[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 21, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1909-E1910]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 REFLECTING ON THE 150 NEW YEARS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH COMMUNITY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 21, 1999

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, in recent days, Jews around the world have 
celebrated the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. As these 
religious holidays have been commemorated, the Jewish community of San 
Francisco has marked a particular milestone--the 150th anniversary of 
the Jewish community of San Francisco. The contributions that its 
members have made to the civic, charitable, and economic well-being of 
the Bay Area are truly extraordinary, and the history of Jewish life in 
San Francisco merits both our attention and our admiration.
  Mr. Speaker, 150 years ago, during the brief interval between the 
Mexican-American War and the Civil War, pioneers and risk-takers from 
around the world descended upon San Francisco. These individuals 
represented every imaginable race and ethnic origin, united only by 
their desire to find gold in their mining pans and win an instant 
fortune. Some 100,000 fortune-seeking ``Forty Niners'' arrived in the 
Bay Area in the year after President James K. Polk announced the 
discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort in his State of the Union address in 
December 1848.
  Among the multitude drawn to San Francisco was a small number of 
Jews, some from the eastern states of our country and other from as far 
away as Poland, Prussia, and Bavaria. They joined the dynamic melting 
pot of people with a great diversity of backgrounds and views, and 
helped to create the uniquely diverse cultural life that flourishes in 
San Francisco to this day.
  In recognition of the critical contributions of the Jewish community 
to the City of San Francisco and to the entire Bay Area, I would like 
to place in the Record a September 10, 1999, article by Don Lattin of 
the San Francisco Chronicle which details the birth of Jewish life in 
the Bay Area 150 years ago. This article is part of a series of 
articles that have appeared over the past year in connection with the 
sesquicentennial of the discovery of gold in California and the events 
connected with California's accession to the Union in 1850 as the 31st 
state.

           [From the San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 10, 1999]

                   San Francisco Jews' 150 New Years

                            (By Don Lattin)

