@phdthesis{1966,
  keywords = {Toronto, Jews, Social services},
  author = {Jack Lipinsky},
  title = {The Progressive Wedge: The Organizational Behaviour of Toronto Jewry, 1933-1948},
  abstract = {This thesis examines the development of institutional completeness in the Toronto Jewish community from the mid-1930s through the late-1940s. It focuses on key fundraising and social service organizations and analyzes the factors that led to rationalization and professionalization of services. During the much of this period two issues dominated Jewish community concern: relief far the needy, and opening Canada's gates open to increased immigration. The earlier period was also characterized by decentralized collection and disbursement of funds based on shared hometowns or preference to family members or friends, or members of the same religious or fraternal organization. The few community-wide social service agencies relied on volunteers rather than professional workers. In the absence of unified Jewish communal leadership and in the face of competing organizational imperatives, community planning was fractious and difficult. This model conflicted with the more centralized one adopted by the Jewish Federation movement in North America. The Federation model emphasized coordinated and professional fundraising, monitored disbursement, agency accountability and professional service delivery. This Federation model was favored by the wealthier and more established Toronto Jews and the increasingly important university educated generation. This elite group also supported efforts to establish the Canadian Jewish Congress as the national spokesagency advocating immigration and combating anti-Semitism. The exigencies of Depression and war worked in favor of a shift to a Federation-like model in Toronto. The failure of traditional fundraising during the Depression threatened agencies and wartime currency restrictions dictated that one communal agency oversee fundraising. Overriding the concerns of many in the immigrant community, major communal donors created the United Jewish Welfare Fund. It employed fiscal professional fundraising and disbursement techniques to impose its will on educational and social service agencies including priorities for postwar immigrant absorption. In the process it also imposed orderly future planning on communal agencies. This model is operative today. In the final analysis, while reform of the institutional structure of Toronto Jewry came later than comparable American communities, when the movement towards professionalization did come, imposed by the wealthy and educated community elite, it fell into place quickly and with only limited resistance.},
  year = {2003},
  edition = {Ph.D.},
  number = {Dissertation/Thesis, Unpublished},
  pages = {1-296, },
  publisher = {University of Toronto},
  isbn = {04194209},
  language = {English},
}