California Jews
Author: Ava Fran Kahn
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 238
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe first full-length presentation of Jewish life, history, and culture in California from the Gold Rush to the twenty-first century.
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Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush
Author: Ava Fran Kahn
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 564
ISBN-13: 9780814328590
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 1848, news of the California Gold Rush swept the nation and the world. Aspiring miners, merchants, and entrepreneurs from all corners of the globe flooded California looking for gold. The cry of instant wealth was also heard and answered by Jewish communities in Europe and the eastern United States. While all Jewish immigrants arriving in the mid-nineteenth century were looking for religious freedoms and economic stability, there were preexisting Jewish social and religious structures on the East Coast. California's Jewish immigrants become founders of their own social, cultural, and religious institutions. Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush examines the life of California's Jewish community through letters, diaries, memoirs, court and news reports, and photographs, as well as institutional, synagogue, and organizational records. By gathering a wealth of primary source materials-both public and private documents-and placing them in proper historical context, Ava F. Kahn re-creates the lives within California's Jewish community. Kahn takes the reader from Europe to California, from the goldfields to the developing towns and their religious and business communities, and from the founding of Jewish communities to their maturing years-most notably the instant city of San Francisco. By providing exhaustive documentation, Kahn offers an intimate portrait of Jewish life at a critical period in the history of California and the nation. Scholars and students of Jewish history and immigration studies, and readers interested in Gold Rush history, will enjoy this look at the development of California's Jewish community.
A Cultural History of Jews in California
Author: Bruce Zuckerman
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 142
ISBN-13: 1557535647
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith this volume of the Casden Annual Review, we continue our policy of focusing on a single topic, and in this case the topic we have turned to is, quite literally, close to home: the Jewish role in California life. The aim of this volume is to stress the cultural aspects of the Jewish experience of coming to and living in the Golden State. While we cannot hope to present in this limited venue a comprehensive and detailed history of Jews in California, per se, it is our goal to consider a number of insightful perspectives on how the Jews, who settled in California, helped shape the Golden State's culture and were, in turn, themselves molded by cultural influences that were uniquely Californian. While this volume looks at the Jewish experience in California in general-nonetheless, particular emphasis is placed on Southern California. We begin our cultural history at a crucial moment in California history, the mid-nineteenth century in the after-glow of the California Gold Rush, where we encounter a European Jewish emigrant, fresh off the boat, who can (and did) get a chance to make a fortune in the pueblo of Los Angeles and, in doing so, helped define what California is. We conclude it with a personal, meditation from one of the latest group of refugees to come to the west, the Iranian Jews who were forced out of their ancient homeland some thirty years ago and who found in Southern California a particularly hospitable (yet no less difficult) place to transplant their cultural roots. In between, we are treated to a few choice snapshots of how life developed and changed for Jews in California as California itself evolved and grew. We firmly believe that there is something special about the Jewish role in California and even more so in Southern California-that here on the lower left-coast Jews have had an Americanization experience that is significantly different from that which Jews have had elsewhere in the USA. Conversely, Southern California would be quite a different place without the Jews who made it their home. Book jacket.
Jewish San Francisco
Author: Edward Zerin
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 132
ISBN-13: 9780738546834
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn San Francisco, the "instant city" of the gold rush days, Jews were pioneers among pioneers. Some came as immigrants directly from Europe, others as resettled adventurers from the East Coast, and still others as scions of southern Sephardic families. Out of this mixed multitude emerged a community with synagogues and institutions to care for the needy and the sick, along with a dignified social fabric. New immigrants following the Russian pogroms of 1883 were absorbed, and the ashen ruins from the 1906 earthquake were rebuilt. The city's cultural treasures and social needs were enriched, and the city's Jews were nurtured by civic commitments. Today's 70,000 San Francisco Jews, standing upon the shoulders of pioneering giants, continue to build and rebuild.
American Jewish History
Author: Gary Phillip Zola
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Published: 2014-11-04
Total Pages: 475
ISBN-13: 1611685109
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPresenting the American Jewish historical experience from its communal beginnings to the present through documents, photographs, and other illustrations, many of which have never before been published, this entirely new collection of source materials complements existing textbooks on American Jewish history with an organization and pedagogy that reflect the latest historiographical trends and the most creative teaching approaches. Ten chapters, organized chronologically, include source materials that highlight the major thematic questions of each era and tell many stories about what it was like to immigrate and acculturate to American life, practice different forms of Judaism, engage with the larger political, economic, and social cultures that surrounded American Jews, and offer assistance to Jews in need around the world. At the beginning of each chapter, the editors provide a brief historical overview highlighting some of the most important developments in both American and American Jewish history during that particular era. Source materials in the collection are preceded by short headnotes that orient readers to the documentsÕ historical context and significance.
Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema
Author: Prof. Deborah A. Starr
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2020-09-22
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 0520976126
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. In this book, Deborah A. Starr recuperates the work of Togo Mizrahi, a pioneer of Egyptian cinema. Mizrahi, an Egyptian Jew with Italian nationality, established himself as a prolific director of popular comedies and musicals in the 1930s and 1940s. As a studio owner and producer, Mizrahi promoted the idea that developing a local cinema industry was a project of national importance. Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema integrates film analysis with film history to tease out the cultural and political implications of Mizrahi’s work. His movies, Starr argues, subvert dominant notions of race, gender, and nationality through their playful—and queer—use of masquerade and mistaken identity. Taken together, Mizrahi’s films offer a hopeful vision of a pluralist Egypt. By reevaluating Mizrahi’s contributions to Egyptian culture, Starr challenges readers to reconsider the debates over who is Egyptian and what constitutes national cinema.
Western States Jewish History
Author:
Publisher:
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 874
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJews in the Los Angeles Mosaic
Author: Karen Wilson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2013-05-03
Total Pages: 136
ISBN-13: 0520275500
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic, organized by the Autry National Center of the American West."--Introduction.
Comrades and Chicken Ranchers
Author: Kenneth Kann
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 322
ISBN-13: 9780801480751
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book is a portrait of the Petaluma Jewish community from the early years of the century to the present day. Kenneth L. Kann interviewed more than two hundred residents, representing three generations of Jewish Americans. The picture that emerges from their testimony is of a wonderfully animated and fractious community. Its history blends many of the familiar themes of American Jewish life into a richly individual tapestry. In the first few decades of this century, many Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe wound up in Petaluma. This first generation of chicken farmers consisted largely of educated, often professional men and women; many were drawn to chicken farming as much by Marxist or Zionist beliefs in the dignity of labor as by economic necessity. They helped establish the particular character of a community, with its combination of arduous work and cultural aspiration.
