In A Brotherhood of Memory, Michael R. Weisser describes a fascinating and little-known chapter of the Jewish immigrant experience in America. Drawing on moving first-hand accounts as well as rare documentary evidence, he recovers the rich history of the landsmanshaftn, benevolent societies that provided immigrants from Eastern Europe with economic help, advice, and a psychic and spiritual haven in a frightening new world."A Brotherhood of Memory is a fine study of that unique institution of immigrant Jewish life-the landsmanshaft. The book is written with delicacy of feeling that never lapses into sentimental¬ism. I found it touching and true."-Irving Howe"Until now there has been practically nothing in English avail-able on the literally thousands of landsmanshaftn that existed from before the turn of the century up until very recently. . . . This makes Michael R. Weisser"s accomplishment even more impressive, for . . . he has had to glean bits and pieces from whatever sources he could find. . . . A beautiful story."-Journal of American History"Weisser has managed to weave together, out of scattered, fragmentary sources, an impressively rich picture of an almost forgotten feature of Jewish immigrant life. And he has used the landsmanshaftn to suggest the complexity and diversity of the Jewish immigrant experience in America: the division of communities (and families) between those who assimilated and advanced, and those who did not; between those who became successful, middle-class Americans, and those who remained "always marginal, socially and economically, to the society in which they lived." "-Alan Brinkley, Times Literary Supplement