Our Secular Jewish Heritage

that in 1905, an outraged Warsaw Jewish community rioted against the brothels. Forty legal and illegal ones OUR SECULAR were destroyed, eight people were killed and one hundred were injured. JEWISH HERITAGE In New York, the “white slave trade” began in the 1880s and flourished on the Lower East Side along Allen Street. A mutual aid association for sex workers was founded in 1896 as the New York Independent Be- YANKL STILLMAN nevolent Association, with 135 members. The number later grew to six hundred, and the Association bought a Jews and Prostitution large piece of ground in Brooklyn in the Washington Park Cemetery. U T OOK, PROSTITUTION will probably always be around,” wrote Nicholas Kristof from For years, an elderly Jewish woman, her sad face M A Cambodia in the January 29th, 2005 New caked with cheap cosmetics, stood on a comer in Rio York Times, “but we could largely stop the buying and de Janeiro selling lottery tickets. But long-time resi- selling of teenagers who are routinely held in bondage dents knew that in her youth she sold “love.” If she is in brothels from Calcutta to Belize.” This contempo- rary outcry against female sex slavery reflects the poverty that prevails in much of the Eastern Hemisphere. Poverty similarly impelled Jewish women into prostitution in the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, when “white slavery” became a matter of real concern to Jewish leaders around the world. In 1872, for example, 17 percent of the known prostitutes in Warsaw were Jewish, along with 27 percent in Krakow and 47 percent in Vilna. Jews loomed large among the exploiters, however, as well as the exploited: By 1889, in the Pale of Settlement, where Jews consti- tuted about 12 percent of the population, Jewish women not only comprised 22 percent of the 5,127 licensed prostitutes, but also women ran 203 of the 289 (70 percent) licensed brothels, according to a 1982 book, The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery 1875-1939, by Ed- still alive, wrote Dovid Markus from Rio de Janeiro in ward Bristow. Considering that 78 percent of the pros- the February 21st, 1997 Yiddish Forward, she must be titutes were Christian, in bordellos largely run by Jews, one of the last Jews dragged as young women into pros- this was a potentially dangerous political situation that titution many years ago. Countless Jewish girls were could result in interethnic hostility and pogroms. enticed from Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, to In Minsk, Jews ran all four licensed brothels, and Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires and New York thirty of the thirty-six licensed brothels in the province by agents of the Tsvi Migdal (Beauty Tower) mafia. of Kherson (which included Odessa). Bristow writes These were elegantly dressed young men, sporting ex- that the American Consul in Odessa reported in 1908 pensive pocket watches, who appeared in small East- that the “whole ‘business’ of prostitution is almost ex- em European towns and made it known, often through clusively in the hands of the Jews.” shad-khonim (matchmakers), that they were seeking a In Warsaw, sixteen of nineteen licensed brothels were bride whom they wanted to take back with them to run by Jews. Prostitutes in lower-class houses were ex- South America or even to the goldene medina, the pected to service forty to fifty customers a day and as United States. It was not hard for them to find pretty much as sixty to seventy on holidays. Bristow reports young women who were delighted to be lucky enough Illustration by Lawrence Bush Se pt e m b e r -O c t o b e r , 2005 23 to marry a millionaire, get out of the shtetl and live in whose beauty compares to Esther’s and ends in Yid- luxury somewhere in the Americas. The bubble burst, dish: Ikh bin meshuge far dir (I am crazy for you). Yet however, on the ship heading across the ocean when Esther, like numerous other prostitutes, committed sui- they met other women who were “betrothed” to the same cide. Others died in insane asylums, or from venereal “groom.” and other diseases. The great majority died in abysmal The Tsvi Migdal mafia established centers in War- poverty. saw, Buenos Aires and New York in 1904. By the 1920s, they controlled thousands of brothels in Argentina and According to Markus, while a number of books have hundreds in Brazil. In the center of Rio de Janeiro, wrote been written about Jewish prostitution in Argentina and Markus in the Forward, the police had identified 431 Brazil, a doctoral dissertation published in 1997 by brothels, with Jewish women ranking ninth in number, Beatrice Kushnir, a young researcher in Rio, provides preceded by Brazilians, Portuguese, Spanish, French and the most documentation: The Masquerade: Jewish others. The