On this day in 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie Chotek, setting off the course of events that ultimately led to the first World War.
World War I proved a decisive turning point for the American Jewish community. Through four years of harrowing conflict that decimated Europe and the Middle East, American Jews experienced an ascendance into the world’s preeminent Jewish community, just as they witnessed the first signs of their acceptance as one of America’s mainstream religious and ethnic groups. But it wasn’t easy. From the outset, American Jews recognized that they would have to act swiftly, shrewdly, and cooperatively to protect and advance their interests as Jews and as Americans.
Shortly after the conflict began, American Jews observed the growing needs of the Jews of Palestine, whose supplies faltered as the Ottoman Empire focused its resources upon the war. Meanwhile, European Jewish philanthropists, who ordinarily provided Middle Eastern Jews aid, could not get money out of Europe. In order to meet the needs of the Jews of Palestine, and later, Eastern Europe, American Jews organized the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which ultimately raised more than $16.5 million to benefit hundreds of thousands of Jews impacted by war. The JDC continued to serve world Jewry following the war, rebuilding communities and repatriating prisoners of war, illustrating the American Jewish community’s newfound primacy in world Jewish philanthropy. From 1918 onward, world Jewry would look across the Atlantic for support and for leadership.
Meanwhile, the war provided an opportunity for Jews to gain a foothold for achieving broader acceptance in American society. In 1917, the Young Mens’ Hebrew and Kindred Associations (YMHKA), along with seven other major Jewish organizations, colluded to create the Jewish Welfare Board, which served the needs of Jewish soldiers by providing materials necessary for the observance of religious rituals and holidays, by building recreational facilities at military installations, and by recruiting active-duty Jewish chaplains. More than 200,000 Jewish servicemen joined the ranks of the American military, and twenty-five Jewish chaplains were commissioned, the first Jewish chaplains since the Civil War. The presence of Jewish servicemembers, which rendered the observation of Jewish ritual visible to Christian soldiers, fashioned a growing sense of pluralism within the military and without. Though it would take another twenty-five years to cement the status of Jews within mainstream American society, the first steps toward parity for Jews and the use of such phrases as “the Judeao-Christian tradition” had been realized through a shared wartime experience.
Through their meaningful commitment to the war effort and to the welfare of Jews worldwide, American Jews responded to global crises by simultaneously advancing the needs of Jews at home and abroad, increasing the import of the American Jewish community to the country and to Jews throughout the world. More than one hundred years later, we continue to face the same question as our grandparents, albeit in a new context: How can we best meet the needs of our American and global Jewish communities?
— Rabbi Josh Knobel