Organizations

Vienna provided traditional welfare and aid organizations such as the "Chevra Kadisha Association for Pious and Charitable Deeds" (founded in 1764), the "Association for Support of Orphans in Need" (1860) and various other organizations funded by the Jewish community or private donors, which operated a soup kitchen, and provided clothes and money. In 1840, the philanthropist, pedagogist and merchant Joseph Ritter von Wertheimer (1800-1887) established an organization which provided vocational training for thousands of Jewish children. Wertheimer also established in 1875 an organization that supported 258 apprentices learning shoemaking and carpentry, turning and machine production and placed them at its own expense with gentile masters. 15 years later it was sponsoring over 1,300 Jewish apprentices in the craft trades in Vienna.

By 1875 the foundation of another philanthropist, Moritz Baron Hirsch (1831-1896) provided during the First World War mainly for war refugees. The fund was administrated in Vienna and tied to Austrian National Bonds and thus became a victim of post-war inflation.

The first Jewish synagogue organization Beth Israel was founded in 1852 when the number of Galician Jews in Vienna was rather small and it was difficult to keep their own identity. This organization was religious, anti-Chassidic and tended to political liberalism. They built a synagogue in 1893 in the Leopoldsgasse, the "Polish Shul" (synagogue). The strictly orthodox Machzike HaDass was founded in 1903 in the Restaurant Schwetzer in the Leopoldsgasse. They stressed their adherence to religious laws and wished to attract the Polish Jews in Vienna.

Livias Chen was a welfare organization for people in need and for the protection of its member from poverty, which had also a small prayer house and was run by Galician Jews. The Organization for Public Kitchens founded in 1874 was the first soup kitchen.

Charity has always been a traditional Jewish virtue. IsraelitischeFrauenvereine ("Jewish Women’s Societies"), often connected to Israelitische Tempelvereine (organizations responsible for the maintenance of the synagogue), existed in each quarter of Vienna. Bertha Pappenheim founded, in 1904, the women’s organization Juedischer Frauenbund, established a boarding school and a “Central Bureau for Charity of the German Jews" in 1917.

The Vienna Jewish community maintained a large number of various organizations before 1938; there were humanitarian and welfare organizations, women's humanitarian and welfare organizations, and miscellaneous non-political organizations, Landsmannschaften (organizations of fellow country men), synagogue and religious organizations, non-nationalist political organizations, Zionist organizations (Political Zionists, Religious Zionists, Socialist Zionists, Zionist Athletic and Sports Clubs and other Zionist organisations), Jewish Nationalist organizations, Zionist and Jewish-National Student organizations and non-national student organizations and societies.