Tsvi Migdal ring was disbanded, however, Women and Prostitution — the Polacas and Their Insti- in the 1930s, after Argentina’s police began to harass tutions for Mutual Aid. them and the Brazilians closed their borders to suspi- Polacas was the word for prostitutes from Poland cious-looking women and their “protectors.” The ar- and neighboring countries. Kushnir’s book gives lists chives of this criminal group were kept by the kehila, of women who administered the mutual aid institutions, the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) of a number of pimps, and the minutes of their meetings. Buenos Aires, but were destroyed, according to Markus, She describes how devoted the “girls” were to each when the AMIA building was blown up by terrorists in other, their readiness to help each other, and their de- 1994. sire to live a religious life. They maintained their own After the mafia was disbanded, trafficking in Jewish synagogues, luxuriously furnished — red carpets and women fell sharply, but the mutual aid institutions es- all — in Rio, Sao Paolo, Santos and Buenos Aires, and tablished by Jewish sex workers, including funeral so- they hired their own rabbis and cantors. Some “mad- cieties and cemeteries, were maintained until the 1960s. ams” were so pious that they wore shaytlen (wigs) and The largest mutual aid association, in Rio, had 1,030 observed shabes. In Sao Paolo they built a mikve (ritual members initially but dwindled to a few dozen by the bath) for themselves. One of them even had a picture time it was closed down in 1966. of the president of Israel, Chaim Weitzman, hanging on the wall over her bed. Misled Jewish women attempted to escape from cap- The young South American Jewish immigrant com- tivity, but only a few succeeded. There are documented munities were hard pressed to find ways to keep prostitutes out of their institutions. A particular area of con- flict was the Yiddish theater. Sex workers would buy A mutual aid association for sex workers was the best seats for the performances of prominent Yid- founded in 1896 as the New York Independent dish actors who came on tour through the cities of South Benevolent Association, with 135 members. The America. The young immigrants blockaded the ticket number later grew to six hundred, and the offices and barred entry to the <(alphonses ” (pimps) and Association bought a large piece of ground in their madams, all dressed in finery and jewelry. Fights Brooklyn in the Washington Park Cemetery. would break out, the police would intervene and the prostitutes and pimps would be driven off. The women also had their own cemeteries in Rio, cases, however, of prominent Brazilians who liberated Sao Paolo, Santos, Buenos Aires and Brooklyn. To sup- Jewish women from the brothels and married them. port these, they added a funeral society alongside their Decades ago, the well-known samba composer Morei- mutual aid association. The largest cemetery, in Rio, ra da Silva (95 years old in 1997 when Markus wrote was opened in 1906 and had 792 graves divided in four about him) composed “My Rare Jewess,” a song dedi- sections. The largest (about 80 percent) was for the mad- cated to the woman he rescued and loved for eighteen ams and their “bride maidens” (that’s how the madams years, Esther Gladkovitser. It says that no rose exists liked to refer to them). The next section was for the 24 Je w ish Cu r r en t s alphonses. The third was for children and the fourth ficked to Israel every year for the purpose of prostitu- for suicides. This cemetery was closed in 1972 and care tion. Most of the women come from Uzbekistan, of it was turned over to one of Rio’s two burial soci- Moldova, Ukraine and Russia. The vast majority eties. have never engaged in prostitution before. Their aver- The last known Jewish madam in Rio, Becka (Rebec- age wage in their country of origin was $38 a month.” ca) Friedman, died in 1984 at the age of 103. She According to Levenkron, the exploitation of these reigned over the mutual aid association with an iron women is driven by “enormous client demand, cur- hand and was buried in one of Rio’s two general cem- rently estimated at a million visits to brothels per eteries. Similar data is available for the 209 graves in month. ... In one case, a brothel visit was given as a Sao Paolo, the small cemetery in Santos (totally ne- bar mitzvah present to a thirteen-year-old boy.” She glected except for the monument erected by the notes that Israel was given a poor rating by the U.S. madams and alphonses to commemorate the six mil- State Department in a report on worldwide sex traf- lion victims of the Holocaust), and the five hundred ficking, which prompted some intensification of Israeli graves in Buenos Aires.

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