Western States Jewish History
Reviews Currently on This Page.
MANNIE’S
CROWD: Emanuel Lowenstein, Colorful Character of Old Los
Angeles
JEWISH PIONEERS OF
NEW MEXICO
JEWISH VOICES
OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH: A Documentary History
MANNIE’S
CROWD: Emanuel Lowenstein, Colorful Character of Old Los
Angeles, by Norton B. Stern. Glendale: Arthur H. Clark
Company, 1970. 136 pp. Illustrations, Bibliography, Index.
Some copies available at varying prices at Amazon.com.
Reviewed by
Abraham Hoffman, (February, 2007)
In 1970
Norton Stern wrote Mannie’s Crowd, a life-and-times
biography of Emanuel Lowenstein (1857-1939). Mannie, as he was
known, never held public office or ran for one. Although he was
a founder of what became the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, he was
not a wealthy philanthropist. Mannie wrote numerous plays, none
of which were published, and many songs and poems, of which a
few did get some recognition. He was a businessman operating
such retail establishments in Los Angeles as tobacco stores; he
ran a real estate business, which made money, and invested in
mines, which didn’t. Mannie’s father, Hilliard Loewenstein, was
a Prussian Jewish immigrant who came to Los Angeles in the 1850s
and joined the small group of pioneer Jews who prospered in
local businesses, ranching, and real estate development.
Mannie
Lowenstein seems to have been an ordinary person who lived in an
extraordinary time in Los Angeles as the city grew from a dusty
little cow town to major metropolis within an average person’s
lifetime. In one respect, however, Mannie was more than an
ordinary person. He was a character, a man with a sharp wit,
controversial personality, and a circle of friends who put up
with his barbs and enjoyed his company. For many years Mannie
occupied center stage at his daily lunches at Levy’s Café, a
gathering spot for attorneys, journalists, other professionals,
and businessmen. Close friends included Carl Laemmle, founder
of Universal Studios; composer George M. Cohan; film actors such
as Jimmy Durante, Groucho Marx, and Jack Oakie; and assorted
Edelmans, Cohns, Pragers, Newmarks, and other members of the Los
Angeles Jewish community. A life-long bachelor, Mannie had an
active social life that included the theater, race track, and
night clubs. Rabbi Edgar Magnin officiated at his funeral
service. Newspaper obituaries said Mannie “was one of the most
colorful figures in the history of the city” (p. 56).
An
indefatigable researcher, Norton Stern discovered Mannie
Lowenstein in tracking down the author of a diary written in
1880. The trail led to collateral descendants, friends of
friends, and people still living that in one way or another had
known Mannie at some point in their lives. Stern also checked
Los Angeles newspapers, documents, and the few published studies
that dealt with Mannie or his contemporaries. The book that
emerged from his efforts tells more than the life of one man.
Stern captured Los Angeles as it developed into a major city;
the growth of the city’s Jewish community; the businesses that
promoted the city’s economic life. The book also includes
Mannie’s diary, the account he kept of his departure from Los
Angeles in May 1880 with his father to open a general
merchandise store in Tucson, Arizona Territory. The diary also
contains a brief entry made in 1883, reviewing the success of
the store, Tucson’s Jewish community, and the growth of the town
in just three years.
Stern’s book
succeeds in standing the test of time. He tells an engaging
story that is solidly researched and brings to life someone who
otherwise would be lost in the selectivity of history. History
may deal more with politicians and millionaires, but they would
have been hard pressed to list as many friends as those who
enjoyed the company of Mannie Lowenstein.
JEWISH PIONEERS OF NEW MEXICO, by Tomas
Jaehn. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2003. 100 pp.
Map, Illustrations, Bibliography. Cloth, $39.95. Order from
Museum of New Mexico Press, P.O. Box 2987, Santa Fe, NM 87504.
(505) 827-6455;
www.mnmpress.org.
