|
View the h-us1918-45 Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in h-us1918-45's October 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in h-us1918-45's October 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the h-us1918-45 home page.
S
American National Biography Online
Monsky, Henry (4 Feb. 1890-2 May 1947), lawyer and Jewish communal
leader, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Abraham Monsky,
a fish dealer, and Betsy Perisnev Greenblatt, both of whom had
been born in Poland. Monsky was raised in an Orthodox Jewish
home; his father was a cantor and was active in synagogue and
Jewish communal activities. After graduating from Central High
School in 1907, he entered Creighton College of Law as a night
student in 1909. There he demonstrated leadership and oratorical
skills and in 1911 was president of the Omaha Hebrew Club, a
group that had been founded by his father in 1892. He earned
his law degree in 1912 and embarked on a corporate practice.
He married Sadie Lesser in 1915; they had three children.
Monsky joined B'nai B'rith, a major Jewish fraternal organization,
in 1912 and was lodge president in 1913. A lifelong Zionist,
he attended the first American Jewish Congress convention in
December 1918 and supported the postwar relief of the American
Jewish Relief Committee (1919), the Palestine Restoration Fund
(1920), and the Joint Distribution Committee meeting. He longed
to unite Jews to work for a common purpose.
Monsky's wide-ranging concern for juvenile issues caused him
to become a benefactor in 1917 of Father Flanagan, the founder
of Boys Town, an orphanage and home for troubled boys. His role
is depicted in the film classic Boys Town (1938). His concern
for the spiritual vitality of Jewish youth facilitated the transformation
of an Omaha Central High School Jewish club in 1922 into the
B'nai B'rith-sponsored Aleph Zadik Aleph junior order, a program
for young boys. Soon thereafter Monsky encouraged the establishment
of the Hillel Foundation on many college campuses. In 1923 he
introduced Community Chest united fundraising to the Omaha Chamber
of Commerce rather than ignoring urban social problems or tackling
them piecemeal through multiple, competing, and fragmented charitable
organizations.
Monsky aspired to lead B'nai B'rith. An indefatigable fundraiser,
he was elected the organization's international president in
May 1938, becoming the first Eastern European to lead the group.
He pledged all his energy "no matter what the sacrifice may be."
Membership rose dramatically, from 45,000 in January 1936 to
82,860 in October 1939, spurred by continuous crises: Hitler's
Nazi party, the Nuremberg laws, Kristallnacht, immigration restrictions,
and World War II. By the end of the war B'nai B'rith had 300,000 members.
Monsky's 1938 Rosh Hashanah article "A Jewish Inventory" (B'nai
B'rith Magazine, Oct. 1938, p. 51) identified five outstanding
problems facing Jews: (1) relief for refugees; (2) assistance
to rebuild Palestine; (3) unswerving defense of Jewish rights;
(4) loyalty to democracy in the face of subversive forces; and
(5) building a "richer and more vital Jewish life." That same
year Monsky attended a meeting of the "big four" in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Together, B'nai B'rith, the American Jewish Committee,
American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Labor Committee created
the General Council for Jewish Rights. Monsky served as vice
chairman and repeatedly called for a "united front."
When the British government vacillated in the 1930s on honoring
the Balfour Declaration, which declared British sympathy with
Zionist aspirations and had been signed in 1917, an Emergency
Committee of Zionists--comprising Monsky; Dr. Solomon Goldman
and Dr. Stephen S. Wise, both rabbis; and Louis Lipsky, an author
and journalist--interviewed Sir Roland Lindsay, British ambassador
to the United States, and the following day presented a plea
to Secretary of State Cordell Hull requesting that U.S. pressure
be brought on the British. Monsky sent Prime Minister Chamberlain
a number of telegrams urging him to uphold the declaration.
Monsky condemned communism, fascism, and nazism as equal threats
to democracy. He fought anti-Semitism at rallies in Madison Square
Garden, by supporting the Anti-Defamation League and lobbying
elected officials. To his anti-Semitic enemies, such as the American
fascists and nativists, he symbolized the "international Jew,"
part of an alleged Jewish conspiracy featured in the spurious
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Monsky involved B'nai B'rith
in Red Cross and civil defense programs. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt named Monsky to the National Volunteer Participation
Committee in July 1941. B'nai B'rith raised over $135 million
in war bond sales.
On 25 May 1941 Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist
Organization, met with New York governor Herbert H. Lehman, Monsky,
Stephen Wise, and Louis Lipsky and others at New York's St. Regis
Hotel. Weizmann and Monsky, realizing the fractiousness and disarray
in organized American Jewish life, searched for a compromise
agreement to establish Jewish unity to rebuild Palestine. As
European Jewry's situation further deteriorated during the Second
World War, American Jewry created numerous ad hoc committees
and programs. Following the verification between June and November
1942 of Hitler's "final solution" and Jewish leadership's ineffectiveness
in persuading Cordell Hull and President Roosevelt to take effective
action, Monsky in December 1942 almost single-handedly convened
the American Jewish Assembly, initially comprising thirty-two
different and contending organizations. Subsequently renamed
the American Jewish Conference, it concerned itself with European
Jewry and Palestine. Monsky served as a delegate to the United
Nations conference in San Francisco in 1945.
After Monsky's first marriage ended in divorce in 1937, he married
Daisy Hirsch, the widow of Albert Rothschild and a University
of Chicago graduate and social worker who had one child, that
same year. In 1947 he suffered a fatal heart attack while addressing
the American Jewish Conference on the pressing need for unity.
Monsky played a significant role in the B'nai B'rith, Omaha
Jewish communal affairs, Jewish-Catholic relations, combating
juvenile delinquency, coordinating private sector social welfare,
and creating the internationally oriented American Jewish Conference,
which disbanded in 1948. Through statesmanship and dedication
to fundamental Jewish spiritual concepts, mediated by his midwestern
experience, he attempted to bridge divergences and rivalries
in Jewish life.
Bibliography
Henry Monsky: The Man and His Work (1947), by his second wife
and B'nai B'rith secretary and longtime friend Maurice Bisgyer,
was written and published within months of his death. Albert
Vorspan, Giants of Justice (1960), contains a thumbnail biography,
"Henry Monsky--Gambler in Futures," pp. 117-31. Max F. Baer,
Dealing in Futures: The Story of a Jewish Youth Movement (1983),
provides valuable firsthand information and intellectual analysis.
More recent academic literature includes a study by Deborah Dash
Moore, B'nai B'rith and the Challenge of Ethnic Leadership (1981),
and a biographical treatment that carries Monsky's life to the
eve of the Second World War, Oliver B. Pollak, "The Education
of Henry Monsky--Omaha's American Jewish Hero," in Crisis and
Reaction: The Hero in Jewish History, ed. Menachem Mor (1995).
An obituary is in the New York Times, 3 May 1947.
Oliver B. Pollak
Citation:
Oliver B. Pollak. "Monsky, Henry";
http://www.anb.org/articles/08/08-01026.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date:
Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published
by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
From American National Biography, published by Oxford University
Press, Inc., copyright 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.
Further information is available at http://www.anb.org.
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|