Jewish Community
Part 2 (1900-1950)
Entry Author: Stephen
Mark Dobbs
1900 - 1950
By the end of the 19th century, the Jewish community was
firmly established and a part of San Francisco, which had
approximately 350,000, a deep water port, and since 1869 an
umbilical to the East Coast via the Transcontinental Railway.
The Jewish community had quietly transformed itself from merchants
and small shopkeepers to department store magnates, international
bankers, real estate developers, and manufacturers.
San Francisco had changed as well. The city of the brawling
Gold Rush era had settled down into a burgeoning metropolis,
although the existence of the largest Chinatown outside of
Asia continued to lend San Francisco an aura of the exotic.
From their geographical perch San Franciscans viewed the outlying
communities of the Peninsula, East Bay, and Marin as they
basically developed in the City's shadow. San Francisco had
the best hotels and restaurants, museums and theaters, and
civic buildings, including a monumental new City Hall which
opened in 1898.
The relative remoteness of the City to the rest of the American
nation and to Europe may have made it more difficult to relate
to distant struggles, but there were Jews in San Francisco
who were current on international issues. For example, the
first Zionist world congress took place in Basle, Switzerland,
in 1897. Some San Francisco Jews were energized by talk of
a homeland in Palestine, but Jews of other ideologies were
not. Rabbi Voorsanger of Emanu-El spoke openly against Zionism.
But the continuing arrival of impoverished immigrants from
European persecutions were a constant reminder that all Jews
were not as well off as those fortunate enough to live in
San Francisco.
Domestic Life in the Jewish Community
Jewish middle class families enjoyed comfortable lives fueled
by San Francisco's prosperity and their own hard work. The
Gentile aristocracy, including the Big Four, lived on the
major hills --- Nob, Telegraph, Russian --- and in neighboring
Pacific Heights, where the most affluent Jewish families also
built great homes with views of the Bay. Other Jewish upper
class families lived in huge Victorians along Van Ness Avenue,
Franklin Street, and around Lafayette Park. Middle and working
class Jewish families first migrated south of Market Street
into the blue collar districts of the Mission, and to the
Fillmore District in the Western Addition. Later they would
populate additional western precincts of the City, such as
the Richmond and Sunset Districts, where Jews established
a number of neighborhood shuls (synagogues), modest
by comparison with Emanu-El and Sherith Israel.
The outstanding Jewish architectural survivor of the final
decades of the 19th century is the Haas Lilienthal House,
at 2007 Franklin Street, designed by Peter Schmidt in 1886.
A Queen Anne Victorian featuring elaborate wooden millwork,
the house represents the apogee of success and tranquility
in Jewish family life in San Francisco. This and other mansions
were often home to the "old Jewish families" who
traced their California ancestry to the Gold Rush. These families
did not conceal their Jewish heritage, and were openly and
publicly supportive of Jewish charities, belonged to synagogues,
and sent their children to weekend religious schools. But
they also often had Christmas trees and in general gave higher
priority to assimilation than to preserving Jewish tradition.
While all Jews in the City certainly did not live as well,
the fact that Jews could own such large and fine houses reaffirmed
high aspirations. Even the once-poor Polish or Russian immigrant
might succeed in San Francisco's entrepreneurial climate and
one day own a fine home. But in contrast to the domestic bliss
of Franklin Street, other areas of San Francisco still had
unsavory reputations going back to the days of the Barbary
Coast. The Chinatown squad of the S.F. Police Department kept
tong (family association) wars in check, but corruption
was common and by the end of the century the city's political
leadership was called to account.
Behind the scenes pulling the strings was Abe
Ruef, the country's first Jewish political boss. His puppet
was Mayor Eugene Schmitz, who was indicted along with Ruef
and several of San Francisco's leading corporate executives.
But it was Ruef alone who ended up going to prison, after
a trial which took place a few years after the 1906 earthquake
and fire. Ironically, the wheels of justice turned at Congregation
Sherith Israel, where Ruef's parents were members and he had
attended religious school. Now the Superior Courts functioned
there, as the building was located several blocks west of
the final fire line on Van Ness Avenue and was one of the
few large structures in the city to survive destruction in
1906.
The Trauma of 1906
Early in the morning of April 18, 1906, following Enrico Caruso's
triumphant performance at the Old Opera House, San Francisco
and the entire Bay Area was struck by an epic earthquake,
followed by a fire which lasted almost three days and utterly
destroyed most of the city. Consumed in the flames were more
than 3500 souls and hundreds of millions of dollars in buildings
and other property. The Jewish community lost Emanu-El's great
Sutter Street synagogue building, which burned to the ground.
