San Francisco Stories: A History of Jewish San Francisco

This is an Archive of a Past Event

Gertrude Stein. Levi Strauss. Adolph Sutro. Emperor Norton. Jews have been a prominent part of San Francisco since the days of the Gold Rush. Join us for the next installment in the “San Francisco Stories” series as we explore the role they have played in the life of the city. In many ways, the Jewish experience in the Bay Area has been different from the rest of the United States. Since the 19th century, Jewish San Franciscans have been part of a highly variegated population, and the interactions of Jewish residents with their Asian, Latino, and African American neighbors have taken unique forms there. Similarly, there has also been an unusually pronounced variation among the city’s Jews themselves. These factors, in combination with relatively less overt forms of anti-Semitism in the Bay Area than in many other parts of the country, have resulted in the emergence of a truly distinctive Jewish community—not only in the forms of religious life, but also in terms of broader contributions to the Bay Area, particularly in the arenas of the arts and in political struggles for social justice.

Fred Rosenbaum, Historian

Fred Rosenbaum is co-founder and director of Lehrhaus Judaica in Berkeley and has taught at the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State, and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He is an award-winning author whose many publications include Cosmopolitans: A Social & Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area and Visions of Reform: Congregation Emanu-El and the Jews of San Francisco 1849–1999.