By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—At a recent ceremony marking the beginning of a year-long celebration of Congregation Beth Israel’s sesquicentennial, Rob Levi shared with me a copy of his book about his great-grandfather, Adolph Levi, one of the founders of the Reform congregation.
Although he researched and published the book primarily for family use—and a well-known family it is in San Diego—Levi has also donated a few copies to local libraries for the edification of people interested in San Diego-area history.
Sam Steiner, Adolph’s uncle, went into business during the 19th century with Abraham Klauber, creating a company in San Diego that provided general merchandise to stores in outlying, rural areas. Adolph’s older brother, Simon Levi, went to work for that company, eventually becoming Klauber’s partner after Steiner retired. In 1883 the firm became known as Klauber and Levi.
Adolph, meanwhile, had established himself as a businessman in the mountain community of Julian, where he operated a general store and a livery stable. In 1884, he and Joseph Marks, owner of an inn, general store, and 1,000-acre cattle ranch near Warner Hot Springs, became business partners, acquiring interests in each other’s businesses. Together they built a store that still is a landmark in Julian today, the brick “Marks & Levi” building that became better known years later as the Julian Drugstore. Klauber & Levi, of course, were suppliers.
Marks preferred to operate the Julian store, and Levi moved out to the cattle ranch before traveling to Bohemia to attend his sister’s wedding. That wedding led to him meeting, courting, and marrying within two months the mostly German-speaking Eleanora Schwartz, whom he brought back to America.
Eleanora was alone at the ranch when an Indian, under the influence of too much whiskey, staggered into the general store and demanded more alcohol. “Woman,” he yelled, “I got to have liquor!”
As Levi tells the story, “Eleanora was frightened but gamely shouted back, ‘Don’t call me a woman!’
“The befuddled Indian was silent for a moment, then bellowed, ‘Then what the hell are you?’
Today, people can drive up to Julian from San Diego in a little over an hour, but back then a local newspaper thought it remarkable that another Levi brother, Isaac, had made the trip in “seven and a half hours plus and hour and a half spent feeding and resting the horses.”
In 1886, following the dissolution of his partnership with Marks, Adolph moved to San Diego, where he became a partner in the Diamond Livery Stables, which had its offices at Second and Broadway, where the Spreckels Building was later to be built. Jews had been in San Diego since Louis Rose’s arrival in 1850, but for nearly 40 years, they did not have a synagogue building. Instead, they met in each other’s homes or in rented quarters. Marcus Schiller, original leader of the congregation, along with brothers Simon and Adolph Levi, and such other luminaries of the Jewish community as Abraham Blochman, Louis Mendelson and Samuel I. Fox agreed the time had come to build a temple. Of simple design, Temple Beth Israel was built in 1889 at the corner of 2nd and Beech Streets, on a hill above downtown. Simon Levi succeeded Schiller as president, and Adolph succeeded Simon, serving 14 years as the congregation’s lay leader. Since 1978, the Victorian-style structure has served as an entry way to county-run Heritage Park.
Selling his partnership in the Diamond Livery Stables, Adolph opened the Levi Hack and Transfer Company, and his horse-drawn carriages met the train at the Santa Fe Station and offered sightseeing rides out to Coronado. Above Levi’s stables was a large ballroom that doubled as a roller skating rink. He sold the company in 1906, foreseeing that horses and carriages would be made obsolete by automobiles. With his son Edgar, Adolph next opened a real estate office in a downtown bank building. Among properties he purchased was land that today houses the Grossmont Shopping Center and Grossmont Hospital; a ranch in Mission Valley; a ranch covering much of modern-day Lakeside; a 1,000-acre ranch in Kearny Mesa; and the 9,380-acre Rancho de los Penasquitos. In 1898, he bought a home in Del Mar that subsequently became the landmark Alvarado-Levi House operated by the Del Mar Historical Society.
Rob Levi quoted his grandfather as saying “You can’t beat San Diego real estate, but you have to give it time. Don’t try to hurry it too fast. Someday the market will pick up and be as brisk as ever…” Added Rob: “Some things never change.”
In the summers the Levi family liked to travel to “Tent City” alongside the Hotel del Coronado.
Adolph’s daughter, Selma, moved to San Francisco after marrying George R. Newbauer. That prompted his son Edgar to make trips up to San Francisco to see Selma. Estelle Coblentz, a woman who he met at his sister’s wedding, was another very good reason for visiting San Francisco. They were married about a year later.
Selma’s and George’s daughter, Helen, (Adolph’s granddaughter) eventually married Elliot Cushman of San Diego. One of Elliot’s sons, automobile magnate Steve Cushman, has served as a San Diego Port Commissioner and as a member of the San Diego Convention Center board of directors.
Besides his activity in Temple Beth Israel, Adolph Levi was a leader of the Lasker Lodge, which was chartered by the B’nai B’rith in 1887. According to his great-grandson, Adolph gave generously to both Jewish and non-Jewish causes. “When three Catholic nuns first arrived in San Diego in the late 1800s seeking property for a new hospital, they encountered much prejudice,” Rob Levi wrote. “It was Adolph who came to their rescue and purchased the necessary land, then sold it to the bishop, without taking a dollar’s profit. It was through his efforts that Mercy Hospital became a reality.”
Levi died in May 1943, two years before his wife Eleanora passed away.
Included in Levi’s book are interviews with various members of his family, some of whom since have passed away.
Among Helen Cushman’s remembrances was that her grandfather Adolph along with Samuel Fox, founder of Lion Clothing Company, “were major contributors to San Diego’s first Jewish temple. The two of them got the temple built. When it was finally paid for, they held a big ceremony and my grandmother (Eleanora) was chosen to stand at the pulpit and burn the mortgage.”
Ruth Schulman, oldest of Adolph Levi’s four grandchildren, recalled that she was very involved in Temple Israel, “singing in the choir and teaching Sunday school. When I was about 15, in 1931, I was chosen by the Sunday school to greet Albert Einstein at the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park, on his first visit to the United States. As you can imagine, I was very nervous, for the greeting was being broadcast nationally. But when I looked up at Mr. Einstein’s face, he had the kindest eyes I’d ever seen.”
Ruth’s brother Richard revealed what apparently was a long-hidden family secret. He told of talking in London to one of Adolph’s grand-nieces, Rose Lowe-Zimmer, a spinster and professional nanny, who had escaped from Nazi Germany. Not knowing why his grandfather Adolph had decided to come to the United States, he asked Mrs. Lowe-Zimmer, then 95. “Well,” she responded, “there was a good reason … Your grandfather’s father was the owner of a pub in this small town in Bohemia” and, was thought to regular drink up the profits. “And that I guess was the reason my grandfather never told me exactly why he came here,” Richard said. “He came seeking new opportunities, of course, but he never explained why he left home and family at the tender age of eighteen.”
Richard also noted that along with Simon, Adolph had helped to found both the Gas & Electric Company, and the San Diego Savings & Loan Association, which later became known as Great American Federal Savings & Loan. “”When Great American celebrated their 100th anniversary, they included photographs of both Adolph and Simon Levi in their publications.”
Norman Levi, father of Rob, said that Adolph as a founding member of Temple Beth Israel, was “very Reform.”
“They never wore the yarmulkes and the services were mostly in English,” Norman Levi recalled. “And when I was growing up, I never heard of a Bar Mitzvah. They were rare as anything in our temple. We were raised on bacon and ham; we never kept kosher. But as a kid I went to Sunday school whether I wanted to or not, and was there for all the high holidays.”
The book concludes with a collection of family photographs and news clippings. Any historian of San Diego’s Jewish community will make a point of consulting this engaging volume.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com