In addition, much of Adolph Sutro's collection of Hebraica
and documents of the Spanish era in California were destroyed.
Among the Jewish institutions that responded to the city-wide
emergency was Mount Zion Hospital, which was safely located
beyond the perimeter of the fire in the Western Addition.
Jewish doctors and nurses worked tirelessly in the days after
the conflagration to help injured citizens. In Golden Gate
Park, where tens of thousands of homeless citizens were temporarily
housed in tents for months following the conflagration, a
Jewish couple named Victor and Anna Rosenbaum won a city-wide
award for having the tidiest domicile.
Jewish merchants played a leading role in getting San Francisco
back on its feet, setting up a new commercial district along
Van Ness Avenue and making Fillmore Street a substitute for
Market Street for several years while the Downtown District
was rebuilt. The Chicago architect Daniel Burnham had proposed
a progressive new street design for San Francisco, modeled
after those of Paris and Washington D.C. But Jewish and other
merchants were anxious to get back in business and the Burnham
Plan was dropped.
San Francisco's rabbis were tireless in their relief efforts,
and the Jewish community pledged large sums to the city's
reconstruction, figuring prominently in its fulfillment. Jewish
businessmen were among those celebrating when, on the morning
of April 18, 1907, the Ferry Building clock which had stopped
at 5:12 a.m. a year earlier was started up again. The reconstruction
of the San Francisco was also symbolized by the erection in
1912-1915 of a magnificent new Beaux Art neo-Renaissance City
Hall, designed by Arthur
Brown, who would later design the new Congregation Emanu-El
in 1925. The legendary, long-serving Mayor "Sunny Jim"
Rolph would attend and speak at the dedications of both buildings.
Another sign of San Francisco's rebirth and renewal is memorialized
in the city flag, which features a phoenix, the mythic bird
that arose from its own ashes. The Panama-Pacific International
Exposition of 1915, celebrating the opening of the Panama
Canal in 1913, also signaled that San Francisco was back in
business, especially for the important Transpacific and Asian
trade. The Exposition was actually the second World's Fair
to be held in San Francisco. The first was the 1894 Midwinter
Fair in Golden Gate Park, after whose Inspector General, Michael
De Young, the De Young Museum of Fine Arts would later be
named. In Congress several American cities were hoping to
secure federal sanction and funding for another World's Fair.
Political support for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
was organized by Julius Kahn, the first Jewish congressman
from San Francisco, who served, almost without interruption,
from 1898 to 1924.
As the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Kahn was
a powerful member of the House of Representatives. He won
the day with an impassioned speech in 1911 declaring that
no federal funds were required for the World's Fair in San
Francisco. The entire sponsorship for the 1915 Fair would
be raised by private subscription. After Kahn's passing, his
wife, Florence Prag Kahn, served as the first Jewish woman
in Congress, holding office from 1924 until her defeat in
the Roosevelt landslide of 1936. The Julius Kahn playground
in Presidio Heights honors the congressman.
The only surviving building of the 1915 Fair is the Palace
of Fine Arts, with its massive Rotunda designed by Bernard
Maybeck, an architect at the University of California
in Berkeley. Maybeck's dome inspired Arthur Brown to create
a comparable structure for Congregation Emanu-El a decade
later. More than 18 million people visited the International
Exposition, which also featured the first automated post office,
baby incubator, and visits by Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison,
Henry Ford, and Luther Burbank.
The New San Francisco
The 1910s and 1920s were a period of vigorous growth in San
Francisco, and Jewish financing, planning, and political support
gave material assistance. Significant civic infrastructure
dates to this time, including the Hetch Hetchy municipal water
system, Mills Field (later SFO), the Municipal Railroad (including
the revered cable cars which had been climbing San Francisco's
hills since the 1860s), the Twin
Peaks Tunnel which helped open the western areas of the
city for residential development, and a new Main Library and
Auditorium in Civic Center.
In the Jewish community there were two architectural projects
of note. A new Concordia Club (later to merge in the 1930s
and become the Concordia-Argonaut) was designed in 1914 by
the Jewish architect Gustave
Albert Landsburgh, whose credits also include the Fox
Theatre, Orpheum Theater, Civic Auditorium, and Clift Hotel.
While outright anti-Semitism in San Francisco was unusual,
after World War I there were noticeable vestiges of it in
the city's social upper crust. A Jewish men's club continued
to be necessitated by the virtual exclusion of Jews (except
for tokens drawn from the "old families") from such
organizations as the Pacific Union Club and the Olympic Club,
not to mention high society events such as the Cotillion.
