History of the Jews in San Francisco

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The Jewish community in the San Francisco Bay Area is about 350,000 people, making up roughly 4% of the area’s population. It is the fourth-largest Jewish population in the United States, after New York, southeast Florida, and metropolitan Los Angeles. Jews have helped shape the region’s economy and culture from the Gold Rush era to today.

Early history
- The California Gold Rush in 1848 brought many settlers, including Jewish pioneers. In 1849, two of the first San Francisco synagogues were founded: Congregation Sherith Israel and Congregation Emanu-El. They started as separate groups, sharing a common faith but with different immigrant backgrounds—Emanu-El mostly Bavarian German Jews and Sherith Israel mainly Eastern European and English-speaking Jews.
- By 1880, San Francisco’s Jewish population was the second-largest in the United States.
- Cemeteries founded for the community in 1889—Home of Peace for Emanu-El and Hills of Eternity for Sherith Israel—and later moved to Colma, along with other area Jewish cemeteries.

Hard times and growth
- The 1906 earthquake and fires devastated most of the city and affected about 30,000 Jews living there. The Jewish newspaper Emanu-El helped people reconnect after the disaster.
- A Sephardic synagogue, Magain David Sephardim Congregation, was founded in 1935 and hosted anti-fascist and anti-Nazi activities.

Community, culture, and renewal
- The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco began as the Young Men’s Hebrew Society in 1877 and was incorporated as JCCSF in 1930. It supported refugees in the late 1930s and grew into a central, multilingual hub by the 1950s.
- In the 1950s, the Bay Area’s Jewish life was seen as largely secular. By the 1980s, the region experienced a Jewish renaissance, with the population rising to about 223,000 (around 3.3% of the Bay Area). New, less traditional communities formed, such as Jewish Renewal and the Aquarian Minyan (founded in 1975) and the Synagogue Without Walls, which held services in parks and community centers.
- The arts and culture scene grew as well: the Jewish Theatre San Francisco started in 1978, and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival began in 1980, becoming the world’s oldest Jewish film festival. In 1984, the Jewish Community Museum opened (later renamed the Contemporary Jewish Museum). Tikkun magazine began in 1986 in Oakland.
- In the 1980s, thousands of Russian Jewish immigrants arrived, and by 2021 they formed a vibrant community with their own center.

Today and notable people
- A 2018 study found that 17% of Bay Area Jews still live in San Francisco. The Bay Area overall has a younger, more ethnically diverse, highly educated, and LGBTQ-friendly Jewish population. Denominations show Reform as the largest (about 37%), followed by Conservative (13%), with Orthodox and Reconstructionist each around 3%, and about 41% unaffiliated.
- In 2022, the University of San Francisco launched Mapping Jewish San Francisco, an online exhibition to share stories of Jewish subcommunities in the Bay Area.
- Notable San Francisco Jews include Levi Strauss, who moved to the city and founded Levi Strauss & Co. with denim jeans; Adolph Sutro, the city’s first Jewish mayor (1895–1897) who owned large tracts of land and built the Sutro Baths; Aaron Fleishhacker, a longtime philanthropist and founder of the Emanu-El congregation; and Florence Prag Kahn and Julius Kahn, who served in the U.S. Congress. The Kahn family was influential in civic life, and Kahn’s actions intersected with broader immigration policies of the era.

In short, Jewish life in San Francisco began with the Gold Rush, grew into a major cultural and economic force, faced and recovered from disaster, and continues to thrive in a diverse and evolving community.