Reviewed by
Abraham Hoffman (February, 2007)
From October
2000 to December 2004 the Palace of the Governors Museum of New
Mexico, in Santa Fe, featured the exhibition “Jewish Pioneers of
New Mexico, 1821-1917.” The volume under review is the
companion book to the exhibition. It includes color photographs
of items from the exhibition such as phylacteries, wedding
shoes, eyeglasses, dinnerware, candlesticks, and other items
loaned by descendants of pioneer New Mexico Jewish families or
from collections at the Palace of the Governors. The book also
features 150 historic photographs, many of them portrait
pictures of successful Jewish merchants such as Charles Ilfeld,
the Spiegelberg brothers, and others who came from Europe and
found a home in the American Southwest. There are also
photographs of their stores, street scenes, social clubs, a
birthday party, and residences. For anyone who did not visit
the exhibition, the book provides a surrogate experience in
seeing these pioneer Jews, largely of Germanic origin, and what
they accomplished in New Mexico, mostly in its territorial
period.
As seems
inevitable in companion books based on exhibitions, this one has
its virtues and vices. On the plus side are the photographs;
they suggest an image of prosperity, or people who came to an
isolated place, worked hard, and achieved success. Many of the
names will be familiar to people interested in Western Jewish
history, from Seligman to Zeckendorf, plus the names mentioned
above. The book is divided into four chapters—Immigration,
Economic Activities & Politics, Social & Family Life, and Jewish
Faith on the New Mexico Frontier. Henry Tobias, author of
The History of the Jews in New Mexico (1990), provides a
brief Afterword.
Each chapter
begins with a brief summary by Tomas Jaehn, followed by a
portfolio of photographs. Here is where the problems begin.
Jaehn, listed on the title page as compiler and editor rather
than author, doesn’t provide enough information in his summaries
to place the pioneer Jews in a New Mexico political context.
For example, Jaehn states, “There was a so-called ‘Santa Fe
Ring’ in politics, headed by Thomas Benton Catron, and with the
aid of various stalwart individuals in the Republican Party,
Catron became the most dominant politician and business figure
ever to hold sway in New Mexico….The original ring included A.
Staab…” (p. 10) And that’s it. No mention of the general view
of historians that the Santa Fe Ring was a major land-grabbing
group that connived successfully to separate native New
Mexicans, i.e., the Hispanos and Indian people who predated U.S.
conquest, from their ancestral lands. No information is given
as to Abraham Staab’s role in the ring’s machinations.
Also missing
from the text is the Lincoln County War of the 1870s, best known
for the participation of William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. A
conflict between ranchers competing for government contracts to
supply beef to the Army, it is difficult to see how Jewish
merchants could have avoided getting involved. Another
omission, the activities of Las Gorras Blancas (the White
Caps) concerned resistance from Hispanic farmers and ranchers to
Anglo takeover of their communal lands and other property in the
1880s. Again, the question of where Jewish merchants stood in
this controversy remains unaddressed. Jewish participation or,
at the very least, awareness and observation, regarding these
important events in New Mexico history merit examination.
There also
seems to be a problem with the book’s photographs, though it may
come down to a matter of personal taste. Rather than simply
printing pictures, the book’s design is such that intimate
portraits are given lots of space and large scenes are very
small in size. Thus a humorous photo of the Shriners with R.W.
Isaacs dominates p. 67, but the picture on the same page of the
Masonic Lodge Group, in which Isaacs also appears, is 1 ¾ x 3 ¼
inches in size—a bit small for a picture that includes almost
eighty people! Many photographs are superimposed on others,
taking up a corner or more of the larger picture. Captions are
placed on many photos instead of next to them. A worst case
example of design gone wild is the picture of the Albuquerque
Browns Baseball Club on p. 71, featuring Mike Mandell. The
other plays are lost in a grayish wash, leaving Mandell
highlighted as if a spotlight was shining on him. Might as well
have captioned the picture, “Here’s the Jew!”
One other
criticism: In focusing on New Mexico’s Jews within the
constraints of the 1821-1917 time frame, no mention is made of
the research of Professor Stanley Hordes of the University of
New Mexico who is writing a book on crypto-Jews, or of the DNA
project of Father William Sanchez to identify Jewish ancestry
through genetic footprints. Clearly, the history of New Mexico
Jewry is a fascinating topic that offers many opportunities for
research. This book provides a familiar look rather than a
fresh perspective and is therefore of interest to anyone not
knowing much about the pioneer Jews of New Mexico.
JEWISH VOICES
OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH: A Documentary History, 1849-1880,
edited by Ava F. Kahn. Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
2002. 551 pp. Illustrations, Glossary, Maps, Bibliographical
Essay, Index. Cloth, $39.95. Order from Wayne State University
Press, Leonard M. Simons Bldg., 4809 Woodward Avenue, Detroit,
MI 48201-1309 (800) 978-7323.
