I flew from Oakland into the Burbank airport early Thursday morning, where I was met by Ken Wilson, who is known in the publishing business as a media escort. Ken’s specialty is taking authors to book stores to do something called a “meet and greet” or ferrying writers around to events.

The idea was to get around to as many bookstores as possible, rush in and talk to the manager, and tell him or her about my new book, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant named Isaias Hellman Created California. Since Hellman was such a giant figure in the making of Los Angeles – he started the first successful bank, was the largest shareholder of the private water company, donated the land for the founding of the University of Southern California, funded the massive trolley system of the 20^th century and much more – we were hoping the stores would get excited about the topic and increase orders.

One of the things that struck me most on Thursday about Los Angeles was the dearth of independent bookstores. I live in Berkeley and there are so many independent bookstores in the Bay Area that you can find one in virtually any neighborhood. If I think just about my stomping grounds in a small section of the East Bay, I can count eight bookstores alone. And this is even after the closure of the world-renowned Cody’s, which had two East Bay branches.

But Los Angeles seems filled with dozens of mega Barnes and Nobles and Borders. Of course, the city is a car town and small shopping districts are everywhere, so it makes sense there are so many chain stores. But they have a different vibe than independents. There’s so much merchandise and so much gloss and so much emphasis on the bestsellers that all personality is stripped from the stores.

Still, Wilson has been taking authors around for many years and he has built up good relationships everywhere. I was pleasantly pleased by the reception store managers had to Towers of Gold, particularly when they heard I was the great great granddaughter of Isaias Hellman. And that is the reaction I have gotten wherever I go. Since we are a nation of immigrants, we are all interested in our roots. Why did our ancestors come to the United States? What was their experience like? Was it hard? Was the struggle worth it?

I was fortunate that my relative was a pack rat and saved virtually every document he could. In looking through the 50,000 pages of documents of his, I found receipts for the purchase of newspapers, receipts from his wife’s dressmaker, and doodles on paper along with business correspondence and personal letters. So when I went to explore my family’s roots, I had concrete material to work with.

Los Angeles is such a forward-thinking city that it does not have a well-defined sense of its own history. San Francisco, in contrast, celebrates its historic moments frequently. Just this week the newspapers have been running long stories about the tragedies of 1978, when 900 members of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple committed mass suicide and Dan While assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. The city held an enormous celebration to commemorate the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire.

There aren’t as many of those moments in LA. Ancient history is the time when Britney Spears sheared off her hair or drove her car into the papparazi. So when I began to rattle off the ways Isaias Hellman built this city, peoples’ eyes grew big. I literally watched as they started to understand that he did business with Pio Pico, a former governor of Mexican California, for whom a boulevard is named. Or that William Mulholland, associated with the city’s water company (and the movie Chinatown) worked for Hellman. They got excited at the connections between the past and the present.

So in a strange way, Los Angeles’ mega stores and impermanence worked to my advantage. I found that a city always searching for the next big thing actually has an interest in its roots, if given the opportunity.

Frances Dinkelspiel, author of Towers of Gold, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy. This is her parting post. Want more? Buy her book!

The post Searching for Permanance in a Barnes and Noble appeared first on Jewcy.

While lots of other states have outlawed marriage between same sex couples, this is the first time that the rights of gays have been rolled back. More than 18,000 couples got married this spring and summer after the California Supreme Court overturned an earlier amendment that banned on same-sex marriage. Those marriages are now in limbo, and future gay marriages are again taboo.

Now I have many friends who are gay and who have been involved in long term relationships. Many of them had filed for domestic partner status with the state or various cities. Some of them had even rushed down to San Francisco’s City Hall in 2004 after Gavin Newsom ordered the city government to start marrying people.

Some of these people took advantage of the brief opening in California law to get legally married. And as a straight person, it seemed strange at first to refer to the partner of a friend as her wife. But seconds later, it was wonderful, because she really was her wife. She wasn’t some other kind of semantically-challenged partner — but an actual wife. It seemed revolutionary and obvious at the same time.

That right is now gone. And it has hit people hard. While much of California is delighted over Obama’s election, residents here also have a sense that we are a state of bigots, of one group willing to deny others their rights.

