On Sept. 17, 1849, 16 Jewish businessmen gathered in a makeshift storeroom on Jackson Street in San Francisco to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Most were immigrants from Bavaria, now the largest land, or state, in Germany, covering much of the country’s southeast. Their canvas-walled structure hosted what is believed to have been the first Jewish religious service on the American West Coast — a modest moment that marked the beginning of a community with an outsized influence on the city’s rise.
In the mid-19th century, nearly 3,000 Jews lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. By 1900, that number had grown to roughly 30,000 — about 9 percent of the city’s population — making it the second-largest Jewish community in the United States after New York.
The Bavarian Jewish Edict of 1813 marked a turning point in the history of Jewish life in that state. It granted Jews emancipation and a range of civil rights, but also placed Jewish communal life under strict governmental control. Rabbis and teachers were now expected to receive formal academic training, rabbinical districts were reorganized by the state and independent rabbinical courts gradually lost their authority.
The edict also contained severe limitations, including freezing the number of officially registered Jewish families in each Bavarian locality at the level of 1813. From 1827 onward, officials inspected the hygiene of mikvahs, and beginning in 1829, synagogue construction projects required approval from a royal architectural commission.
These restrictions contributed to a large wave of Jewish emigration beginning in the 1830s and continuing into the 1920s.
Another major catalyst for immigration to the United States came with the revolutions of 1848 that swept across France, the German states, Austria and Italy. Many intellectuals, political activists and supporters of democratic reform chose exile in the United States, among them numerous reform-minded Jews
The participants in that 1849 Rosh Hashanah service in San Francisco soon split into two separate congregations. By 1855, the Orthodox congregation Sherith Israel had already established a synagogue on Stockton Street. The members of Emanu-El were determined to follow suit — and to make a statement. Their building site was donated by Benjamin Davidson (1823–1878), the California representative of the Rothschild family. Bavarian-born congregational leader Louis Sachs (1820–1890) together with Reform Rabbi Elkan Cohn (1820–1889) laid the cornerstone for a new building at 450 Sutter Street. Both congregations later joined the American Reform movement.
At the time of its completion, Emanu-El’s temple was the largest synagogue west of Chicago and was widely regarded as one of the most beautiful religious buildings in California. It went on to serve as a model for many synagogues throughout the American West.
The first generation of Bavarian-Jewish immigrants in San Francisco produced a remarkable number of colorful and influential figures — far more than their share of the population would suggest. While Salomon Haas, founder of S.F’s influential Haas family, and Levi Strauss are well known, there were other influential figures.
Julius Baum (1833–1894) was born in Diespeck, near Nuremberg, and arrived in Missouri at the age of 16. His life became closely intertwined with one of San Francisco’s most iconic landmarks: the cable car. A founding member of Congregation Emanu-El, Baum built a highly successful career as a merchant and, by the 1880s, was considered one of the wealthiest men in California. He served on the board of the Sutter Street Railway cable car, built in 1877, whose line ran from Market Street past the synagogue to the Presidio district at the Golden Gate.
Benedict Feigenbaum (1834–1896) of Binswangen emigrated to the United States in 1853, first to New York then moving to California in the wake of the Gold Rush. By 1856, at the age of 22, he became a partner in a thriving department store in Eureka. When he married Hannah Löwenthal of Frankfurt in 1866, their wedding was the first to be celebrated in the Sutter Street temple. In 1869, the family relocated permanently to San Francisco, where Feigenbaum, together with his brother Joseph and business partner Louis Schwartzchild, founded the California Notion & Toy Company, for many years the largest toy manufacturer on the West Coast.
Aaron “Honest” Fleishhacker (1820–1898) was an early pioneer and another founding member of Emanu-El. He emigrated from Bavaria to the United States in 1845, initially settling in New Orleans. Drawn west by the Gold Rush, he established a large packaging manufacturing business in San Francisco. His equally successful sons, Mortimer Fleishhacker (1866–1953) and Herbert Fleishhacker (1872–1957), later founded the American River Electric Company, operating several hydroelectric plants. They also funded the predecessor of the city’s modern zoo as well as the Fleishhacker Pool and Bath House, a public swimming facility that remained in operation until 1971.
Jacob Greenbaum (born Grünebaum, 1831–1914, sometimes known as Greenebaum), hailed from a Bavarian territory west of the Rhine. In 1851 at the age of 20 he emigrated to California, first settling in Sacramento before moving to San Francisco in 1860. There he became a partner in H. Cohn & Co., a major importer of clothing and hats, and later entered the securities business. In 1863 he was elected director of Emanu-El, a position he held for an extraordinary 42 years, until 1905; for a time, he also served as its president. Greenebaum was also deeply involved in philanthropic work.
Nathan Michael Reese (born Ries, 1815–1878) came from a family of Jewish traders in Hainsfarth. He emigrated to America at 18, made and lost a fortune on the East Coast, started over, and achieved success through real estate speculation in the rough-and-tumble Minnesota Territory. In 1848, he moved to San Francisco. His years on the frontier earned him a reputation as a tough and determined man; he was frequently deputized by the sheriff as part of a posse to apprehend wanted criminals. A devastating fire in 1851 brought him to the brink of ruin for a second time. With remarkable tenacity, he rebuilt his fortune — yet developed a reputation for extreme frugality. He was said to collect crumbs from the counter at Saulman’s Coffee Salon and to walk for hours rather than spend five cents on a streetcar fare.
The earthquake of April 18, 1906, devastated San Francisco, destroying much of the city and many of its historical records. The disaster marked a turning point. Although the city was rebuilt, the character of its Jewish community was already changing.
In the decades that followed, Jewish life shifted westward to new neighborhoods such as the Fillmore. When Emanu-El opened a new building in 1926, the old synagogue was demolished — a symbolic end to an era. A new generation, fully American in identity, had replaced the immigrants of the Old World. The once-prominent German-Bavarian heritage gradually faded, further eroded by anti-German sentiment during World War I.
Today, efforts are underway to recover this largely forgotten chapter of transatlantic history. Initiatives such as the German-language “Jewish Life in Bavaria” website, launched in 2021 by the House of Bavarian History, are working with partners in California like the Society of California Pioneers to bring these connections back into view — reminding us that the story of the American West is, in no small part, also a Bavarian story.