Reviewed by
Abraham Hoffman (February, 2007)
Hard on the
heels of Ava Kahn’s Jews in the American West, the
companion volume for the “Jews in the American West” exhibit at
the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in 2002, comes Kahn’s
essential documentary history on Jews in the California Gold
Rush. Until now the Jewish experience in the Gold Rush and, in
a larger context, the trans-Mississippi West, has been given
only limited scholarly inquiry. Rudolf Glanz’s The Jews of
California: From the Discovery of Gold Until 1880 (1960),
and Robert E. Levinson’s The Jews in the California Gold Rush
(1978; Kahn did not note that the 1994 edition she cites is a
reprint) have been standard if somewhat dated sources of
information. Authors treating the Gold Rush more generally have
minimized Jewish participation or, while noting Jewish
goldseekers, have not gone into much detail about them. Still,
books such as Jews of the American West (1991), edited by
Moses Rischin and John Livingston, and monographic studies
dealing with Western synagogues, Jews in Western towns,
biographies of Western Jews, and other topics, point the way to
the opportunities in research and publication about the Western
Jewish experience. Kahn provides an excellent bibliographical
essay in Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush, but
it’s icing on the cake when compared to the richness of the
book’s documents.
Most of the
selections in the book consist of written documents, including
excerpts from diaries, memoirs, correspondence, sermons, and
other written materials. However, Kahn liberally defines
“documentary history” and provides photographs, maps, newspaper
advertisements, bills of sale, drawings, wedding invitations,
and even a baker’s announcement about matzoth. The book
organizes the selections into six categories—Looking West, San
Francisco, Personal Struggles, Gold Rush Country, Group
Relations, and Looking Backward and Forward. In all, there are
110 documents, plus 53 illustrations. Kahn includes an
introduction, a historical overview, a glossary, a chronology,
and an index, important tools for readers and researchers alike.
Perhaps the
most valuable aspect of this documentary history is the window
it opens for us to learn at first hand what it meant for Jews to
join in the rush for gold. Prospecting for the precious but
elusive mineral was but one part of the story. For Jews who
kept kosher there was the challenge of avoiding malnutrition
and/or starvation, of sticking to the rules or adapting to harsh
realities. Observant Jews lost no time in establishing
synagogues, but isolated Jewish prospectors found it tempting to
give up religious distinctiveness for inclusion in the larger
community. It is one thing to read in a book about the Gold
Rush that Jewish prospectors endured hardship while crossing the
continent; quite another to read what that hardship involved.
For example, Louis Sloss and his companions encountered on the
trail “in one place, furniture and household ornaments; in
another, a barrel of flour; in another canned meats and bacon;
here, a fine selection of books; there, cooking utensils and
stoves,” all discarded from overloaded wagons. (p. 109) Such
vivid word portraits bring the experiences of the past to life
and enrich our understanding of these pioneer ambitions and
sacrifices.
There is much
more here than goldseeking. Jews wrote to relatives, friends,
and for publication about their successes and failures in
business, of frontier justice, the encounters now and then with
anti-Semitism, the founding of a synagogue, the search for a
rabbi to lead it, the oddities (Benjamin Lloyd writing in 1876
of “Emperor” Joshua Norton), and the various fortunes and
misfortunes of Jewish men, women, and children who fully
participated in this early version of the California dream. The
documents center mainly on San Francisco and the Gold Rush
region. Los Angeles is barely mentioned, a lawless backwater
town in the 1850s whose activities were chronicled by Harris
Newmark. Kahn evidently figured there was no need to include
any excerpts from Newmark’s classic Sixty Years in Southern
California since Los Angeles was at best marginal to the
Gold Rush.
Ava Kahn’s
fine editorial work, the selections themselves, and their vivid
descriptions, make this work a basic source for anyone
interested in learning of the roles Jews played in the Gold
Rush, as a source for research into the topic, or just for the
pleasure of reading so many eyewitness descriptions from a
Jewish point of view. The book is a valuable addition to a
growing body of work on Jews in the West.
Abraham
Hoffman is Book Editor of WSJH. He teaches history at
Los Angeles Valley College.
