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Congregation Emanu-El on Sutter Street (1866–1926), San Francisco. The history of the Jews in San Francisco began with the California Gold Rush in the second half of the 19th-century. The San Francisco Bay Area has the fourth largest Jewish population in the U.S. [1] behind the New York area, southeast Florida and metropolitan Los Angeles.
Congregation Sherith Israel (transliterated from Hebrew; "loyal remnant of Israel") is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in San Francisco, California, in the United States. Founded in 1851 during California’s Gold Rush period , it is one of the oldest synagogues in the United States .
As the gold rush progressed, local banks and gold dealers issued "banknotes" or "drafts"—locally accepted paper currency—in exchange for gold, [125] and private mints created private gold coins. [126] With the building of the San Francisco Mint in 1854, gold bullion was turned into official United States gold coins for circulation. [127]
During the Gold Rush in 1849, a small group of Jews held the first High Holy Days services in a tent in San Francisco; it was the first Jewish service on the West Coast of the United States. [2] This group of traders and merchants founded Congregation Emanu-El sometime in 1850, and its charter was issued in April, 1851.
Soon, signs of the Jewish religion were showing up all over the city of San Francisco. The first Jewish congregation established in the city of San Francisco celebrated Rosh Hashanah in 1849. Shortly afterwards a kosher butcher, local mohel service and a cemetery were established.
The Californian moved to Yerba Buena, as San Francisco was then called, in mid-1847. The city was about to undergo rapid changes as the California gold rush got underway. The newspaper did not report about the discovery of gold because word spread so quickly from person to person.
The fastest clipper ships cut the travel time from New York to San Francisco from seven months to four months in the 1849 California Gold Rush. [1]A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune.
[10] [11] [12] There have been ethnic and class differences within the Jewish community in San Francisco, which has spawned dispute on the earliest of history. [11] In 1851, Congregation Emanu-El and Congregation Sherith Israel of San Francisco were joined as a single synagogue; but soon after they split into two congregations. [13]