Oregon: Jews of the Pacific Coast, January 23

Since the Gold Rush in 1849, the Pacific Coast  has attracted Jews who have shaped this geographical region.

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon will present "Jews of the Pacific Coast," with Professor Ellen Eisenberg, at its next meeting on Sunday, January 23.

The program begins at 1pm at Congregation Ahavath Achim, 3225 SW Barbur Blvd., Portland. Admission: Members, free; others, $5.

From the California Gold Rush of 1849 to the explosion of population centers in the Southwest in the 1980s, Jews have played a significant role in shaping the Pacific West. In the process, they have reshaped themselves, as individuals and as communities. Through their mercantile networks and cultural innovations, their philanthropic institutions and political leadership, western Jews created a distinctive identity.

Using historical photographs from her new book, Ellen Eisenberg will explore the nature of the Jewish experience in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the small towns of the West. She will explain the important differences among these cities, as well as highlighting the ways in which the western Jewish experience has echoed and deviated from the familiar story of American Jewish history.

Since 1990, Eisenberg has taught history at Willamette University, and was named the Lear Professor of America History in 2003. She holds a BA in American Studies (Carleton College) and a PhD in History (University of Pennsylvania). Her research focuses on Jews in the Pacific West and their relationships with other ethnic groups.

Her publications include Jewish Agricultural Colonies in New Jersey,1882-1920; chapters in the anthologies Jewish Life in the American West and California Jews, and journal articles and monographs.  The First to Cry Down Injustice?  Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII was a National Jewish Book Award finalist.  Jews of the Pacific Coast: Reinventing Community on America’s Edge, co-authored with Ava Kahn and Bill Toll, was released by the University of Washington Press earlier this year.

For more information, click here.

California: Yosemite's Jewish past

As regular readers will remember, Tracing the Tribe recently visited the town of Bendigo - north of Melbourne, Australia. It was the center of that area's Gold Rush, and many Jews arrived there to join in.

In the US, the mid-1800s Gold Rush was centered in the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Country. This was also a magnet for Jews, whether as prospectors or as providers of goods and services for the miners.

Image above left is Yosemite Park.

The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles has an interesting article on Yosemite's Jewish past and present by Elyse Glickman.

Yosemite even has a Jewish park ranger, Scott Gediman of North Hollywood, although the nearest synagogues are more than an hour away in Stockton and Fresno. He says he's always wanted to be a park ranger, that isn't that difficult to be Jewish there for a young Jewish family.

Back in 1978, the Jewish Sentinel published a historic account written by Norton B. Stern, summarizing Jewish life in the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa County, the epicenters of the Gold Rush in the mid-1800s.

Although their numbers were small, Jewish immigrants (mostly from Central Europe, though a few came from France and Bavaria) built their fortunes through dry goods and clothing businesses that in turn provided much-needed supplies, services and necessities for miners and others settling into the West. Many of the Jewish residents were also simultaneously active in politics and civil posts in townships dotting the area — including Bear Valley, Coulterville, Hornitos, Agua Fria and Mariposa.

The short but fact-filled 30-year-old article was sourced in the archives of the Mariposa Museum and History Center, a spot small on space but rich in substance. The prolific collection of Gold Rush-era artifacts is organized thematically and exhaustively catalogued in a way that brings textbook American history into three dimensions.

According to Gediman:

“Today, there is a fairly big Jewish population in Stockton and Modesto, and during the late 1800s, Jewish families served as early concessionaires to miners before settling in those places,” Gediman said. “Before the federal government came to California, Jewish pioneers ran some of the stores, hotels, photography businesses, souvenir stores and things like that. Though many of these businesses are long gone, they made their mark on history.”

Read the complete story at the link above.

San Francisco Bay: Magnes Museum founder dead

On behalf of the Judah L. Magnes Museum, director and chief curator Alla Efimova informed the Magnes community of the death of Seymour Fromer, 87.

Fromer died in his home in Berkeley, California, on October 25 after a long illness. The internationally known Jewish educator and founder of the Judah L. Magnes Museum was 87.

Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Fromer graduated from Stuyvesant High School, earned a B.A. from Brooklyn College, and did graduate work at Teachers College Columbia University. He worked in the Jewish communities of Essex County , New Jersey and Los Angeles where, in 1955, in the Hollywood Bowl he presented the opera David, composed by Darius Milhaud who conducted the orchestra. In Los Angeles, Fromer met and married his wife of more than fifty years, the poet and author Rebecca Camhi.

In the late 1950s, Fromer came to Oakland, California, and established the Jewish Education Council (the forerunner of today’s Center for Jewish Life and Learning), remaining in that post for a quarter century.

In 1962, the Fromers founded the Magnes Museum, first in modest quarters over the Parkway movie theater in Oakland and a few years later in the turn-of-the-century Burke mansion at 2911 Russell Street in Berkeley, its headquarters to this day.

Before Fromer’s retirement in 1998, the Magnes grew to become the third largest Jewish museum in North America. It has specialized in ceremonial art and posters and paintings of Jewish interest. Fromer expanded the collection by rescuing artifacts from endangered Jewish communities such as Czechoslovakia, Morocco, Egypt, and India.

