Monday, Dec. 7, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM with short break                                                           

Includes a discussion led by Vikki Silverman

Beginning in the 1850's, entrepreneurial Jews made their way across America by wagon, sailed for months around South America's Cape Horn and hiked through the jungles of the Isthmus of Nicaragua to seek their fortunes in California. Who were these people and what was their life like during the Gold rush decades? How were their Jewish communities formed? We will examine these and other questions by chronicling the pioneers and early settlements of the Gold Country and San Francisco, where by the 1860s Jewish religious and community organizations flourished.