Earlier this year, J. launched an audio oral history project commemorating 130 years of our reporting on Jewish life in the Bay Area. We asked community members to leave us voicemails about how their family ended up in Northern California and published several of them in April.
Due to popular demand, we kept the line open and collected another batch of your stories.
In these six new voicemails, we hear about families that made their way to the Bay Area from Eastern Europe, China and elsewhere. These are stories of Jewish computer engineers, confectioners and construction workers, all of whom were drawn to our region’s ecosystems of redwoods and innovations.
If you’d like to share your family’s history with us, you can still call 415-263-7200 ext. 953 and leave a voicemail.
These transcripts have been edited for length and clarity.
Jillian Osheroff — ~1890
I wanted to share how my family got to Northern California, specifically on my dad’s side. His mom’s family, my grandmother, came around 1890-1900, from Romania to San Francisco specifically. And there was some involvement in the 1906 earthquake.
My dad’s dad, my grandfather, and his family came to San Francisco through Angel Island around 1940 from Harbin, China. His parents met in Harbin. My great-grandfather was part of the soybean industry there. He was very religious.
My grandfather was part of Beitar, which was a big Zionist movement. He did gymnastics. There was a whole community there. And then, when the Japanese were invading that part [of China], they decided to move. They had family in Cincinnati. When they landed in San Francisco through Angel Island, they went to the Midwest.
And then when they got there, they were like, “This ain’t it.”
So, they came back to San Francisco, and that’s where they stayed. My great-grandfather, apparently, was in the candy business then. My grandfather eventually opened a carpeting business, and that’s what he did, maintaining Modern Orthodoxy when they were in San Francisco.
They were members of Adath Israel and would walk to temple, and that was their whole community.
On the other side of my family, they came a little earlier from what is now mainly Belarus, and were living on the East Coast in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They made their way out here when they were quite young. My grandmothers actually knew each other as tweens.
Joyce Kurtz — 1856
How did they get to San Francisco? [My great-great grandfather] Mark Zuretsky came from Poland, someplace near Warsaw, and came to New York in about 1851. He met Dora Witmark, possibly Witkowski, who was supposedly from Prussia, in New York.
They got married. In 1854, their first daughter, Sarah, was born in New York. In 1856, my great-grandmother Rebecca was born in San Francisco. They had another child born in San Francisco. Then they moved up to Oregon.
Four children were born in Oregon. I believe they were in Portland. And in 1866, their next child was born. Lily was born in Virginia. And in 1868, their last child, Fanny, was born in Mississippi.
I know that Mark had three siblings who also came to the United States, who all settled in the South. When the Civil War was over, or nearly over, they got to Virginia and settled there. Mark died there. It was my grandparents who were the ones who came back to California in 1923.
So this family traveled long before times were easy to travel. We have always wondered how they did it. I know that it was very expensive to travel from New York to San Francisco in the 1850s.
And I can’t imagine how they had the money or continued on with their travels. So a great mystery, and it’s been fun to do research for them, and it’s been fun telling you.
Steve Held — 1923
My dad’s side came over [to the U.S.] in the early 1900s. My grandfather came through Ellis Island in 1906 but didn’t make his way to Oakland until about 1923.
He came by way of Kansas City, which is where my dad was born, before finally settling in Oakland about 1923.
The first member of my family that I know about that came to Oakland was my dad’s uncle, George Held. He worked in a cigar store in downtown Oakland. He later moved the family to Lakeport, Lake County, up north, in about 1922 after their oldest child was born. Had two more children after that. They were [also] born in Lakeport.
Another one of my dad’s uncles was Joseph Held. He came to Ellis Island in 1912 at about age 15 or 16. He made his way out to Oakland pretty quickly. He was one of the co-founders of the Peerless Stages, a bus system that ran from Oakland to San Jose and Santa Cruz and points in between that was in business into the 2000s.
Joe and Dave, I believe, worked for the Oakland Tribune as printing press operators or in the production department for the Oakland Tribune in the 1930s and 1940s.
Nina Wouk — 1956
Our dad got his second job after he got his doctorate in 1956. The company gave him a choice of Waltham, Massachusetts, or Mountain View, California. He had never been west of the Rockies and chose Waltham, Massachusetts, because it was near the family. When they flew him to Mountain View on a business trip, he changed his mind. He said he thought he’d made the wrong choice, but it was too late to go back and make a different one.
So my sister and I spent our childhood moving west every time dad got a chance. We always thought we’d been cheated of our California girlhood. So my sister moved to San Francisco as soon as she got out of college. And she was born in ’51. So that would have been like ’72, ’73.
She established a foothold in San Francisco. I visited her a lot from Texas.
Then in ’80, I got hepatitis and couldn’t get better in Texas because it was too hot. So me and my then partner, now spouse, and our best friend came out here on a prospecting trip, somehow convinced ourselves we could afford it. I flew out and my sister, who was then not living in California, met me and helped me tell a bunch of lies so we could rent a place.
The other two drove from Texas in a U-Haul, hauling a car with two dogs and five cats. I had somehow gotten a place rented by the time they showed up.
It was a bit of a saga. Now that my sister’s retired, we both live in the Bay Area 10 minutes from each other, and we’re getting to go to shul together in our old age. So, we’re having our California girlhood a little bit late.
That’s the quick version of how me and my family ended up here. Me and my spouse are still together, our best friends still living near us too.
Steven Backman — 1956
My name is Stephen Backman, and I’m a second generation San Franciscan. My mother and my siblings were all born in the city. My parents originally met in 1956 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on California Street at a dance.
They were married at Temple Emanu-El in 1957.
My parents, my grandparents, my great-grandmother, my brother and I, and my two sisters have all attended events at the JCC for many years.
We were active members of Congregation Beth Israel-Judea on Brotherhood Way in San Francisco for over 40 years.
I love living in the city and call it my home.
Irina Korman — 1992
My name is Irina Korman. My family and I came to San Francisco in 1992 from the Soviet Union.
We were granted refugee status through the Jewish community and that’s how we were able to come to the United States. We left the Soviet Union because of the extreme antisemitism over the period of our lives and lives of our ancestors. So we’re extremely grateful to be now in Northern California.