Marc Dollinger
The Jews of California
Summary
“If you want to be poor all your life,” an eastern European Jewish immigrant was told, “go to New York. If you want to be rich, go to the other side,” meaning California, where economic prosperity and social acceptance promised Golden State Jews opportunities unknown in the East. For many new Jewish immigrants, California became the new promised land, even as it challenged many New York-centered assumptions about American Jewish life. Whether you are native to California, New York, or anywhere else in the world, this provocative talk just might undo the way you think about American Jewry.
Marc Dollinger
Prof. Marc Dollinger is the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility in the Department of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University. He has authored many articles and four books, including Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America, California Jews and American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader, and Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s. He is currently writing his fifth book, Power and Privilege: Jews, The Identity Project and the Modern University.
Most of the Israelis stayed. The South Bay of Northern California has a very high Israeli population and a lot of them are involved in Silicon Valley. Of course, LA is very dense, with tens of thousands of Israelis or Israeli Americans.
We’re going to do a rivalry between Northern and Southern California. Southern Californians will say the greatest cultural contribution was Hollywood because the American Jews who were defining for Christian America what it meant to be American through the movies that they made. In Northern California, I’ll say the Gold rush. It was what brought Jews to California to begin with. Also, Levi Strauss, Adolph Sutro, and other San Francisco Jews, who were able to really create a basis of Jewish life in this state that also had national implications.