Many times I have said that the best thing about American society is our cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious diversity. Tonight, I want to talk about a book recently published by Rabbi Edward Zerin, entitled Jewish San Francisco, and also recommend that anyone interested in the history of the Bay Area give it a read. (The book is easily available via Amazon.com.)
Ed sent me a signed copy of the book recently; he had been a "student" in one of my memoir classes for people 50+. But, long before he attended my classes, which in the words of my friend Susan Hoffman were more like "performance art pieces," Ed was an accomplished writer, having published a number of books on Judaism.
The thing I love about Ed's latest book is how he clearly lays out the major contributions Jews have made over the past 158 years to make the San Francisco Bay Area a major metropolitan area. Today, we have the third largest Jewish population in the U.S., behind only New York and LA.
Here are a few of the names and the details that make Ed's book such a joy to peruse:
* By 1880, San Francisco's population of 233,000 (which was a quarter of the entire state's population) made it the most important city on the Pacific Coast. Of this number, we had 16,000 Jews.
* From the beginning, the European Jews who came here (escaping persecution in the old World) devoted themselves to establishing successful businesses locally, and supporting diversification through many avenues, including philanthropy and other forms of social responsible activities.
* The names of our Jewish pioneers read like a Who's Who of the builders of this great city, most of them starting in the most modest of circumstances: Adolph Sutro, Levi Strauss, Jesse Seligman, the Lazard Brothers, the Haas Brothers, Anthony Zellerbach, Lazarus Dinkelspiel, Alexander Mayer, and many, many more.
* Local Jews contributed massive resources to rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Rather than take donations from the Red Cross, they turned to the wealthier members of their own community for funds. This left the other charity available for poorer people.
* Another set of names: Steven Breyer, Supreme Court Justice and graduate of Lowell High School; and our two senators from the state of California, bot local Jewish girls: Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
* Let me crib one last list from Ed's fine book, that of some of our local foundations established by Jewish families: Baker, Columbia, Diller, Gold, Goldman, Friedman, Haas, Hellman, Koret, Lauder, Levine-Lent, Maisin, Osher, Rosenberg, Schultz, Saal, Swig, and Taube.
Anyone who has tried to raise money for any worthy cause is familiar with at least some of these organzations.
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In other posts, I'll detail some of the contributions of many other groups who built San Francisco -- Italians, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, African-Americans, Pacific Islanders, and of course Mexicans, who established this town and called it Yerba Buena.
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