Gained in Translation

Jews, Germany, California circa 1849

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.

The Magnes archives of Western Jewish Americana have served as an

important source for several foundational studies of Jewish history in
California. Researchers often relied on the combination of Magnes and
Bancroft collections in their work. Now, the physically integrated collections
of both institutions bring unparalleled resources under one roof, making them
even more accessible for teaching and research.

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.

Alla Efimova, Jacques and Esther Reutlinger Director

Francesco Spagnolo, Curator of Collections

January 24, 1848

Gold is found by James W. Marshall at Sutter’s Mill, Coloma, California,
a town in the Sierra Foothills.

February, 21, 1848

Karl Marx publishes the Manifesto of the Communist Party in London.
 
February 24, 1848
The monarchy of King Louis-Philippe is overthrown in France,
resulting in the proclamation of the Second Republic.
 
February 27, 1848
The revolution reaches Germany, where an assembly in Mannheim
adopts a resolution demanding a bill of rights. Demands for
constitutional and civil reforms and the unification of Germany are
made throughout the German-speaking lands.
 
September 26, 1849
The first celebration of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) in
San Francisco is held in a wood-framed tent. Today, this early Jewish
presence in California is acknowledged by a bronze plaque on the
700 block of Montgomery Street in San Francisco.
The Magnes Collection is a source of primary evidence about
Jewish life in the global Diaspora. It documents personal and family rituals,
synagogue and communal life, and the social interactions among Jewish
and host communities.

The lamps on view highlight aspects of religious observance and domestic

life in Germany in the 17th–19th centuries. Their presence in The Magnes
Collection is also a direct testimony of the immigration history of the
German Jewish community to California.

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.

Special lamps for Hanukkah (“dedication”), which include

eight receptacles for oil and wickers, or candles, and one
or two elevated “servitor” (Hebrew: shamash) lights, are
kindled during the eight days of the Winter Festival of
Lights. German Hanukkah lamps often include engraved
Hebrew texts relating to the festival, as well as the
depiction of crowns and lions—references to the Hebrew
Bible and to the Jewish people, and symbols of self-
empowerment.
Synagogue interiors,
Reckendorf, Germany, ca 1911
In 1856, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim,
an artist later labeled as the first modern
Jewish painter, portrayed an imagined
meeting among scholars Moses Mendelsohn
(1729–1786), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–
1781) and theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater
(1741–1801) in Mendelssohn’s Berlin home.

The scene refers to two foundational moments in the history of

German Jewish cultural interactions. The actual meetings between
Mendelssohn and Lavater, which took place in
1763–64, were followed by the failed attempt
on the part of the theologian to convince
Mendelssohn to embrace Christianity. The much-
celebrated friendship between Mendelssohn and
Lessing, one of the high points of the haskalah,
or Jewish Enlightment, came to be considered
a paradigm of the possibility of a harmonious
cohabitation between Germans and Jews.
Moritz Oppenheim (1800–1882)
at his easel, ca. 1850.

By the mid-19th century, the philosophical debates of the haskalah

spread throughout Europe, and were translated into the political and
social realms by the Emancipation movement. Jewish contribution to
society at large became the norm but did not go unchallenged.

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.

Naomi Seidman, Koret Professor of Jewish Culture, Graduate Theological Union

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.

John Efron, Koret Professor of Jewish History, UC Berkeley

The history of individuals and families from
their roots in Southern Germany to their settlement
in California is broadly documented in the Magnes
archives and museum holdings. The materials
related to the Haas and Lilienthal families of San
Francisco provide a particularly insightful illustration of the span
of this immigration story, including family portraits, ritual objects,
personal and professional papers, photographs, and business records.

The Lilienthal family emigrated from Munich to the United States in

the 1840’s. The California branch of the family descended from Rabbi
Max and Dr. Samuel Lilienthal, who are depicted as young children
in Germany in a family portrait. Max (Menachem) Lilienthal (1814–
1882), an educator and Rabbi active in Eastern Europe, became an
American journalist and scholar, and a promoter of the Jewish Reform
Movement in the American West. Samuel Lilienthal (1815–1891), a
physician and a pioneer of homeopathy in America, joined his family
in San Francisco in the late 1880’s.

[…] repression in much of central Europe included increasingly

restrictive laws that made it difficult for a Jew to acquire a residency
permit to own a business, marry, and establish a family. […] A Jewish
marriage was permitted only after one Jewish inhabitant had died
and thus made room for another on the prescribed town list of Jewish
families. Not surprisingly, many young men and women were eager
to seek their spouses as well as their fortunes in the United States. In
the 1840s, nearly as many Jewish women as Jewish men left Bavaria’s
towns for America, with most women traveling to California with their
husbands, brothers, friends, or other family members.

Ava Kahn, co-editor of California Jews

Susie and Elias Cohn, natives

of Germany, buried in Colma,
California

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.

In the early decades of the 20th century, these California families

were involved in an early form of Jewish heritage travel, and visited
their ancestral homes in Bavaria, documenting their trips with detailed
photographic mementos.

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.

In some Jewish European communities, especially in Germany, Torah

binders were made from the linen or cotton cloths used to cover
newborn boys during ritual circumcision, decorated with celebratory
texts and images with amuletic significance, and presented to the
congregation when a child turned one.

This kind of Torah binder, also known as wimpel, would be used to

bind a Torah scroll once the child became bar mitzvah, and later again
on the occasion of his wedding. The Hebrew texts and the images
embroidered or painted with varying styles and materials on the
binder typically include the boy’s full Hebrew name and date of birth,
blessings and good wishes related to the life cycle, and references
to astrology. 

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.

Moses Rischin, Professor Emeritus of History, San Francisco State University

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

Perhaps the most famous Jewish

immigrant of this period was Levi
Strauss, world-renowned for his
sturdy workpants made out of heavy
denim (a French material for tents),
reinforced with rivets, would become
an international icon, and his company
the world’s largest maker of apparel
including jeans. Other men also saw
great opportunity and put down
roots in Gold Rush days, or soon
thereafter in early San Francisco.
Pioneer families included Bissinger,
Brandenstein, Dinkelspiel, Fleishhacker,
Gerstle, Greenebaum, Haas, Helbing,
Lewis Gerstle, Louis Sloss, and Gustave Niebaum in the
Hellman, Kohl, Koshland, Levison, San Francisco offices of the Alaska Commercial Company,
late 19th century
Levy, Liebes, Lilienthal, Magnin, Meyer,
Schwabacher, Seligman, Sloss, Stern,
Sutro, Weill, and Zellerbach.

Stephen Mark Dobbs, contributor, Encyclopedia of San Francisco

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.

The holdings of the Western Jewish Americana archives in The Magnes

Collection enrich the history of the San Francisco Bay Area cultural
and philanthropic institutions preserved at The Bancroft Library.

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

As a San Franciscan, I like to see Sutro [...] in terms of the European-Jewish

civilization he absorbed and acquired as a young man and brought to his adopted
city.  Adolph Sutro and the other Jewish founders of San Francisco knew what a city
was all about: knew what a city was in terms of culture and cultural institutions, but
also knew what a city was about in terms of responsibility to the community.

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.

Robert D. Haas, former chairman of Levi Strauss & Co.

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.

This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the generous support

of the founding Friends of the Magnes:
Barry and Debbie Cohn, Frances Dinkelspiel, Rosalie Eisen,
Robert D. Haas, Adele Hayutin, Dana Shapiro, Janet Traub,
Marjorie and Barry Traub, and Chen C. Wang.

www.magnes.org