Thar's Gold in Them Thar Hills

There's a lot of gold in those hills, and we went after it yesterday. It's not the shiny stuff you have to dig for; the gold we went after (and found!) was historical information about the Jews of the California Gold Rush. Six families from Edot, Shira and Y'tzira tracks drove to Sonora and Columbia on Highway 49 in gold country on what turned out to be a beautiful fall day, and spent the entire day getting to know each other and, of course, learning about what life was like for Jewish pioneers living in that area between the 1840's to 1870's.

We met in Sonora's Wood Creek Rotary Park and enjoyed a picnic lunch there.

It was the perfect setting for schmoozing and getting to know each other.

And, for dessert, I brought the 1-2-3-4 cakes the Edot students had made a couple of weeks earlier.

Once we had all had a chance to eat and get to know each other, we packed up our picnic baskets and drove the 10-minute drive to Columbia State Historic Park.

There, we were greeted by Debbie, one of our docents, dressed as a pioneer woman.

After giving us a general introduction about the Park and Columbia's place in Gold Rush history, Debbie led us up a (very steep!) hill to the Old Columbia School House, built in 1861, where we were greeted by Ms. Parrott, our "School Marm." She immediately divided us into two lines - one for boys and one for girls before having us file into the school room.

We learned history, ciphering (arithmetic), spelling and reading just as students back in 1861 would have learned the subjects. Here, we are having a geography lesson, learning about the routes many of "us" immigrants took from Europe to reach California.

Here, each boy is being asked to spell certain words; if he spells a word incorrectly, the whole class has to write it out five times for homework (no pressure!). Charlie, spell 'cemetery.' c-e-m-e-t-a-r-y. Whoops - wrong! Guess what we have to do tonight!

Some kids have a hard time learning what they're supposed to. Here's where you get to sit and what you get to wear if you don't do your homework or can't answer several questions in a row correctly!

If you can't behave in class, you get the switch over your fingers if you're a boy and on your ankles, if you're a girl. And then you get to stay after school and do chores for the school marm - like cleaning out the outhouse or emptying the stove of all the ashes.

Before it was time to go back down to Main Street for our tour of Jewish businesses, we had a chance to gather on the school steps for a group photo.

Debbie led us down to The California Store, a typical mercantile establishment of the times. There, we met our town docent, Don, all dressed up as a miner would have for a special occasion in his "Sunday best."

First, he took us to see the Odd Fellows Hall in the red brick building. Many Jewish men belonged to this order, as well as to the Masonic Order. We know from local newspaper accounts that Jewish pioneers were allowed to use the Hall for High Holiday services during the1850's, and that a chandelier hanging inside was donated by the Jews to thank the group for their generosity.

When we came to the original site of the H.and S. Levy store (Harris and his brother Solomon), Hannah read a "letter home" to her family, taking on the persona of Sarah Levy, Harris' wife. The letter described to the family she left home in Europe why she and Harris had to leave their family and friends, how they were shipwrecked off the coast of Cuba on their way to California, and what her life was like in Columbia since they arrived. Descendants of the Levy Family eventually moved to San Francisco and established the Mervyn's Department Store chain (which went out of business some years ago).

Just before leading us to the original site of Phillip Schwartz's New York Fancy Dry Goods Store, Don shared how many Jewish merchants like Schwartz became tax collectors to earn extra money (though certainly not any friends!).

The New York Fancy Dry Goods Store stood just next door to a barber shop and the blacksmiths shop. Here is Joseph Tarkoff reading a "letter home" from Phillip Schwartz; you can hear the blacksmith hard at work in the background!

All this walking through the town can make a man hungry. What better to munch on than a (not-so-tasty) piece of hard tack (no pizza for this pioneer!)

We learned that after the gold ran out in the Columbia/Sonora area, Columbia survived thanks to all the marble stone that they could quarry. Here are some makeshift steps made out of Columbia marble. Columbia was honored, in the 1860's, by having marble from its quarry chosen to be part of the Washington Monument in D.C.

After about 40 minutes of free time on Main Street after our tour (during which time you could choose to pan for gold, take a stagecoach ride, have something made in the blacksmith's shop or just watch him working, and/or try out some of the tasty old-fashioned treats in the saloons, ice cream parlors, candy stores or restaurants), we headed back to our cars for the short ride back to Sonora to visit the Pioneer Jewish Cemetery on Yaney Avenue.

Sonora's was the first Jewish cemetery established in Gold Country, back in 1851. It's first burial was a young, 17-year old named Hartwig Caro who died in 1853 and was "mourned by a parent and brother" whose names faded away long ago.

The cemetery lies adjacent to the Tuolomne County Sheriff's Department and is regularly maintained by prisoners from its jail.

After briefly sharing a history of the cemetery and of the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks in the West which owns the deeds to this and to six other pioneer Jewish cemeteries in Gold Country, I handed out a "treasure hunt" to each family which asked them to find gravestones with certain symbols on them. This gave the families a chance to look around at all 45 known graves (there are many others whose markers were lost long ago) as they searched for the symbols.

Doves were frequently carved into or sculpted on top of children's gravestones.

Lambs were also frequently sculpted or carved into children's gravestones.

The Hebrew letters "pey" "nun" stand for the Hebrew words, "poh neekbar" (here is buried) and are found on almost every Jewish gravestone.

So, too, are the Hebrew letters "tav" "nun" "tzadi" "vet" and "hey" (at the very bottom of this gravestone). They stand for the Hebrew words, "t'hey nishmato tz'rura b'tzror he'chayim," meaning, "may his soul be bound up in the bond of everlasting life" (a verse from the first Book of Samuel 25:29)

Once the "treasure hunt" was over, we gathered to hear two Edot students read their "letters home" next to the gravestones of the Jewish pioneers they had been assigned to "become" in class. First, Charlie read his "letter home" from Emanuel Linoberg, the richest man in Sonora when he suddenly died at the age of 40 from a heart attack.

Then, it was Michael's turn to read his "letter home" from Hartwig Caro, the young man who was the first to be buried in this cemetery.

We then chanted the "Kaddish" (the Mourner's Prayer) together, and each person took large pebbles I had brought to the cemetery, to place on one or more graves. Even though we never had a chance to know these Jewish pioneers personally, we place the pebbles on their gravestones to let people know that these pioneers are not forgotten. 

 

And that was the purpose of this field trip - to learn about these Jewish pioneers who left at a young age everything and everyone they knew behind them, to seek out a better life for themselves and their future generations in a land "that they did not know." This coming Shabbat, we will read parshat "Lech L'cha" in synagogues all over the world. The history of our Jewish nation began with the story of a great physical and spiritual journey. And ever since, Abraham's descendants have continued his journey to every corner of the world. Just as Abraham took it on faith that he would be led to a place of blessings and fulfillment, so every generation of Jews has also looked for a place on Earth where we could improve our lot physically, socially, economically and spiritually. Early California Jews found such a place, and our Bay Area Jewish community, which they founded,  has an obligation never to forget them.

ZEECHRONAM LEE'V'RACHA - MAY THEIR MEMORIES BE A BLESSING