The other Jewish building of consequence was the new Congregation
Emanu-El, located in the Inner Richmond District near the
Presidio. This edifice, for which ground was broken in 1925,
remains today one of the most impressive examples of Jewish
architecture anywhere in the world. Arthur Brown's travels
in Europe and the Near East exposed him to the great domes
of the Vatican in Rome, Invalides in Paris, and Hagia
Sophia in Istanbul. The enormous Emanu-El dome rises 150
feet from the synagogue floor and rests on giant pendentives
which eclipse those of Sherith Israel.
Just as the towers of the old Emanu-el dominated the downtown
skyline for more than forty years, the new synagogue at Lake
& Arguello Streets has dominated the north west sector
of the city since its construction. The neo-Gothic appearance
of the downtown edifice is replaced by Brown's Levantine and
Mediterranean style, evoking the ancient Temple in Jerusalem
with its courtyard, Solomonic candelabra, and bejeweled ark.
The ark created an international art sensation when floated
down the Thames on its way to America and was displayed at
the Smithsonian before its shipment to the West Coast. Brown
would go on to design other San Francisco landmarks including
the Opera House and the Veteran's Auditorium, the PG&E
Building, and the San Francisco Art Institute.
The 1920s and 1930s in San Francisco featured the same boom
and bust economic cycles periodically experienced since the
Gold Rush. Powerful unions, which took root in the late 19th
and early 20th century, flexed their muscles and brought San
Francisco to a virtual halt in the General Strike of 1934.
Several of San Francisco's leading rabbis, such as the dynamic
young Jacob Weinstein of Sherith Israel, supported the workingmen's
efforts, and Jewish organizers were heavily involved in Harry
Bridges' International Longshoremen and Workers Union (ILWU)
and other unions.
The Jewish artist Bernard Zakheim worked on the vivid murals
depicting social protest that enliven the interior of Coit
Tower (also designed by Arthur Brown), which opened in 1933.
The Great Depression of the 1930s was a severe test of the
American spirit, and Jewish families stood in bread lines
along with others. A Federation of Jewish Charities, chartered
in 1910 to organize and centralize fund raising for Jewish
and general community causes, helped Jews and non-Jews alike
through Jewish-sponsored service agencies providing shelter,
employment training, clothing, food, and medicine.
San Francisco's Jewish Neighborhood
The liveliest "Jewish neighborhood" was undoubtedly
the Fillmore District. It included synagogues, Hebrew schools,
Jewish bakeries, kosher butcher shops, cigar and tobacco stands,
and movie theaters featuring the new "talkies" (an
industry pioneered by Jews in Hollywood and New York). The
Fillmore also featured clothing stores, medical and dental
offices above the retail shops, billiard parlors, and social
halls. It was as close as any neighborhood in San Francisco
ever came to resembling Delancey Street in New York, Maxwell
Street in Chicago, or Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. At the
turn of the century there had been a similar neighborhood
in the South of Market District. Others were located on San
Bruno Avenue in the southeastern part of town, and later out
in the Avenues of the Richmond and Sunset Districts where
Hebrew lettering appeared in store windows.
The Nazi Menace
All of this Jewish "urban culture" developed while
the ominous cloud of National Socialism swept over Germany
and Central Europe, culminating in the outbreak of war with
the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939. But there were
only a handful of San Francisco leaders who were involved
with the national Jewish organizations that monitored the
Nazi persecutions of Jews throughout the 1930s. Most members
of the Jewish community knew relatively little about the Holocaust
and felt distant from the plight of their brethren in Europe.
After December 1941, San Franciscans of all stripes were preoccupied
with the war against Japan in the Pacific, which struck much
closer to home and led to blackouts in San Francisco. At the
same time, a trickle of Jews were arriving from Germany after
having escaped increasing persecutions.
When victory in Europe unmasked the horrors which had befallen
the Jewish people and others murdered by the Nazis, the Jewish
communities of America --- including San Francisco --- awakened
from their World War II slumber about the peril in Europe.
There was a massive outpouring of cash, commodities, and care
for the survivors. Jewish politicians pressed for relief from
the quotas which had strictly limited Jewish immigration to
the United States, but it would be several years before America
would open the doors to meaningful numbers of refugees.
Zionism Divides San Francisco Jews
Zionist organizations mounted campaigns to create support
for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. While Jews
around the world were appalled at the destruction of European
Jewry, different communities had varying reactions about how
to respond. In cities such as New York, Boston, Cincinnati,
and Chicago, the Zionist elements were strong. But the more
assimilated communities, such as San Francisco, tended to
be more divided, with a mixture of caution and hope. San Francisco's
Jews of Eastern European origin, whose home communities were
devastated by Hitler, were the most sympathetic to the dream
of a homeland, and avidly supported the Zionist effort. Rabbi
Saul White of Congregation Beth Sholom, himself a Polish immigrant,
led the local Zionist movement.
