Julius Eckman: Rabbi and Jewish Newspaper Owner of Early San Francisco

Rabbi Julius Eckman

Rabbi Julius Eckman WS15/2111

Rabbi Julius Eckman, #WS15/2111

Values Codes  I-H-E-L

 

Julius Eckman was born in Rawicz in the Polish province of Posen in 1805.

Eckman received his education in Germany, then came to America in 1849.

He had been a merchant in London for three years prior to coming to the United States.

Rabbi Eckman served three congregations in the South, from 1849 to 1853.

 

San Francisco

Rabbi Eckman arrived in San Francisco in 1854, where he served as spiritual leader of Congregation Emanu-El on a one-year contract.

The contract was not renewed due to his unwillingness to compromise on ritual matters.

Rabbi Eckman had founded at Congregation Emanu-El, which followed him as Hephtsi-Bah School.

Eckman also operated a day school at the same location, known as the Harmonica School.

In 1857, Rabbi Eckman established an Anglo-Jewish weekly newspaper, The Weekly Gleaner — one of our more valuable resources for Jewish history of the early West.

The first journalism experience of the brothers Charles and Michael DeYoung, who later established the San Francisco Chronicle, was as typesetters for Rabbi Eckman’s Jewish paper.

 

Portland, Oregon

Eckman served as rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel of Port­land from 1863 to 1866.

ln 1872, he organized Congregation Ahavai Shalom in that city, which today, as Congregation Neveh Shalom, is the largest Conservative Congregation in the Northwest.

 

Rabbi Julius Eclmian died in 1874, and is interred in the Row of Honor, Hills of Eternity of Congregation Sherith Israel in Colma, California, just south of San Francisco.

Sources

  • Reva Clar and William M. Kramer, “Julius Eckman and Herman Bien: The Battling Rabbis of San Francisco, Part 1,” Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 15/1
  • Reva Clar and William M. Kramer, “Julius Eckman and Herman Bien: The Battling Rabbis of San Francisco, Part 2,” Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 15/3
  • Reva Clar and William M. Kramer, “Julius Eckman and Herman Bien: The Battling Rabbis of San Francisco, Part 3,” Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 15/4.
  • Reva Clar, “Rabbi Julius Eckman and the Elephants,” Western States Jewish History 20/1.
  • O. P. Fitzgerald, “Rev. Dr. Julius Eckman, “The Rabbi,” San Francisco, California,” Western States Jewish History 40/1.
On March 1, 2013   /   Jewish, San Francisco Exhibit Hall, San Francisco Jewish Pioneers