The stones are lonely in the Jackson Pioneer Jewish Cemetery, where the Jews underground outnumber those living above.
At least 32 Jews are buried there, with their deaths dating back to the California Gold Rush, which brought thousands of opportunity seekers to this undeveloped area in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada starting in the late 1840s. But you’d be hard-pressed to find that many Jewish residents of Jackson today, said Arnie Zeiderman, a retired doctor who maintains the historic cemetery in the absence of a local Jewish congregation in the town of 5,100.
On May 18, Zeiderman convened about two dozen people from neighboring areas on the cemetery’s grassy hilltop, shaded by native oaks and cypress trees, to share the history of the 19th-century Jewish community and its role in shaping Jackson, the seat of rural Amador County, an hour’s drive east of Sacramento. The cemetery was founded as Givoth Olam, or Hills of Eternity, in 1857.
Joining the event was Fay Levinson, an Aptos resident and a board member of the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks in the West, which formed in 1962 through the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley (now the Magnes). Her late husband, historian Robert E. Levinson, was a key figure in the commission. In 1965, he undertook extensive research into the pioneer Jewish communities that left as their legacy the seven historic burial sites dotting the central Sierra Nevada foothills, from Marysville to Sonora.
His interest in the subject converged with that of the late Seymour Fromer, the Magnes co-founder, who funded the research and in 1976 published Levinson’s book, “The Jews in the California Gold Rush.” In 1996, the commission also published “A Traveler’s Guide to Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries” by Susan Morris, in an effort to supply biographies of the individuals buried in them.
For many years after his book’s publication, Levinson’s husband, who taught history and helped found the Jewish studies program at San Jose State University, would bring work parties of interested students up to Jackson and other cemeteries to weed, clean and explore, she said.
But since his death in 1980, “there has been no one to take up the reins,” Levinson said. “The board members make site visits, but it is a sporadic thing that groups go up there to work.”
That’s one reason why Zeiderman, who lives in nearby Sutter Creek, has stepped up to the task. The other is that he wants people 一 Jews and non-Jews alike — to understand the relationship of these Jewish communities to the counties where they lived.
There’s no point in maintaining a cemetery without fostering an appreciation of how these people contributed to the county and the state overall, Zeiderman said. “You’ve got to weave them into the history of the community.”
Prominent Jewish families with names like Zellerbach, Haas, Dinkelspiel and Strauss all got their start in Gold Rush towns like Jackson, he said.
From its earliest history, “Jackson has been good to the Jews,” Zeiderman said. The nascent city, founded in 1848 as a mining and supply town for the many passing through, deeded a group of 35 Jews a plot of land for a synagogue. Those Jews dedicated their burial ground first, in 1854, signaling that the strenuous migration from Europe to California, by land or sea, had not erased their recognition of a sacred duty.
Three years later, the members of Jackson’s now-defunct Congregation B’nai Israel, who had to borrow a Torah from San Francisco to celebrate the High Holidays, dedicated the first synagogue in the Mother Lode, Zeiderman said, referencing the famed strip within the Sierra Nevada crowded with gold deposits.
The building was used for only a dozen years, as gold fever waned and Jews who gained an economic foothold moved on to larger towns or cities. But the commercial structures built by the prosperous Jewish miners and merchants still line the streets of downtown Jackson.
Today, the former synagogue is now the site of Jackson Elementary School and is marked by a plaque, California Historical Landmark No. 865. On weekdays, students run right by it, most oblivious to the fact that a few hundred yards away, the Jewish cemetery holds the remains of children their own age — and younger — whose bodies did not withstand the rigors of pioneer life.
“I’ve taken to visiting the grave of one particular child, Jacob Fabien, who died in 1862, less than 3 weeks old,” event attendee Jolie Chain told J. “I’ve grown strangely attached to him, maybe because his surname has French roots, like my own.”
The last burial in Givoth Olam took place in 1921, and it was rededicated as a historic site in 1976. When Zeiderman’s elder son Matt attended Amador High School in nearby Sutter Creek, he and his Eagle Scout troop chose to restore the cemetery as their community service project. They cleaned up decades of nature’s debris, scrubbed moss from the stones and mowed the tall wild grasses.
Today, Matt Zeiderman is himself a doctor, with a practice in Napa, but the wild grass just keeps on growing. And as Levinson said, “the stones are getting older.”
Arnie Zeiderman said he envisions the site as a place for people of all ages to visit.
“The cemetery is very accessible,” he told J. “I want folks to know that they are welcome here.”
Chain, who is originally from Los Angeles, noted that when she first started visiting Amador County she would sometimes stay at the Foxes Inn, a Sutter Creek B&B that was originally the home of Nathan Brinn, a founding officer of the Jackson congregation.
“When you move to a place where you don’t have roots, it’s gratifying to learn that our people do have history here, that we were part of the development of this place, though it’s not generally talked about,” Chain said. “Learning this history represented a shift for me, as a newer resident of this county. Now I feel I have something to stand up with, should anyone challenge whether I belong.”