Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area

Levi Strauss, A.L. Gump, Yehudi Menuhin, Gertrude Stein, Adolph Sutro, Congresswoman Florence Prag Kahn--Jewish people have been so enmeshed in life in and around San Francisco that their story is a chronicle of the metropolis itself. Since the Gold Rush, Bay Area Jews have countered stereotypes, working as farmers and miners, boxers and mountaineers. They were Gold Rush pioneers, Gilded Age tycoons, and Progressive Era reformers. Told through an astonishing range of characters and events, Cosmopolitans illuminates many aspects of Jewish life in the area: the high profile of Jewish women, extraordinary achievements in the business world, the cultural creativity of the second generation, the bitter debate about the proper response to the Holocaust and Zionism, and much more. Focusing in rich detail on the first hundred years after the Gold Rush, the book also takes the story up to the present day, demonstrating how unusually strong affinities for the arts and for the struggle for social justice have characterized this community even as it has changed over time. Cosmopolitans, set in the uncommonly diverse Bay Area, is a truly unique chapter of the Jewish experience in America.

History

Rosenbaum, Fred

Americas

University of California Press

Architects of Reform Congregational and Co

Arts & Photography

Architecture

Judah L. Magnes Museum

Congregation Emanu-El's portrait has been painted here in a broad canvas of a momentous century and a half of world Jewish History. Waves of immigration, the changing posture of the Reform movement, the response to the Holocaust, the acrimonious debate over the birth of Israel, and, in recent decades, the reaction to alternative expression of Judaism are among the many important themes that shape this richly textured narrative.

Visions of Reform : Congregation Emanu-El and the Jews of San Francisco 1849-1999

An account of one woman s uncommon resourcefulness and perseverance, Out on a Ledge uncovers some of the secrets of Jewish suffering and survival in the twentieth century. Related in her plainspoken voice, it will be of considerable interest both to scholars and the general public. This book owes much to a recently opened trove of documents on the Holocaust, 150 million pages that were digitized and made accessible to researchers by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Fred Rosenbaum was among an international team of twelve scholars assembled by the USHMM to examine and analyze the archive in the summer of 2009. It revealed a great deal of information about Eva Libitzky and her times. Original documents, including transport lists, medical records, and identity cards will be reproduced in the appendix of this volume.

Out on a Ledge: Enduring the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Beyond

Libitzky, Eva

World

3Ibooks

On the night the SS rounded up the Jews of his Ukrainian ghetto, eighteen-year-old Yosel Epelbaum crawled on his hands and knees to a nearby forest. There he joined a diverse band of pro-Soviet partisans, led by a kind of warlord in the wilderness, who created a forest republic behind Nazi lines. With his courageous comrades, Epelbaum, disrupted the German war effort for almost a year and a half and saved hundreds of civilians at the same time. After the liberation the young survivor became caught up in Europe s robust black market. With little money or formal education, and knowing no English, he immigrated to San Francisco in 1947 and within a year opened an ice cream shop. Only a decade later Joe Pell was well on his way to becoming one of the leading real estate developers in Northern California. Taking risks, related in a taut and vivid style, is his story- one of loss and torment but also daring, ingenuity and uncommon resilience.

Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

Biographies & Memoirs

Pell, Joseph

Historical

Rdr Books

Taking Risks: Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California 
The night the SS rounded up the Jews of his ghetto, 18-year-old Yosel Epelbaum crawled on his hands and knees to a nearby forest soon to be engulfed by winter. There he joined a band of pro-Soviet partisans who resisted the Nazis and saved hundreds of civilians. After the war, he smuggled contraband from one end of Europe to the other. Then, without money or a formal education and knowing no English, he immigrated to San Francisco. Within a decade, Yosef—now known as Joe Pell—was on his way to becoming one of Northern California’s leading real estate developers.

Stripped of her name, 18-year-old "Sonia" Shainwald went to war without basic training, without equipment, without food or any of the essentials necessary to fight the Germans. Urging her family and neighbors to leave a wretched hiding place during the liquidation of their ghetto, she and her parents and uncle spent a brutal winter in the forests and then joined a heroic Soviet partisan brigade. After the liberation, her family spent three years in a Displaced Persons camp near Frankfurt, and eventually reached America. But Sonia's life in her adopted land has been both tragic and triumphant.“Here, There Are No Sarahs” is co-authored by Holocaust scholar Fred Rosenbaum whose “Taking Risks” (with former partisan Joseph Pell) was praised by the San Francisco Chronical as “so extraordinary that it transcends the genre.” As they were completing their manuscript, Orbuch and Rosenbaum discovered that a trove of touching family correspondence written in the 1930s and 40s lay in a closet in Argentina. The letters, some in Sonia's own hand, were copied, sent to the Bay Area, and translated. Several are published in the book's appendix, along with love poetry penned in the forest in 1943.

Here, There Are No Sarahs: A Woman's Courageous Fight Against the Nazis and Her Bittersweet Fulfillment of the American Dream

Orbuch, Sonia Shainwald

On the night the SS rounded up the Jews of his Ukrainian ghetto, eighteen-year-old Yosel Epelbaum crawled on his hands and knees to a nearby forest. There he joined a diverse band of pro-Soviet partisans, led by a kind of warlord in the wilderness, who created a "forest republic" behind enemy lines. With his courageous comrades, Epelbaum disrupted the German war effort for almost a year and a half and saved hundreds of civilans at the same time. After the liberation. the young survivor became caught up in Europe's roaring black market. With little money or formal education, an knowing no English, he immigrated to San Francisco in 1947 and within a year opened an ice cream shop in the city's outlying, foggy Sunset District. Only a decade later Joe Pell was well on his way to becoming one of the leading real estate developers in Northern California. Taking Risks, related in a taut and vivid style, is his story--one of loss and torment but also daring, ingenuity, and uncommon resilience.

Gatekeeper Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rosenbaum, Fred. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rosenbaum, Fred

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rosenbaum, Fred. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area

Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area

Architects of Reform Congregational and Co

Visions of Reform : Congregation Emanu-El and the Jews of San Francisco 1849-1999

Visions of Reform : Congregation Emanu-El and the Jews of San Francisco 1849-1999

Out on a Ledge: Enduring the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Beyond

Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

Here, There Are No Sarahs: A Woman's Courageous Fight Against the Nazis and Her Bittersweet Fulfillment of the American Dream

Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California