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With the establishment of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
at UC Berkeley in July 2010, unique materials documenting the Jewish
experience in Northern California were gifted to The Bancroft Library by
the former Judah L. Magnes Museum.
This inaugural exhibition draws on art, artifacts, books, and archival materials
from The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, The Bancroft Library,
and the Levi Strauss & Co. Archives. The resulting synergy stretches the
boundaries of California history, connecting German Jewish history before
1849 to the establishment of the Jewish community in the San Francisco
Bay Area.
Hanging lamps, lit in the Jewish homes on the Eve of the Sabbath and
Festivals, were also used before the advent of electric light to
illuminate synagogue interiors.
The decade in which the painting appeared was pivotal for German
Jews: their hopes for emancipation were shattered by the failed
revolutions of 1848–49. The revolutions also spurred emigration to
the United States, including to San Francisco, where the Gold Rush
opened unprecedented opportunities for social success and civic
engagement.
From Mendelssohn on, the integration of Jews into the German public sphere
has been closely associated with German-Jewish Bible translation, and German-
Jewish integration can in turn be read as a kind of translation project. Translation
from Hebrew could signal Jewish foreigness […], but it also had a range of other
significations for translators and their audiences. Translation is thus both a lens
for analyzing the character of German-Jewish identity and a privileged mode of
its expression.
As it gradually became possible during the later eighteenth century for Jews in
Western Europe to leave the walled-off life of the ghetto and enter into modern
European society, some Jewish intellectuals, associated with the merchant and
managerial classes, adopted Hebrew as the means of creating a new kind of Jewish
culture that might take its place with the cultures of other peoples in a progressive
international society of enlightened men.
Robert Alter, Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley
The haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, which began in Berlin in the 1740s, is one of
the most important developments in the entire history of European Jewry. Through
the promotion of secular education to complement the traditional Jewish curriculum,
the haskalah sought to reform Jews and Judaism by harmonizing religious and social
life with the ideals of European bourgeois culture. [...] The haskalah was the first of
many later secular ideologies and new forms of religious expression that captured
the hearts and minds of modern Jews.
22 x 35
The families who immigrated from Germany
to the Bay Area following the Gold Rush
maintained close ties to each other. Many
came from Bavaria, particularly from Reckendorf, a village north of
Bamberg. In San Francisco, they forged business partnerships and
formed extended families, whose influence still impacts the texture
of the city.
The Haas family established itself as one of the leading Jewish families
of the Pacific Coast. Koppel and Fanny Haas had seven children in
Reckendorf. William Haas arrived in San Francisco in 1868 and joined
the wholesale grocery firm of Loupe & Haas. In Los Angeles, Abraham
Haas worked for Hellman, Haas & Company.
There were other large Jewish clans in Reckendorf, and Isaias and Herman [Hellman]
played with boys from these families, forming relationships that would survive
immigration and distance. One of these clans was the Haas family, who lived in a
caramel-colored, low-slung house just a few steps from the synagogue. The family
dealt in cotton and textiles.
Frances Dinkelspiel , author of Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias
Hellman Created California
22 x 27
Torah binders are ceremonial textiles used
to keep a Hebrew Bible scroll tightly closed
when it is not being used for public reading in the synagogue.
23 x 22
The history of commerce in California
is extensively documented at The Bancroft
Library. The papers of individuals and families
from The Magnes Collection add to this wealth
of research material on the pioneer businesses
of the West Coast.
By 1880 San Francisco had become the ninth-ranking city in the country and the
Pacific Rim’s uncontested metropolitan hub. With 233,000 residents, the great
majority of them foreign born or of foreign-language parentage, the city accounted
for well over a quarter of the state’s population, with 16,000 Jews, who were
exceeded in number only by the Jewish inhabitants of New York City.
But the story of the Jews of California is different. Many of them fled the
discrimination of the homelands in Germany, France, and Poland, and headed in
the 1850s to California and its promise of gold. While a few became miners, most
became merchants who catered to the miners’ needs. And from the start, these
Jews were accepted and integrated into society. They were elected to public office,
built their homes alongside their Christian neighbors, and became the established
mercantile elite. In both San Francisco and Los Angeles, Jews were community
leaders. It was not until the 1890s that intransigent anti-Semitism gripped California.
And while barriers were erected after then, the Jews had already indelibly shaped
the state.
Frances Dinkelspiel , author of Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias
Hellman Created California
22 x 38
In San Francisco, German Jewish
immigrants laid the foundation for Jewish
community life in the city, creating benevolent
societies, synagogues, and schools. At the
same time they influenced the making of the new
metropolitan area, supporting education, the arts, and social causes,
thus translating German Jewish ideals shaped by the haskalah to the
realm of civic engagement in the new world.
What, then, has been the essence of a Jewish community that is more universalist
than particularist, artistically creative and economically powerful, philanthropic and
civic-minded, borrowing freely from other traditions and interacting fully with non-
Jews? […] local Jews felt themselves the product of an age-old history and tied to
a fate of their people throughout the globe. But they focused even more on their
teeming port city, an instant metropolis, which brought the world to them.
Fred Rosenbaum, author of Cosmopolitans. A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the
San Francisco Bay Area
Kevin Starr, University Professor and Professor of History, University of Southern California
Over the years, the family has given to Jewish causes. But, the commitment to
giving goes beyond religious tradition. It’s clear that the Jewish tradition has a
strong element of giving back. I think that may have been a driving force for our
earlier generations, but it’s more how we’re raised. It is not a Jewish idea. It is a
civic responsibility.
Betsy Haas Eisenhardt, board member of Walter and Elise Haas Fund and Evelyn and
Walter Haas Jr. Fund
Certainly, the focus on philanthropy came from my grandfather. But it goes back
five generations. Levi Strauss gave to a local Protestant orphanage. He endowed
scholarships at UC Berkeley, many of them held by women. Rosalie Myer Stern is our
great-grandmother.
22 x 39
The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
is supported by Koret Foundation, Taube Foundation,
Hellman Family Foundation, Magnes Museum Foundation,
Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula,
Marin and Sonoma Counties, Jim Joseph Foundation,
Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund,
Walter and Elise Haas Fund, and Lumina Foundation.
www.magnes.org