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Article: Between Los Angeles and Berkeley: memoirs of a California Jewish historian.(Jewish Studies in Northern California)
- Article from:
- Judaism
- Article date:
- September 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 American Jewish Congress. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SEVERAL YEARS AGO I WAS INVITED BY THE BERLIN Jewish Community to participate in a conference on the theme of "The Jews of California." Like many of my co-participants, I later discovered, my initial reaction was to laugh. Was there such an identity? But once I got to Berlin and actually tried to formulate coherent answers to the questions posed by the organizers, I realized that there might just be something to growing up and living as a Jew in California that is distinctive and possibly even unique.
I was born in Los Angeles in the years following World War II, the golden age of endless summers and equally endless smog alerts. My father had come to this ...