Fred Rosenbaum

Rosenbaum grew up in Queens, New York in a family that was "marked by the Holocaust". His mother fled Poland and escaped to the United States. His father had earlier emigrated from Poland and became a sergeant in the United States Army, and fought in Europe during World War II.{{Cite book

| last = Goodman

| first = Roberta Louis

|author2=Katz, Betsy Dolgin

| title = The Adult Jewish Education Handbook: Planning, Practice, and Theory

| publisher = Behrman House, Inc

| year = 1990

| pages = 127

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Eg_vg0nHYnoC&pg=PA127

| isbn = 9780867050875}}

Rosenbaum earned a bachelor's degree at Washington University in St. Louis in 1968, and then studied the history of Nazi Germany as a Fulbright fellow in West Germany. He earned a master's degree in European history at the University of California Berkeley.

Inspired by the life of Franz Rosenzweig, he left traditional academia in 1974 to cofound Lehrhaus Judaica, which was named after Rosenzweig's Freies Juedisches Lehrhaus, which was founded in 1920, and closed by the Nazis 18 years later. Lehrhaus Judaica has been described as "a continuing-education program affiliated with Berkeley Hillel"{{Cite news

| title = BAY AREA SCENE OF JEWISH RENAISSANCE WITH A TWIST

| newspaper = Daily News of Los Angeles

| location = Los Angeles

| date = May 21, 1988

| url = http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=LA&p_theme=la&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EF518E95D25EA02&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM

| access-date = March 29, 2011}} Rosenbaum was then a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley, and cofounded Lehrhaus Judaica with Seymour Fromer of the Judah L. Magnes Museum and Rabbi Steven Robbins of Berkeley Hillel.{{Cite book

| last = Isaac

| first = Frederick

| title = Jews of Oakland and Berkeley

| publisher = Arcadia Publishing

| year = 2009

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=RvOadZJHGj4C&q=%22Lehrhaus+Judaica%22&pg=PA76

| isbn = 978-0-7385-7033-4}} Described as a "new program of Jewish adult education" in 1988, in 1998, it was called "The grandparent of community adult learning institutions".{{Cite book

| last = Tornberg

| first = Robert E.

| title = The Jewish educational leader's handbook

| publisher = Behrman House, Inc

| year = 1998

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=xucuLQxVPoEC&q=%22Lehrhaus+Judaica%22&pg=PA513

| isbn = 978-0-86705-043-1}}

Rosenbaum has expressed the opinion that anti-semitism was less of a factor affecting the Jews of Northern California than in most other areas of the world. "Perhaps most remarkable was the uncommon degree of acceptance, indeed respect, accorded San Francisco Jewry by the larger society".{{Cite journal

| title = Studies in American Jewish literature

| volume = 20 -23

| publisher = State University of New York Press

| year = 2001

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=DEUrAQAAIAAJ&q=Fred+Rosenbaum

| access-date = March 29, 2011}} Another group, the Asians (the Chinese in the 19th century, and the Japanese-Americans during World War II) bore the brunt of social ostracism in the region. He noted that "it was the Asians who were abused during these years of turmoil; they and not the Jews became the scapegoats".

{{Cite book

| last = Eisenberg

| first = Ellen

| title = The first to cry down injustice: Western Jews and Japanese removal during WWII

| publisher = Lexington Books

| year = 2008

| location = Lanham, Maryland

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=rYWhonHF8fgC&q=Fred+Rosenbaum&pg=PA7

| isbn = 978-0-7391-1381-3}}

Rosenbaum's most recent book, Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area, a comprehensive history of the first 100 years of the Jewish community of the San Francisco Bay Area, has been widely reviewed.{{Cite news

| last = Pine

| first = Dan

| title = From Gold Rush to gay rights: New book chronicles history of Jewish life in Bay Area

| newspaper = San Francisco Sentinel

| location = San Francisco

| date = January 28, 2010

| url = http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/41219/from-gold-rushto-gay-rights-new-book-chronicles-history-of-jewish-life-in-b/

}}{{Cite journal

| last = Greenberg

| first = Erik

| title = Fred Rosenbaum, Cosmopolitans: A Social & Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 439 pp.

| journal = American Jewish Archives Journal

| url = http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/journal/PDF/2010_62_01_00_reviews.pdf

| access-date = 2011-04-03

| archive-date = 2012-08-06

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120806160603/http://americanjewisharchives.org/journal/PDF/2010_62_01_00_reviews.pdf

| url-status = dead

}} According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Rosenbaum "researched his subject over several decades." The reviewer of the book observed that "his dedication to the topic is evident in its encyclopedic scope".

• {{cite book|author=Fred Rosenbaum|title=Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kt2HaliLi0EC|year=2009|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-27130-2}}
• Taking risks: a Jewish youth in the Soviet partisans and his unlikely life in California, Joseph Pell and Fred Rosenbaum, Muskegon, Michigan, RDR Books, 2004
• {{cite book|author=Fred Rosenbaum|title=Visions of Reform: Congregation Emanu-El and the Jews of San Francisco, 1849-1999|url=https://archive.org/details/visionsofreform00fred|url-access=registration|year=2000|publisher=Judah L. Magnes Museum|isbn=978-0-943376-69-1}}
• Free to choose: the making of a Jewish community in the American West: the Jews of Oakland, California from the gold rush to the present day, Fred Rosenbaum, Berkeley, California, Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1976
• Architects of reform: congregational and community leadership Emanu-El of San Francisco, 1849-1980, Fred Rosenbaum, Berkeley, California, Western Jewish History Center, Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1980
• Here, There Are No Sarahs: A Woman's Courageous Fight in the Soviet Partisans and Her Bittersweet Fulfillment of the American Dream, Sonia Shainwald Orbuch and Fred Rosenbaum, Muskegon, Michigan, RDR Books, 2009
• "The Pope Comes to San Francisco: An Anatomy of Jewish Communal Response to a Political Crisis", by David Biale and Fred Rosenbaum, in American pluralism and the Jewish community, editor: Seymour Martin Lipset, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Transaction Publishers, 1990, described as "a fascinating and insightful account of the playing out of the confrontational style around a Holocaust issue".{{Cite book

| last = Novick

| first = Peter

| author-link = Peter Novick

| title = The Holocaust in American life

| publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

| location = New York City

| pages = 327

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=7zpSvtOak7AC&q=Fred+Rosenbaum&pg=PA327

| isbn = 978-0-618-08232-2| date = 2000-09-20

}}

• "Zionism versus Anti-Zionism: The State of Israel Comes to San Francisco,", Fred Rosenbaum, in Jews of the American West, edited by Moses Rischin and John Livingston, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1991

{{Reflist|2}}

• [http://www.lehrhaus.org/about/ Lehrhaus Judaica] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170929104753/http://www.lehrhaus.org/about/ |date=2017-09-29 }}
• {{cite web|title=Fred Rosenbaum|url=https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=au%3A%22Fred+Rosenbaum%22|publisher=JSTOR}}

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Category:Living people

Category:21st-century American historians

Category:21st-century American male writers

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:Historians of the American West

Category:Jewish American historians

Category:Jewish American non-fiction writers

Category:American male non-fiction writers

Category:Educators from California

Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent

Category:Washington University in St. Louis alumni

Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni

Category:Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area

Category:Jews from California