ABSTRACT
The threatened annihilation of Europe's Jews came at a time when the great depression narrowed the means to give and heightened the need for charity at home. The story of American Jewish philanthropy in foreign lands between the programs of relief and rehabilitation following the First World War and the outbreak of the second global conflict in 1939 may be appropriately begun with a decision of the Joint Distribution Committee in 1924. Many American Jews were only slightly interested in Judaism, which they thought of less as a way of life than as a religion or body of ethical teachings. Some were only slightly involved with Judaism while others were deeply committed. Nor were the cleavages between the old, well-established and often well-to-do and the poorer newcomers from Eastern Europe the only ones. Under economic stress and unfavorable government action the plight of the Polish Jews worsened.
