Our City: The Jews of San Francisco

By Irena Narrell and Irena Narell

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0831071222
• ISBN13: 9780831071226
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Howell-North Books, Incorporated
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 3.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Our City

The greatness of a city resides largely in its people. Many lasting contributions by San Francisco's Jews helped make it one of the world's most extraordinary cities. Our City is both a stunning social history and a penetrating mass biography of the Jewish families who since the gold-rush days have left their mark on virtually every facet of Bay Area life. Starting with the Jewish forty-niners, the book provides a panoramic, yet detailed, account of the often dramatic interplay of personalities and events. It describes with equal cogency earthshaking occurences - like the 1906 quake - and commonplace though crucial happenings: people raising families, building businesses, amassing fortunes, fashioning careers, and coping with crises. The author's total mastery of her material allows her to write with seemingly effortlessness about these typical American success stories which were distinguished by uniquely Jewish experiences.... In delineating San Francisco Jewry's impact on the city's trade, manufacturing, banking, insurace, law, politics, higher education, and philanthropy, author Narell introduces pioneers like the Gerstles, Slosses, Fleishhackers, Zellerbachs, Levi Strauss, and Adolph Sotro. She elucidates how families were linked, how the preserved their heritage, built synagogues, and dealt with the historic conflict between German and Eastern European Jews. The author reveals why prosperous early settlers were accepted into the highest strata of society - because they had arrived in the West at the same time as leading Gentile families. Our City is the product of prodigious scholarship and written with consummate skill. It makes inspiring and illuminating reading. --- from book's dustjacket