Of course California has a long history of denying people their rights. In the mid-19^th century, the Chinese who had come to the west to build the transcontinental railroad were vilified. They were called “Celestials” and were ascribed horrible habits and morals. In 1871, in fact, residents in the small city of Los Angeles rioted against the Chinese. They lynched and killed 19 Chinese men, even hanging some of them from a gate post. California – and the country’s – history is littered with violent and mean acts against minorities. The passage of Proposition 8 is one more example of American intolerance.

On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court decided to review the legality of Proposition 8 using that rationale. The court wants to determine if the proposition uses majority rule to strip rights of a minority group. That action is considered discrimination and it is outlawed in the state constitution.

As soon as the judges indicated they would consider the case, however, conservative activists threatened to start a recall election against any judge who voted to overturn the gay marriage ban. That is blackmail.

Part of California’s problem is that it opened up the workings of government to its citizens in 1911 when it elected the Progressive Republican governor Hiram Johnson. He had run on a platform that criticized the dominance of the Southern Pacific Railroad and other business interests. To lesson the grip of industry, California offered citizens the right to recall politicians and circulate petitions and submit them to become law. Johnson also backed women’s suffrage and the direct election of U.S. Senators,

But the system has gone haywire in California in so many ways. Legislators now shy away from making hard decisions and passing tough bills. Instead, they punt and put the issues on the ballot.

Citizens can circulate initiative petitions. If they collect enough signatures the petitions are placed on the ballot to be voted on. This process has become an industry in California. Professional organizations hire people to collect signatures. All it takes is enough money. Now if you go to the grocery store, chances are that you will be approached by someone carrying a batch of various petitions on a variety of subjects and asked to sign.

But when these petitions are approved by voters and become law, they cannot be changed by elected officials, so bad laws stay on the books forever. The only recourse is the courts.

It will be at least six months before the California Supreme Court decides the legality of Proposition 8. We have the inauguration of Barak Obama in January to look forward to. I just hope that the generous nature of California, rather than the bigoted one, ultimately prevails.

Frances Dinkelspiel, author of Towers of Gold, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

The post California’s Politics Can Be Generous or Bigoted appeared first on Jewcy.

It was all part of research for my book that explores the life of my great great grandfather Isaias Hellman, one of the greatest Pacific Coast financiers of the late 19^th and 20^th century. He went from being a store clerk to the head of Wells Fargo Bank and was dubbed "the Richest Jew in the West."

I came to this work after years of being a newspaper reporter. When I set out to write this book eight years ago, I had one overriding goal: to write something with enough heft that it contributed to historical knowledge of California.

Although my book has just been out about a week, in many ways my dreams have already come true. I have been invited to speak at the world-renowned Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, and the California Historical Society in San Francisco. My other engagements include bookstores, synagogues, Jewish book fairs, and Litquake, San Francisco’s very hip 10-day literary festival.

But as the publication date for my book, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, grew closer, one thing occupied my mind. It wasn’t the reviews, it wasn’t book sales. Instead, I pondered  a serious question: What was I going to wear on my book tour?

Now, I am a pants and sweater kind of gal who occasionally puts on slightly nicer pants and sweaters when I am going out. But for a book tour, I must project a more authoritative image, a vision of a serious researcher/scholar, someone who knows her stuff. At the same time, I don’t want to appear too stuffy or proper.

What outfit can scale all those heights?

My search began this summer when I was five pounds lighter. (A mistake, I know, but I was convinced I would keep up the pace of my exercise schedule.) A few years ago I bought a pair of Billy Blue jeans at a store in Santa Cruz and they have been my favorite pants ever since. They are not easy to find, so when I stumbled upon another pair in a store in Healdsburg in August, I pounced. On the recommendation of the sales clerk, I bought a size 8 instead of 10. (I can still squeeze into them, but sitting for any length of time is not comfortable.)

But jeans, even nice ones, won’t do for most appearances. So a few weeks ago I headed off to Bloomingdales in San Francisco. Contrary to its reputation, Bloomingdales can be affordable if you know how to work the system. The store holds sales every few weeks and it further entices Bloomingdale credit card holders by offering "insiders" an additional 15% discount. If you hunt, you can find clothes at 50% off.

