Back by popular demand, the Jews of the Fillmore exhibition will be on display at the BJE Jewish Community Library from September 2010-January 2011. The free exhibition features a photographic depiction of San Francisco’s greatest Jewish neighborhood from 1907-1965.

A center of Orthodox religious life, but also Zionism, socialism, and the Yiddish theater, the Fillmore was the hub of Yiddish-speaking Jewish culture in Northern California for almost half a century.  But, it was also the entertainment mecca for the whole city, and Jews were highly visible as the operators of restaurants, vaudeville houses, movie theaters, and Jazz clubs. The Fillmore produced one of the greatest violinists of the century, Yhudi Munhihn, along with many Jewish communal leaders.

Fred Rosenbaum, co-curator of the exhibition and author of Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area (UC Press, 2009) will deliver a presentation on the Jews of the Fillmore:

Thursday, November 18, at 7 p.m.
BJE Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco
415-567-3327

This exhibition, which was co-curated by the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the Jazz Heritage Center in the fall of 2009, is made possible by the Koret Foundation, the Laszlo N. Tauber Family Foundation and the Shenson Fund.