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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who died on Sept. 29, didn’t make her religion a focal point of her public or political life. But the Jewish community knew her as one of its own, and that’s the way this publication reported on the San Francisco native from the beginning of her career.

Actually, it started even earlier than that.

The first mention of then-Dianne Goldman is the notice of her confirmation at Temple Emanu-El in 1949.

We also carried news of her somewhat unorthodox wedding in 1956. She was 22.

“Now honeymooning in Mexico are Jack Berman and his bride, the former Dianne Goldman, who eloped to Los Angeles, where they were married at Temple Israel December 2. Original plans of the couple called for a formal wedding next summer.”

Her regular appearances in our pages began after her election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in November 1969. Strangely, we didn’t report on the election itself. The first notice of the change from “candidate” Feinstein to “supervisor” Feinstein was in a short news story later that month headlined: “Dianne Feinstein Joins Harvest Ball Cast.” The Harvest Ball was a B’nai B’rith event where you could win a television or even a new car.

As Feinstein became more active in public life, we wrote about her quite a bit, often in connection to the Jewish community. As a supervisor in 1977, for example, she led a board effort to press the state Legislature to prohibit the wearing of Nazi uniforms in California.

Her proposal followed the “establishment and subsequent destruction of the Rudolph Hess Book Store in San Francisco’s Sunset District. The bookstore, set up by members of the San Francisco ‘National Socialist White Workers’ Party,’ caused fear and tension” among the members of Congregation B’nai Emunah across the street.

“I’m very happy that my temple has been the catalyst that could have brought this action,” B’nai Emunah Rabbi Ted Alexander said after the unanimous vote. The board’s recommendation was sent to the Legislature, though it apparently didn’t get further than that.

Feinstein was the first female president of the Board of Supervisors, a role that ended when she was thrust into the mayorship following the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk on Nov. 27, 1978.

That tragedy changed the city — and the trajectory of her political career.

Two years later, on the eve of her successful citywide election as mayor, our then-reporter Phil Bronstein wrote this about a politician who was making history both as a woman and a Jew.

“Victory morning she was tired but radiant. After three tries during a 10-year political career, Dianne Goldman Feinstein, 46, had been elected San Francisco’s first woman mayor and the City’s first Jewish mayor since 1890.

“The night before, she had been chugging ginger ale to settle her stomach during the tense vote count. Now, she was bubbling with unrestrained joy.

“But the room hushed as she pulled out a telegram she’d just gotten from her rival, Quentin Kopp. The crossfire had become so heavy between them that the mud was still drying. What would the only person who could match her for prim propriety say to Dianne? She scanned it briefly and her face softened. Then she read the beginning of the telegram out loud: ‘Mazel tov,’ Kopp had begun.

“Despite her Catholic school background, Mrs. Feinstein’s identification has always been Jewish. It was her father, a distinguished surgeon at Mount Zion Hospital, who gave her some sage advice when she began her political career on the Board of Supervisors in 1969: ‘No matter what,’ he told her, ‘you’ll always be regarded as a Jew by the community at large.’

“Young Dianne was told she could choose her own religion. She chose Judaism (‘l wanted to be a Jew…l am a Jew’) and politics.”

Feinstein’s faith apparently was not a factor in Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale’s decision not to select her as his running mate in 1984, according to a guest column by Rhonda Abrams.

“A woman — a Jewish woman — was seriously being considered for a spot on the ticket of a major national political party. A woman was indeed chosen. But not a Jewish woman. And the question arises: Did her being Jewish keep Feinstein from getting the nod? Are we still years or decades away from a Jew being able to get the broad-based support necessary for a national office?”

Abrams decided the answer was no. Geraldine Ferraro was just a more sensible choice.

“Ferraro far better exemplified the themes that Walter Mondale had chosen as his focus: stable family life, immigrant beginnings, middle America. Feinstein, thrice married, from Pacific Heights and mayor of San Francisco, definitely was not the image of middle America. Feinstein clearly would have been less believable posing in the supermarket check-out line.”

A 1986 story by Tamar Kaufman and Fern Allen discussed Feinstein’s Jewish background in the context of a visit she was making to Israel.

“Feinstein, whose mother was a Russian Orthodox Christian, was asked her opinion of the Israeli law under which, should she ever decide to immigrate to Israel, she would not be considered Jewish.

“‘I’ve been confirmed in the Jewish faith when I was 13 years old, and am a member of a temple in San Francisco and always have been,’ she responded while in Israel. ‘The world will look at me and regard me as a Jew. I have very little to say about whether Israel does or does not regard me as a Jew.’

“Later, in San Francisco, she noted that she had long been aware of the Israeli controversy over the legal definition of a Jew. That definition, she contended, is arbitrary.

“‘What I am, I am, and how I came to it is how I came to it,’ she said. ‘There’s not very much I can do about it.’”

At Feinstein’s memorial service on Oct. 5 at San Francisco City Hall, Rabbi Jonathan Singer of Congregation Emanu-El described her with words that ring true.

“In Hebrew,” he said, “we call her an eshet chayil, a woman of valor.”