Joint Distribution Committee

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also known as the Joint or the JDC, is a Jewish relief organization based in New York City.

The JDC was founded in 1914, initially to provide assistance to Jews living in Palestine under Turkish rule.

By 1914, approximately 59,000 Jews were living in Palestine under Ottoman rule. The settlement—the Yishuv—was largely made up of Jews that had emigrated from Europe and were largely dependent on sources outside of Palestine for their income. The outbreak of World War I destroyed those channels, leaving the community isolated and destitute. With disaster looming, the Yishuv’s leaders appealed to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., then the U.S. ambassador to Turkey. Morgenthau was moved and appalled by the misery he witnessed. Soon after seeing what he did, Morgenthau sent an urgent cable to New York-based Jewish philanthropist Jacob Schiff, requesting $50,000 of aid to keep the Jews of Palestine from starvation and death.

Dated August 31, 1914, the Western Union cablegram read, in part:

The plea found concerned ears in the U.S. In a month, $50,000 (the equivalent of $1 million in the year 2000) was raised through the efforts of what was intended to be an ad hoc and temporary collective of three existing religious and secular Jewish organizations: the American Jewish Relief Committee, the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War, and People’s Relief Committee.

In 1915 a greater crisis arose with the Jewish communities of the Pale of Settlement caught up in the fighting along the Eastern Front. Under the leadership of Judah Magnes the committee was able to raise another five million dollars by the end of the year. In 1921, following the post-revolutionary civil war of Russia, the committee was one of only two organizations left in America sending aid to combat the famine.

The organization is active in more than 70 countries and in Israel.

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