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to apply for a loan. As soon as this transaction was concluded, Samuel Baum urged the young financier to visit their home for dinner. Ephraim, happy for some Jewish company in a city which contained few of his faith, accepted for the next day.
    And the minute he walked into their small boardinghouse, his life changed forever. Sarah was a beautiful, blue-eyed blonde of sixteen, and as soon as Ephraim saw her he knew he had to have her for his wife. The years of loneliness seemed to disappear, and for the next few months he haunted the Baums’ house until she said yes.
    Their wedding day was an especially auspicious one. Ephraim had helped found the synagogue, and his was to be the first wedding since the modest building on Stockton Street had opened for services. The entire Jewish population of San Francisco seemed to have turned out for the ceremony.
    As Ephraim waited under the chuppa for his bride, whatever loneliness he had endured was now forgotten as he saw Sarah walk slowly down the aisle with her parents on either side. When the tapered candles were lit, the Rabbi began
     
    the sacred ritual in Hebrew. Standing under the blue velvet canopy, they pledged their troth for everlasting devotion. The goblet was handed to the bride as she lifted her veil for the first time and drank from the cup offered by her husband-to-be. The goblet was handed back to Ephraim, whose hand shook as he too drank. The Rabbi pronounced them man and wife amidst happy shouts of mazel tov. After Ephraim had stomped on the wine goblet, he picked up Sarah’s veil again. As tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, he kissed her with all the love he had stored up since his arrival in America. That was the beginning of their life together.
    The years passed in peace and contentment. The Jewish community was a tightly knit one and marriage among these pioneers produced a staggering network of family connections. Although not restricted by the European boundaries of ghetto, they felt no need to go beyond the large family circle. They fraternized within the other communities by day, but their home lives remained aloof. At long last Jews had come into their own. In fact, they were usually welcomed by the rather snobbish pioneers of California society as highly valued citizens, and except for a few isolated cases, antiSemitism was non-existent.
    The Jews were respected as a religious group who maintained their separate traditions.
    As the gold rush died down in the 1850s, the European-bred Jews of San Francisco were particularly adept at making the transition from boom town to sophisticated metropolis. In the years that followed, they elevated them selves from petty shopkeepers to department store magnates, from smalltime lenders to international bankers, from tent makers to real estate developers and shipping tycoons.
    The second generation moved into mansions on Pacific Heights and Nob Hill, and built summer estates in San Rafael, Woodside and Atherton.
    Wives and daughters were transformed into elegant ladies. Society gathered in their magnificent salons. Their generation established
    itself as standard-bearers for the city’s cultural growth. The contributions they made to the arts were so enormous that San Francisco came to be considered a cultural rival of the great European capitals.

Chapter Three
    Now the tyranny and injustices of Europe seemed very far away. Ephraim had become a part of the privileged upper class. His bank had expanded to such proportions that he controlled great parcels of land and underwrote much of the West Coast shipping industry. But the greatest reward of all had been watching his four sons and two daughters grow into fine adults.
    He indulged his daughters shamefully. When they married, each was given a large house as a wedding gift. He endowed his younger sons with companies of their own and eventually gave control of his banking empire to his oldest, Simon. But though he counted his blessings, Ephraim knew that