THE ROLE OF THE PERIODICAL IN THE ORGANIZATION OF THE AMERICAN ORTHODOX RABBINATE: BEIT VA’AD LACHACHAMIM (HEBREW, 1902–1903)

This article documents the first significant Orthodox rabbinic periodical published in the United States: a Hebrew monthly that first appeared in 1902 and was continued by a weekly. BVC featured a broad array of rabbinic genres—among them responsa, Talmudic novellae, and religious-law treatises, homilies, opinion pieces, memoirs, hagiographies and even poetry—as well as public notices and advertisements. The article also proposes a theoretical framework, taken from organizational theory, for analyzing the periodical’s purpose, its structure, and its intended role within the specific historical and institutional circumstances of its emergence. Understanding “organization” as both a verb and a noun, it interprets the periodical itself, as well as the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in the United States that published it, as organizations attempting to organize the American Orthodox rabbinate as a self-conscious, authoritative, and autonomous entity. This effort, in turn, was a means for organizing Orthodox—mostly immigrant— Jews, their congregations and their religious life, as a coherent social entity.