. On his tenure within the context of Americanized Orthodoxy, see Jeffrey S. Gurock, "How 'Frum" Was Rabbi Jacob Joseph's Court? Americanization Within the Lower East Side's Orthodox Elite," American Jewish History in Historical Perspective (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1996), 103-16. For an evaluation of the anti-Semitic disturbaces that accompanied his funeral, see Leonard Dinnerstein, "The Funeral of Rabbi Jacob Josehp," Anti-Semitism in American History (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 275-301. The scanned text above is from Jeremiah J. Berman, Shehitah (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1941), 301-02. On kashruth in this period in America, also see Harold P. Gastwirt, Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness: The Controversy Over the Supervision of the Jewish Dietary Practice in New York City, 1881-1940 (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1974).