I gave myself plenty of time to look, for there is nothing more aggravating than a sense of pressure while shopping. I am usually good for two hours, and then I get overwhelmed by the glare of the lights, the pulsating music, and the crowds. But in those initial two hours, watch out! I am a woman on a mission and I am determined to work my way from floor to floor.

That day was incredibly satisfying. I found a Donna Karan black business suit greatly reduced. The jacket, originally priced at $450, was on sale for $150. The pants I got for about $100. Not bad for a formal outfit – and perfect for standing behind a podium. Then it was off to Nordstrom’s for some shoes to wear with the suit. I found a pair of wedge pumps by a brand I had never heard of, Me Too. These $88 shoes are incredibly comfortable (and are on sale now, darn it!)

But color, I needed color, to offset that somber and serious look. My days of splurging were over so I headed to the Gap, where I bought this orange ruffled sweater. My purchase coincided with a spate of cold weather in the Bay Area, so I have already been wearing the sweater non-stop.

So now I am outfitted, but will my sharp look help sell any books? It’s too early to know. But I have found it fun to play against type. (What type? Nerdy academic.) When I did a reading on Friday at Book Passage, one of the Bay Area’s best independent bookstores, I decided to not to dress the part of a scholar. I put on a black and white Theory jersey dress and gray thigh high boots from Barney’s. (I bought those at a discount store.) My 16-year old daughter said I looked like Britney Spears. (and not in a good way)

But there was something incredibly liberating standing in front of 50 people in a short slinky dress talking about how Hellman stopped a bank run in Los Angeles in 1893.  He may have wowed the world with his financial prowess. I may impress a few with my scholarship. But I know I stopped the show with those thigh-high boots. And as every woman knows, how you feel is what you project.

Frances Dinkelspiel, author of Towers of Gold, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

The post What Does a Nice Jewish Girl Wear on Book Tour? appeared first on Jewcy.

These weren’t half-baked, thrown together at the last minute versions of Christmas, either, sops to a dominant holiday. These were full blown celebrations, with tall trees decorated in tinsel and lights, Santa Claus decorations around the house, and sumptuous meals.

And the presents! There were heaps and heaps of them, the most fabulous gifts money could buy. Sometimes you couldn’t even see the carpet around the Christmas tree because packages were piled so high.

It was not until I was in college that I it occurred to me that it was strange that Jews celebrated Christmas. Many of my new friends in freshman year were from the East Coast, and when I described our annual Christmas festivities, they looked at me with strange expressions. "But that’s a Christian holiday!" I heard over and over. "A proper Jewish Christmas is Chinese food and a movie!" they said.

Their horror over celebrating Christmas was just part of a larger discussion of what it meant to be a Jew. My boyfriend at the time had been raised in New York and was Modern Orthodox. He and his father went to shul every Saturday, hats clamped firmly on their heads. My brothers had not even had bar mitzvahs. I only went to temple on occasion.

We were assimilationists, I heard. You West Coast Jews are fakers, others told me.

I still defended my right to celebrate Christmas, but doubt had creeped into the discussion. As the years went on, I still did a full-blown Christmas (I had two daughters by then) but it gradually became more of a hassle than fun.

But while researching my book on Isaias Hellman, my great great grandfather, I learned that my Christmas-loving, never-going to temple ways had deep historical roots that had more to do with adapting to life in America than rejecting Judaism.

Hellman came from Bavaria to Los Angeles in 1859 and fought hard to retain his spiritual connection. There were fewer than 60 Jews in LA then, and no temple or rabbi, so the community worshiped in rented adobes. Hellman helped raise the funds to construct the city’s first synagogue, B’Nai B’rith, in 1873. It is known today as the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

Hellman opened a dry goods store in 1865 and was faced with his first moral dilemma: should he keep it open or closed on Saturday, the Sabbath?  He ultimately decided to conform to American business habits rather than insist on his traditions.

His family also celebrated Christmas. While rummaging through a Jewish newspaper, I saw a notice that Hellman’s daughter gave a "Santa Claus" party in San Francisco in 1897. When I perused more, I saw advertisements in the paper from San Francisco’s leading department stores, suggesting that Jewish readers buy their Christmas presents there.

