AMERICAN JERUSALEM tells the remarkable story of the pioneering Jews of San Francisco. Drawn to California by the Gold Rush, Jews were welcomed in San Francisco as nowhere else and would go on to build a thriving community, the second largest Jewish community in the United States after New York. With their newfound freedom, Jews played a central role in the transformation of this once-sleepy maritime village into the largest metropolis in the American West. As Jews integrated into mainstream San Francisco society, they were forced to reinvent what it meant for them to be Jewish, to create in essence a new kind of Jew – San Francisco Jew.