Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush: A Documentary History, 1849-1880 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush: A Documentary History, 1849–1880 Fred Rosenbaum Ava F. Kahn , ed. Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush: A Documentary History, 1849–1880. American Jewish Civilization Series. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002. Pp. 549. By the endpoint of this remarkably comprehensive study, California was home to arguably the freest and most prosperous Jewish community in the world. And San Francisco's Jews—more numerous than in any other American city except New York—were prominent in the arts and the professions, in political and civic life, and above all in business, where they were conspicuous not merely as solid merchants but as corporate titans. But as the editor of this volume properly points out, Gold Rush-era Jews have received little attention from American Jewish historians (whose gaze too often stops at the Hudson) or from historians of the West, who invariably fail to differentiate among the various European groups who descended upon California in great numbers beginning in 1849. This is especially regrettable given the exceptional experience of West Coast Jewry from the Gold Rush to the present day. In her brief introduction, Ava Kahn touches upon several major aspects of early California Jewish history—in evidence in other parts of the country, of course, but more pronounced in the Golden State. She notes the venturesome spirit of the new arrivals, the ethnic diversity both of the host society and the Jewish community itself, the fluid social structure of the pioneer period, the special role of women on the frontier, and the broad geographical dispersion. She describes a generally tolerant atmosphere for Jews (with some notable exceptions, particularly in the coarse mining towns) even as non-whites, especially the Chinese, were roundly persecuted. As for the religious expression of the Jewish pioneers, she indicates that the great distance from national centers in the East meant that the "laity had to make decisions on their own" (p. 39), resulting in a high degree of experimentation and innovation. But this was not a community isolated from world Jewry; Kahn shows that there was deep concern in California for oppressed Jews overseas and even records the visits of emissaries from the Holy Land. These themes and others are illuminated by more than a hundred original sources including journals, letters, and newspaper articles, as well as advertisements, court records, institutional minutes, family photographs, and tombstone inscriptions. Placed in context by prefatory remarks at the [End Page 409] beginning of each chapter, and introduced by informative headnotes, the documents afford the reader a direct connection with the lives of mid-nineteenth-century California Jews. Perhaps most compelling are the accounts of the treacherous journey and the hardships borne by the pioneers during their first few years in El Dorado. Louis Sloss, destined to become one of the West's leading citizens and richest men, traveled across the continent on horseback in 1849, at age twenty-five, with two non-Jewish companions. We learn of a deadly plague of cholera on the plains, and of the mistake of overloading made by the emigrants, resulting in goods being strewn along the mountain roads for hundreds of miles. The three horsemen almost drowned attempting to cross the swollen and swift North Platte River. Later, they nearly died of dehydration traversing the Humboldt Desert. And in the Sierras they were among the first to come face to face with the horrible ending of the Donner Party three years earlier. They ran low on food themselves near the end of their journey but bought biscuits at inflated prices from gold miners and, with great difficulty, forded the American River—which ruined the six perfectly laundered white shirts (two for each man) that they had carried the whole way. Finally, they rode into Sacramento in triumph. But their first business venture, a dry goods store, ended in disaster within a year when a flood washed out their stock. Most Jews came by sea, however, and the shipboard diary of the fourteen-year-old Myer Newmark (later a prominent lawyer in Los Angeles and San Francisco) reveals the terror that the ocean held: A great storm arose against us about the...