It’s been home to vegetable farms, a vital Jewish community, and the origins of Japantown. It later became known as the “Harlem of the West” with its many nightclubs and African-Americans migrating to work in the local shipyards.
Now San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood is undergoing a new renaissance as the Historic Fillmore Jazz Preservation District.
One of the major engines driving the Fillmore’s rebirth is the nonprofit Jazz Heritage Center, a cultural arts center supported in part through the collaborative effort of some of the Bay Area’s leading Jewish foundations. At the forefront of this new trend in collaboration is the Koret Foundation, which is finding ways to leverage giving and create new nonprofit partnerships.
“Our charitable institutions are learning to collaborate in order to heighten the impact of our philanthropic dollars,” says Koret President Tad Taube. “By working together, we are able to think even more creatively, and to support organizations at levels we could not otherwise reach.”
Housed within a multi-use complex, the Jazz Heritage Center was formed to celebrate the contributions of the diverse communities that have settled in the Fillmore District — particularly blacks, Jews, and Japanese Americans. The complex — which is comprised of Yoshi’s Jazz Club, 1300 Restaurant, an art gallery and a private media center — was conceived as the leading driver of economic redevelopment in this historic and demographically diverse neighborhood.
Trumpeting tales of the neighborhood back in the day, the Jazz Heritage Center has focused on residents and their interests in various periods.
Last year’s “Jews of the Fillmore” exhibition, conceived by Koret Foundation Program Officer Adam Hirschfelder, brought the center together with Lehrhaus Judaica and the Judah L. Magnes Museum to showcase scenes from the former hub of Jewish life in the Bay Area.
Its current exhibition, “Zackheim, The Art of Prophetic Justice” is a second collaboration orchestrated by Hirschfelder. The exhibit, which runs through Dec. 30, profiles the life and work of Bernard Zakheim, a Polish Jewish immigrant known for his direction of the Works Progress Administration murals in Coit Tower. The work represents a cross-pollination of Jewish and Latino cultures.
Zakheim, an immigrant from Poland, was a friend and colleague of the prominent Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The colorful Coit Tower murals depicted common working people in a style remarkably similar to Rivera’s iconic approach. The two artists influenced each other heavily and their shared sympathy for the working man attracted great notoriety during the 1930s.
Zakheim’s other work of this period showed the influence of Mayan and Inca geometric themes that he had discovered while working with Rivera in Mexico.
Another serendipitous marriage of the Jewish and Hispanic cultures was celebrated with a live performance at Yoshi’s last August with the Idelsohn Society’s re-release of “Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos,” a 1961 recording of Latin and jazz greats performing Latinized versions of traditional Jewish tunes such as “Hava Negillah.”
The evolution of the Zakheim exhibition dates back to 2007, when Koret’s Hirschfelder recommended that the foundation make a capital grant to the Jazz Heritage Center. During that process, he spoke with the center’s executive director, Peter Fitzsimmons, who described the Fillmore neighborhood as one of the city’s most heavily populated Jewish quarters during the early 1900s. Fitzsimmons mentioned that he was interested in publicizing the area’s rich historical past.
Hirschfelder contacted Fred Rosenbaum, founding director of Lehrhaus Judaica, then at work on his recently released book on the history of Jews in the Bay Area, “Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the Bay Area.” Rosenbaum confirmed the Jewish-Fillmore connection, having devoted part of his book to the subject, and agreed that the idea was ripe for an exhibit.
“The Jews of the Fillmore” ran at the Jazz Heritage Center from July to September, 2009. Rosenbaum soon proposed mounting a follow-up exhibit featuring the work of Zakheim, who had lived and taught in the Fillmore district between the World Wars.
“We have witnessed visitors lining up three-deep to view these exhibits, and Fred Rosenbaum spoke to standing-room-only audiences when he talked about the Zakheim show,” Fitzsimmons says. “We’re engaging community youth groups and nearby schools — including our neighbor, the Jewish Community High School of the Bay — to organize field trips to the JHC.”
The Zakheim exhibit, created by Lehrhaus Judaica, drew support not just from the Koret Foundation, but also the Laszlo N. Tauber Family Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, Fred Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation, the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, the Bancroft Library and U.C. Berkeley.
“Our goal is to contribute to the Fillmore District’s desire to be viewed as a true San Francisco icon, along with Fisherman’s Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge and Coit Tower,” Fitzsimmons says. “We need the support of foundations, along with memberships and art patrons, to realize our complete vision for the JHC and enhance our ability to serve the jazz community as well as our neighborhood.”