Constitution of the Universal Israelitish Alliance / Statuten der Alliance Israelite Universelle.

The Board of Delegates of American Israelites, the first American Jewish defense organization, was founded in 1859. Owing to divisions, the new Board was not representative of the community at large. Largely unrepresented were the German congregations, and conspicuously absent altogether were the Reform congregations. Thus, prominent among those who led the struggle against the establishment of the Board of Delegates were leading Reform American rabbis. With the founding of the Paris-based Alliance Israelite Universelle in 1860, opponents of the Board used the opportunity to check the American Board’s growth by founding Alliance branches on the Board’s own turf. The American Board and the Paris Alliance coolly cooperated to combat international threats to Jewish communities, but tensions always remained and the relationship between the two was “never too intimate” (Szajkowski, 390). The Alliance sought to impose its leadership in the international arena, while the Board remained steadfast in its efforts to preserve the operational autonomy of American Jewry. See Allan Tarshish, “The Board of Delegates of American Israelites,” in: PAJHS 49.1 (Sept. 1959), 19, 22; and Z. Szajkowski, “The Alliance Israelite Universelle in the United States, 1860-1949,” in: PAJHS 39.4 (June 1950), 389-443. This pamphlet contains the Alliance’s constitution in English and in German, the latter language reflecting the fact that the German and Reform congregations in the United States led the opposition to the American Board in its early years.