It turns out that Jews in California have been celebrating Christmas since the 1850s. But they did not consider it a holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Christmas had deep roots in Europe, where it was a winter holiday.  Massachusetts did not make Christmas an official holiday until 1856. The holiday – and Santa Claus – only became popular in the late 1830s when Clarke Moore’s poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas," popular. So an automatic assumption that Christmas = Jesus is wrong.

So my research has assured me that my family is not rejecting Judaism. We are just celebrating it a uniquely American way. Or maybe a way that is just unique to the West Coast. But there are cultural reasons for our celebration, not religious ones.

I think this year may be my best Christmas yet.

Frances Dinkelspiel, author of Towers of Gold, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

The post California’s Christmas Jews appeared first on Jewcy.

While it is the middle of November and temperatures on the East Coast drop to a chilly 35 degrees at night, California is blazing. Wind-whipped wildfires are raging in the hills and valleys of southern California, burning mobile homes, mansions, hospitals and business parks along the way. More than 700 structures now lay in charred, smoking heaps on the ground.

This is nothing new for California. From the time of its admission to the United States in 1850, conquering nature has always been one of California’s challenges. In its early years, the state’s sheer distance from the population centers of the U.S. made getting here a feat of physical daring. It could take a clipper ship a year to navigate around the Horn. Wagon trains moved just as slowly as they creaked their way from St. Louis, across the alkaline plains of Utah, and up the forbidding slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Inevitably, settlers died along the way,

But the trip was worth the effort, for California has always been a place of promise. Lured by the glint of gold, men came and then stayed to reinvent themselves. Women came to find husbands, and a more socially liberating society.

For Jews, California offered a place free of the discrimination and anti-Semitism so common in central Europe. By 1860, there were about 10,000 Jews in California, with most clustered in the state’s only true city, San Francisco. From the start, these Jews were an integral part of society, serving as city council members and teachers, merchants and traders. California was still so undeveloped and so consumed in its pursuit of wealth that society was wide open. While discrimination against the Chinese was fierce, Jews basked in new-found freedoms. Unlike their co-religionists on the East Coast, California Jews did not have to fight their way into an existing social structure

I am a fifth generation Californian, a descendant of a man who came from Bavaria in 1859. He settled in Los Angeles when it was more Mexican pueblo than American city, when Spanish was the primary language and more people spoke French than English. His name was Isaias Hellman and he, like countless others before him, had come to California to reinvent himself.

Hellman started Los Angeles’ first successful bank and prospered more than any of his ancestors could have ever dreamed: by the time of his death in 1920, he was president of Wells Fargo Bank and 16 other financial institutions and controlled hundreds of millions in capital. I have just written about my great-great grandfather’s life in a new biography called Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California.

Hellman, like many Californians, had to battle natural disasters to prosper. In the winter of 1860-1861, California had record rainfalls. It started to rain in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, and didn’t stop for months. The state’s huge central valley became a lake, 250 miles long. The new governor, Leland Stanford, returned to his Sacramento home after his inauguration by rowboat – and climbed into a second-story window.

Hellman was a clerk in his cousins’ dry good store at that time, and the relentless rain forced the normally staid Los Angeles River to breach its banks. Hellman and his cousins rushed to the store to salvage any goods they could. They had to fight against a waist-high wall of surging water and barely had time to retrieve anything before the adobe walls started to crumble around them.

That year of rain was followed by two years of merciless drought, a calamity that wiped out southern California’s cattle business. And 46 years later, in 1906, Hellman lived through San Francisco’s calamitous earthquake and fire. He was in his downtown office at the Wells Fargo Bank when fire officials burst in and urged him to evacuate. The fire that consumed San Francisco for three days literally stopped across the street from Hellman’s home on Franklin.

I was not so lucky. In 1991, I lost my home in an urban wildfire that destroyed 2,800 houses in Oakland and Berkeley and killed 25 people. My husband and I were across the Bay when the fire broke out, so we didn’t have to flee for our lives. But we lost everything, including a beloved cat.

California is now the country’s most populous state. Most Californians live in denial of the threat of earthquakes, floods, and fires. But the natural disasters come with regularity. People suffer – and then they rebuild. They fall – and then rise up again. The possibility or reinvention is an integral part of California’s history. It is as embraced today as it was in the 1850s.

Frances Dinkelspiel, author of Towers of Gold, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

The post California is Burning – So What Else is New? appeared first on Jewcy.