Friends of the Jewish Community Library 50th Anniversary Celebration
Sunday, November 22 at 2 PM
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco
Free garage parking on Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy
Celebrate 50 years of community, history, and support!
Founded in 1976, the Friends of the Jewish Community Library is an independent, nonprofit, community-supported organization providing over 90% of the Library’s budget. This anniversary event is a special thank-you to our community who have helped the Library grow and thrive. Please join us!
Keynote Presentation by Historian Fred Rosenbaum:
Deep Divide: San Francisco Jewry’s Debate Over Zionism in the 1940s
In his Yom Kippur sermon in the dark year of 1943, Rabbi Irving Reichert of Congregation Emanu-El vehemently declared his opposition to Jewish statehood and announced the formation of the local chapter of the American Council for Judaism to combat Zionism. The backlash from Rabbi Saul White of Congregation Beth Sholom and others was no less furious, and for half a decade the Jewish community was riven by the most bitter conflict in its history. What lessons does this hold for us today?
Fred Rosenbaum, an award-winning author and educator, is the Founding Director of Lehrhaus Judaica (revived as New Lehrhaus). He has also been a faculty member at the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and the Graduate Theological Union, and has lectured widely. His books include Cosmopolitans: A Social and Intellectual History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area, Visions of Reform: Congregation Emanu-El and the Jews of San Francisco, 1849-1999, and Free to Choose: The Making of a Jewish Community in the American West: the Jews of Oakland, California from the Gold Rush to the Present Day. In recent decades he has devoted himself to biographies and memoirs of Holocaust survivors, most recently The Boy Who Vanished: A True Story of Surviving the Holocaust, with Ernest Fontheim.
Reception: A delicious reception will follow the presentation.
Free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.