Opposition to the Zionist program appeared to be a widely-held
opinion among the Jewish establishment in San Francisco, who
were also horrified by the Holocaust but felt that the solution
was not to press for a Jewish state. In fact, some of the
most strenuous opposition in America to the making of the
modern nation of Israel came from San Francisco's Congregation
Emanu-El and its forceful leader, Rabbi Irving Reichert.
Reichert was the west coast spokesman of the American Council
for Judaism, which opposed efforts to establish a Jewish homeland,
arguing that it would return the Jews to a ghetto of their
own making. Reichert was a tragic figure, arguing for Jewish
continuity without Israel, a view which increasingly isolated
him, especially when it became moot by the emergence of the
new state in May 1948. A year earlier, Reichert had been removed
by the congregation's board of directors and replaced by a
charismatic young Labor Zionist, Alvin Fine, who would remain
at Emanu-El until 1963.
San Francisco Recovers from the War
The post-WWII period was one of recovery and new economic
prosperity, as the surrounding communities continued to develop
with San Francisco serving as the Bay Area's commercial hub.
Regional commerce had been given a significant boost in the
late 1930s with the construction and opening of two great
spans across the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge (1937), connecting
San Francisco to Marin, and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay
Bridge (1936), connecting the West Bay to the East Bay.
The first visionary to speak publicly of building a bridge
across the Bay was Joshua Norton, a Jewish merchant who became
the eccentric "Emperor
Norton." In 1869 he commanded that such a span ought
to be engineered. But it took Joseph Strauss, a Jewish railway
bridge builder from Chicago, who first viewed the harbor as
a teenager in 1917, to promote and organize the effort to
build the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco's most famous
landmark. One of two designers of the Golden Gate, Leon Monssief,
was also a Jew.
Construction of the bridges and other significant public
works, such as the Opera House and the Civic Auditorium, employed
thousands of San Franciscans and helped bring the city out
of the Great Depression. To celebrate, San Francisco's third
World's Fair was created on Treasure Island, a man-made reef
in San Francisco Bay, and opened in 1939. But several of the
exhibiting nations came under the German boot, and the Fair
was closed in 1940, then re-opened in 1941 for only a brief
time.
While federal funds built infrastructure such as highways,
post offices, and power plants, Jewish philanthropy in the
1920s and 1930s aided San Francisco's cultural life. The Fleishhacker
family gave a large gift to the S.F. Zoo, and for building
the world's largest outdoor salt water pool (now gone). Ignatz
Steinhart donated the aquarium in Golden Gate Park. Walter
Haas and his wife Elise Stern Haas, a grand niece of Levi
Strauss, gave the city Stern Grove in the Sunset
District, and endowed summer concerts among the eucalyptus
groves. Jewish philanthropy was also regional, supporting
major facilities at the University of California in Berkeley
and at Stanford University in Palo Alto.
The Jewish Community after WWII
A merger of the Jewish men's clubs took place in 1939, creating
the Concordia-Argonaut, which continues to operate as one
of San Francisco's premier gathering spots. In June 1946,
a few blocks from the Concordia-Argonaut Club, fifty-two signatory
nations chartered the United Nations at the Opera House. One
of the chief architects of that historic convocation was Sol
Bloom, a Jewish Congressman from New York, who was no stranger
to the Bay Area. A boy who grew up in the colorful South of
Market District, Bloom was present at "The Battle of
the Bulge," Joe Choynski's fight with Jim Corbett on
the barge in Benecia, 56 years earlier!
In May 1948, the modern State of Israel proclaimed its independence.
President Harry S Truman was the first world leader to recognize
the Jewish homeland. From its inception, Israel received significant
monetary and material support from the San Francisco Bay Area,
including assistance through the Jewish Agency and Israel
Bonds. Benjamin Swig, who moved to San Francisco from his
native Boston in the 1940s and bought and operated the Fairmont
Hotel, was a vocal advocate for Israel Bonds. During the years
he was its community leader tens of millions of dollars in
economic and social assistance was raised.
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Early in the morning of April 18, 1906, following Enrico Caruso's
triumphant performance at the Old Opera House, San Francisco
and the entire Bay Area was struck by an epic earthquake,
followed by a fire which lasted almost three days and utterly
destroyed most of the city