Mapping Jewish Journeys Across America
This Yiddish map may seem, at first glance, like a quaint artifact: a strange amalgam of American geography and Jewish culture. Behind its production, however, lies the story of an ambitious effort to transform the Jewish immigrant experience in early 20th-century America.
Originally published in 1917, the map was produced by the curiously named ‘Industrial Removal Office’ (IRO). The IRO was founded in 1901 under the auspices of the Jewish Agricultural Society, which had been established just one year earlier. The mission of the Jewish Agricultural Society was to help impoverished Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe resettle as farmers in the U.S.
As more immigrants arrived, many were drawn to urban centers like New York City, which had large and well-established Jewish communities. However, the influx led to families being placed in crowded tenements, high unemployment, and overstretched Jewish charitable institutions. The mission of the IRO, therefore, was to redistribute the new arrivals across the United States into smaller towns and cities where jobs were available, and smaller Jewish communities welcomed growth.
Nearly 80,000 Jewish immigrants were resettled by the IRO between 1901 and 1922. These activities were coordinated thanks to a network of over 250 Jewish aid societies and B’nai B’rith lodges across the country. Local partners welcomed in the newcomers, helped them find work, and created the foundation for thriving new Jewish communities across the Midwest, the Mountain West region, and the Southern United States.
The IRO believed that its relocation efforts would help Jewish immigrants become better integrated into American life. By identifying and promoting migration to places with specific labor shortages and demands (e.g., carpenters in Denver), the IRO also felt that its coreligionists would be well received in those areas.
The IRO map features extensive labeling in Yiddish script. In the northeast portion of the map, city names are crowded together in tiny letters and a few states like Connecticut are left half written. The mapmaker used Hebrew characters to replicate Yiddish orthography and thus provide an easy way for the Yiddish speaking immigrants to read English place names. Since Yiddish words were spelled differently based on the geographic location and dialect of the speaker, its spelling conventions weren’t standardized until 1937. As a result, the map captures a moment in time when different letters could represent the same sound. Nevertheless, the mapmaker was mostly consistent in using the letter alef for “a” and “o” and the letter ayin for “e״, although New Hampshire was rendered as Niuw Hemshir. Place names with “J” or “G” also presented particular spelling challenges: Jacksonville was written dsheksonvile; Georgia as dzshordzia; Virginia as Verrdzschiniya.
Overall, the map served both as a practical guide and a powerful symbol. Immigrants using it could acclimatize to the American landscape and explore its vast opportunities. The Libraries’ 1999 reproduction of the IRO map, printed by Legendary Graphics, thus revives a striking image of Jewish journeys and aspirations in the early 20th century.