In 1967, he established the Western Jewish History Center at the Magnes, the first regional Jewish history center in the U.S. and the most comprehensive. He also created the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks, which restored and to this day maintains seven Jewish Gold Rush cemeteries in the California Mother Lode.

Especially in the 1970s and 80s, Fromer nurtured many young Jewish scholars and artists and was a key catalyst in the Jewish cultural renaissance in the Bay Area. He provided the impetus for such organizations as Lehrhaus Judaica, the Jewish Film Festival, and the National Yiddish Book Center.

Seymour Fromer is survived by his wife, Rebecca Camhi Fromer; their daughter, Mira Z. Amiras, Professor of Comparative Religion at San Jose State University; and grandchildren attorney Michael Zussman and Rayna Leonora Savrosa, a graduate student in the Parsons School of Design, both of Brooklyn, New York.

A memorial service open to the public will be held Tuesday, October 27, at 1PM at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford Street, Berkeley.

The family requests that any donations in Seymour Fromer’s memory be sent to the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94705.

For more information on the Museum, click here.

Gold Rush Jews: Good changes

As Tracing the Tribe reported a few days ago, Victoria Fisch of Sacramento writes the new blog, Jews of the Gold Rush. She's now included more information.

An artist, writer and editor, she began researching the mysteries and myths of her own family:

...whether my uncle perished in Spain fighting against Franco, whether my grandfather really did run away from Russia to South Africa, and along the way became entranced by the larger collective Jewish history...

A graphic artist for many years, she's an editor for a Stanford professor and paints in oils.

Her most recent post focuses on the man considered the pioneer researcher of this historical period of Jewish history, Dr. Robert E. Levinson.

Most of his work is at the Western Jewish History Center at the Judah L. Magnes Museum (Berkeley, California), and was part of his PhD thesis in the early 1960s.

He created the Commission for the Preservation of Jewish Pioneer Cemeteries and Landmarks and the six cemeteries he found (and surveyed) are overseen by the group.

He combed local newspapers contemporary to the Gold Rush era, investigated county records, interviewed surviving descendents, and took meticulous notes, and while doing field work discovered six previously undocumented Jewish cemeteries in what is now known as the "Gold Country." His work was cut short in 1980 when he was killed in a car crash.

He wrote a 1978 book (reprinted in 1994), "The Jews in the California Gold Rush."

Another source is Susan Morris' 1996 book, "A Traveler's Guide to Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries of the California Gold Rush," which gives directions to the cemeteries, headstone transcriptions and community histories.

Victoria has photographed the Placerville Jewish Cemetery, and the others are in Mokelumne Hill, Jackson, Sonora, Nevada City and Grass Valley.

It was not uncommon for Jewish settlers to be buried in non-Jewish cemeteries, given the hardships of life and the difficulty of travel in those early days. Burial in a non-Jewish cemetery is also a reflection of the unique experience of the Jews in the mining towns - most miners were immigrants, and the Jews were usually not singled out, indeed, they were accepted as equals and lauded as worthy neighbors and citizens. Embraced by the community, they enthusiastically joined fraternal lodges, and sometimes were buried in lodge cemeteries. There are several Jewish headstones in the I.O.O.F Cemetery in Sonora that were documented by Dr. Levinson.

In Folsom, a Jewish cemetery has been absorbed into the larger Lakeside Cemetery and she has also photographed those headstones.

Her next post will focus on Jewish community members in Folsom.

Thank you, Victoria, for the updates and the photographs.

If you have Jewish pioneers lurking in your tree, bookmark Jews of the Gold Rush or subscribe!

Jews of the Gold Rush

The blogosphere has a new entry called Jews of the Gold Rush.

Currently, there are only four entries (the blog went live in July), and the entries are only photographs (no text) of gravestones, homes and plaques.

There seems to be nothing about the Sacramento-based author, other than the name Toldot (generations, in Hebrew), but the topic is certainly interesting.

[NOTE: Bob Wascou of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento emailed Tracing the Tribe on August 13, informing us know that Toldot is Victoria Fisch. She is working on a project documenting Northern California resources for a future Avotaynu book.]

Many Jews caught gold fever and tried their luck in Northern California, Nevada, Colorado, Alaska, British Columbia and Australia, as discoveries were announced. Abandoned cemeteries with obviously Jewish gravestones can be found in many of these areas, indicating that Members of the Tribe were among the pioneers.

Tracing the Tribe has previously blogged about these pioneers, so for more information, view these posts:

Resources: Gold Rush Jews

Seattle: Schwabacher & Co. (Klondike Gold Rush)

British Columbia: Pioneer Jewish History (BC's Gold Rush)

19th Century Jewish Businesswomen

Washington: Bellingham's Jewish History

Brown University's rare maps (California Gold Rush maps, among others)

Australia: Virtual Jewish Tour

There are others that mention Gold Rush Jews; Use Tracing the Tribe's Google search box for "gold rush" and see what else is there.

Welcome to Jews of the Gold Rush!