       San Francisco's Gold Rush brought adventure seekers and 
     fortune hunters from around the world, and the 
     ``Israelites,'' as they were called at the time, were no 
     exception.
       One-hundred fifty years ago this month, 30 pioneer Jews 
     from Poland, Prussia, Bavaria and the Eastern United States 
     gathered in Lewis Franklin's tent store on Jackson Street to 
     commemorate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
       Franklin, 29, had come to the booming town from Baltimore. 
     In a prophecy that would come to pass for many Gold Rush 
     immigrants, he read from the Book of Ecclesiastes: ``These 
     shining baubles may lure the million,'' he read, ``but they 
     will take unto themselves wings, and flee from thee, leaving 
     thou as naked as when thou were first created.''
       Those communal prayers, the first public Jewish worship 
     service known to have been held in the West, led to the 
     founding of San Francisco's two leading Reform movement 
     synagogues, Congregation Emanu-El and Congregation Sherith 
     Israel.
       Less than 2 years after that first citywide Rosh Hashanah, 
     in April 1851, ethnic disputes and class differences had 
     spawned rival houses of worship, with the more traditional 
     Poles establishing Sherith Israel and the more liberal 
     Germans founding Emanu-El.
       ``German Jews came from refined society. It was the height 
     of European culture,'' said Rabbi Stephen Pearce, the current 
     spiritual leader of Emanu-El. ``German Jews were more liberal 
     and among the leading citizens of the city, people like Levi 
     Strauss.''
       This month, as both congregations begin a year-long series 
     of mostly separate anniversary events, echoes of that Gold 
     Rush rivalry remain. Differences in leadership styles and a 
     recent price war over membership dues have replaced ethnicity 
     and ancient arguments over Jewish ritual as the bones of 
     contention.
       But Rabbi Martin Weiner, who has led Sherith Israel for 27 
     years, prefers to play down the differences and avoid 
     discussing whatever rivalry remains.
       ``Every synagogue had slightly different traditions, but 
     those divisions have faded,'' he said. ``Both have served the 
     community well.''
       This Sunday, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Weiner and 
     Cantor Martin Feldman, a Sherith Israel fixture since 1960, 
     will lead a traditional Rosh Hashanah service in the shadow 
     of the TransAmerica Building. That is only a block from where 
     the city's first Yom Kippur service was held, on Sept. 26, 
     1849, ending the city's first services for the High Holy 
     Days.
       Actors in period costumes will be featured this Sunday, 
     along with the traditional sounding of the shofar, or ram's 
     horn.
       As it did for many of San Francisco's first religious 
     congregations, fires and earthquakes kept the pioneer Jewish 
     community on the move.
       Sherith Israel's first quarters, at Merchants Court on 
     Washington Street between Montgomery and Sansome streets, was 
     destroyed by the great fire of 1851, as was the 
     congregation's next home on Kearny Street.
       The cornerstone of the congregation's present building at 
     California and Webster streets was laid on Feb. 22, 1904. The 
     interior of the landmark edifice, designed by Albert Pissus, 
     retains an old world flavor with magnificent mahogany 
     woodwork.
       Members of Congregation Emanu-El have worshiped beneath 
     their graceful dome at Lake and Arguello streets since 1926, 
     when they abandoned and razed their twin-towered synagogue on 
     Sutter Street. That edifice, on the side of Nob Hill above 
     Union Square, had towered over the city scape since 1866, 
     even after it lost its two onion-shaped domes in the great 
     1906 earthquake.
       Congregation Emanu-El began its 150th anniversary 
     celebration last month with an architectural exhibit, running 
     through January 2, entitled ``Emanu-El--Image on the Skyline, 
     Impact on the City.'' It brings together photographs, maps, 
     drawings and blueprints to tell the tale of San Francisco's 
     largest and most prosperous synagogue.
       In 1854, Julius Eckman was hired as the first rabbi to 
     preside over Emanu-El's original house of worship, a 
     neogothic synagogue built on Broadway for $35,000. A 
     scholarly graduate of the University of Berlin, Eckman lasted 
     only a year at the Reform-minded congregation.
       Many of Congregation Emanu-El's early members were Gold 
     Rush merchants, including some who went on to establish great 
     fortunes, like the Levi Strauss clothing empire. Jesse 
     Seligman, the son of a poor Bavarian farmer, founded a dry 
     goods business in San Francisco in 1859, using that as a 
     springboard into international investment banking.
       Another Bavarian Jew who prospered as a Gold Rush merchant, 
     25-year-old August Helbing, arrived here from New Orleans in 
     1849. He founded the Eureka Benevolent Society, which is 
     celebrating its 150th anniversary in its current incarnation, 
     Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the 
     Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.
       In founding the charity, Helbing sought to care for ``the 
     Israelites landing here, broken in health or destitute in 
     means.''
       Indeed, the Gold Rush is full of stories about people going 
     from rags to riches, and back to rags. In their book, 
     ``Pioneer Jews--A New Life in the Far West,'' Harriet and 
     Fred Rochlin tell the story of Morris Shloss, who docked in 
     San Francisco on September 25, 1849, amid the first High Holy 
     Day services.
       Shloss, a 20-year-old Polish merchant, made his first sale 
     right on the dock. In New

[[Page E1910]]

     York, he had paid $3 for a large wooden box to carry his 
     wagon with him to San Francisco. Keeping the wagon, he sold 
     the box for $100 to a cobbler who wanted to use it as a 
     workshop and bedroom.
       The enterprising Shloss used that money to buy stationery, 
     reselling it at a makeshift stand for a handsome profit. He 
     worked at night as a fiddler at the El Dorado, a gambling 
     hall at Washington and Kearny, getting an ounce of gold, 
     worth $16, for each three-hour gig. He soon managed to rent a 
     tiny store next to the El Dorado for $400, where he bought 
     trunks from miners eager to lighten their loads before 
     heading up the gold fields.
       In just two months, he had earned between $5,000 and 
     $6,000. Then, on Christmas Eve, he lost it all when a fire in 
     an adjacent hotel leveled his store.
       Destitute, he sailed off to follow another purported Gold 
     Rush outside Eureka, which turned out to be a hoax. He 
     survived for four months on clams and crackers until a 
     schooner brought him back to San Francisco. He started two 
     more businesses in 1852 and 1853, both of which were 
     destroyed by fire. His brother was killed in a shipwreck 
     after coming out to help him. Nevertheless, Shloss started 
     another business and soon made enough money to bring his 
     fiancee to San Francisco.
       Most of the city's pioneer Jews, the Rochlins wrote, ``bore 
     the imprint of centuries of European oppression: pogroms, 
     expulsions, segregations, exploitative taxes and barred 
     occupations.''
       But in the wide-open West, they ``Americanized and 
     regionalized with speed, energy and elan.''
       ``Most Jews who responded to the glittering promises of the 
     far western frontier and rose to its awesome obstacles were 
     intrepid, resourceful and individualistic,'' the Rochlins 
     write. ``For the most part, they were also literate, sober 
     and drive to prove themselves.''

     

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