To understand the history of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, ask a historian.
Fred Rosenbaum, founding director of Lehrhaus Judaica, is arguably the historian of record when it comes to local Jewish community lore. He wrote the book on it. Literally.
Rosenbaum’s 2009 volume, “Cosmopolitans: A Social & Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area,” included fascinating details about the federation. His conclusion: Over the long haul, the federation has had an enormous impact, not only on the local community but also on Jews around the world.
“This last century has been the most eventful in the last 2,000 years,” says Rosenbaum, who is not given to hyperbole. “The federation has been involved at every turn.”
Rosenbaum says the institution’s founding did not mark the beginning of Jewish social action in the Bay Area. For that, one would have to go back to the ’49ers. And he doesn’t mean the football team.
“Philanthropy in the Jewish community starts with the first Jews in the Gold Rush,” he says. “Local Jews wanted to take care of their own and improve the city as a whole. You see the most marvelous acts of philanthropy by individual Jews and organizations like the Eureka Bene-volent Society — today’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services.”
San Francisco landmarks such as the Sutro Baths and Steinhart Aquarium were funded by Bay Area Jewish patrons, all set on beautifying the city. But they also understood that some in the Jewish community faced pressing social needs.
So some 60 years after the Gold Rush, community leaders — many of them successful descendants of those first area Jewish families — formed the federation.
In 1910, Rosenbaum notes, the fledgling organization focused almost entirely on the local Jewish com-munity.
“[The federation] started because the community wanted one overall Jewish address,” Rosenbaum says. “Many people were getting solicitations from various community groups, and some felt it was annoying. They wanted to write one check and have that cover the needs.”
At a time when virulent anti-Semitism was the norm in many societies, local leaders were not blind to the problems Jews faced in foreign lands.
Thus a second organization was established for external needs. The Jewish National Welfare Fund (JNWF) played a significant role from the 1930s through the 1950s in channeling funds to crucial Jewish causes overseas.
Rosenbaum cites several key accomplishments of the federation in those early years. One was the resettlement of émigrés from Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939, organized largely by the federation’s Committee of Service to Émigrés.
“There were thousands of them,” he says of the émigrés. “Some were intellectuals, artists, musicians, businessmen. Some were working-class
people. They constituted 7 percent of the Bay Area Jewish community by the end of the ’30s.”
One of them was Ludwig Altman, who served as the organist and choir director for San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El from 1937 to 1986.
In the early years, the Bay Area did not have the sizeable Jewish population or infrastructure of today. Whereas now the region supports more than a dozen Jewish day schools, as recently as 1964 there were none.
“They were afraid it would ghettoize the community,” Rosenbaum says of the conventional wisdom of the leaders at the time. “The emphasis on education came later.”
The same could be said of the community’s support for Israel. Prior to 1948, although federation donors assisted Jews in the Holy Land, many were skeptical about political Zionism.
Once the State of Israel became a reality, that old thinking quickly disappeared.
“The turning point comes in 1955, when the JNWF merged with the federation,” Rosenbaum recounts. “So when you give your check, some of it goes overseas and to Israel, and a portion [goes to] local needs. This is how the modern federation is created.”
The organization’s Israel connection strengthened over time. The federation was the first in the nation to set up an office in Israel, as well as an infrastructure — called the Amuta — for identifying and funding grantees there.
The partnership took bold steps, such as funding projects in Israeli Arab neighborhoods, from well baby clinics to computer learning centers.
“That was quite controversial at the time,” Rosenbaum notes. “I lead many overseas study tours to Israel, and each time we’ve gone to a program that the federation supports in the Arab sector. It makes a very big impact for visitors to see the work on the ground.”
Though he usually takes the long view, Rosenbaum says the federation has changed since he came to the Bay Area in the 1970s.
He likens the organization’s adaptability to “turning the tanker around.”
“The older generation was philanthropic, but they didn’t have the same concern for accountability,” he says. “In my generation they demanded more accountability and control. The younger generation is of a different mindset; they are coming up with new ideas and initiatives.”
Rosenbaum adds: “It bears little resemblance to the federation of 1927. It really has evolved and adapted, so there’s a lot of reason for hope.”