The University of Washington Press
is pleased to announce the publication of
JEWS OF THE PACIFIC COAST
BY ELLEN EISENBERG, AVA F. KAHN, AND WILLIAM TOLL
"
Jews of the Pacific Coast embraces the entire Pacific West. It places
the Jewish experience within a regional context; it highlights points
of regional distinctiveness; and it makes the case for a more nuanced,
regional approach to the American Jewish experience as a whole."
-Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University
"
Jews of the Pacific
Coast adds significantly to the understanding of Judaism in the West
and will be an important book for anyone trying to understand the
larger contours of religion on the West Coast."
-Dale Soden, Whitworth
University
NOW AVAILABLE From the California Gold Rush of 1849 to the explosion of population
centers in the Southwest in the 1980s, Jews have played a significant
role in shaping the Pacific West. Through their mercantile networks,
cultural innovations, philanthropic institutions, and political
leadership, western Jews created a distinctive identity. In
Jews of the Pacific Coast,
Ellen Eisenberg, Ava F. Kahn, and
William Toll have
joined together to write the first interpretive history of the Jews of
this region.
In the West, Jewish men and women were less
restricted in their pursuits than they had been in Europe or in the
eastern United States. Unlike in the East, where Jews arriving in large
numbers had to accommodate themselves to preexisting local elites and
Jewish communities, in the Pacific West they were full participants in
the civic lives of new and rapidly developing societies.
Drawing
on manuscript collections, oral histories, newspapers, and private
papers, the authors examine the distinctive roles that Jews played in
the Pacific West, especially the innovative roles of women. Personal
stories and anecdotes give the authors the opportunity to compare and
contrast the nature of the Jewish experience in Seattle, Portland, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, and the small towns of the West. They explain
the important differences among these cities, the significance of the
regional shift of focus in the early twentieth century from San
Francisco to Los Angeles, and, after 1960, the importance of Jewish
contributions to new population centers like Las Vegas.
Ellen
Eisenberg, Dwight and Margaret Lear Professor of American History at
Willamette University, is the author of
The First to Cry Down
Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII, a 2008
National Jewish Book Award finalist.
Ava F. Kahn is the editor
of
Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush and
Jewish Life in the
American West and co-editor of
California Jews.
William Toll
teaches American Jewish history at the University of Oregon and is the
author of
The Making of an Ethnic Middle Class: Portland Jewry Over
Four Generations.