Epilogue

Summary

The epilogue begins in 1929, when multiple, high-magnitude issues affected the Jewish world: the global economic crisis, the establishment of the Jewish Agency, the first glimmers of the danger posed by Hitler, the consolidation of Soviet power in Stalin’s hands, and the outbreak of Arab riots in Palestine. It returns to a comparison between international Jewish humanitarianism with its mainstream counterparts, concluding that the moral calculus for Jews and their unique diasporic network meant that humanitarianism was, in effect, nonexpendable Jewish social policy, fundamentally different from mainstream humanitarianism although in practice, much the same. This leads to a discussion of the longevity of international Jewish humanitarianism, whose blueprint was set in the Great War and survived the twentieth century despite the Holocaust and other seismic changes in Jewish life. It concludes by reflecting on the way in which international Jewish humanitarianism was a mosaic of Jewish projects and organizations across the globe, both paradigmatic and exceptional in history.