Emanuel Marum Berg
Emanuel Berg
WS 14/2068
Values Codes I-E-L P
Emanuel Marum Berg was born in Bamberg, Germany in 1817
Berg married Karoline Uhlfelder in 1849 and, shortly afterwards, they left for America where they arrived in 1850.
That same year they headed to San Francisco via the Isthmus of Panama.
They arrived in San Francisco that same year in 1850.
(That was considered a very fast journy in 1850.)
Emanuel Berg opened a dry goods store.
Community
The Bergs joined Congregation Emanu-El when it was founded in 1850.
In 1852 Emanuel Berg was elected the third Preident of Congregation Emanu-El.
As President, it was his duty to rent space for the 1853 High Holy Days.
He obtained a hall at 40 Bush Street.
The lease ran from September First to October Thirty-First, Eighteen Fifty Three and was formalized in the usual document – except for one error that no-one noticed at the time .
In stating the year, the word “three” was inadvertently omitted, making the lease read “Eighteen Fifty,” instead of “Eighteen Fifty-Three.”
Forty-seven years later when Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger was attempting to write the history of Congregation Emanu-El, he picked up the mistaken date on that document and assumed his congregation was founded in 1850, not 1851.
This, in turn, caused Congregation Sherith Israel to claim the same 1850 date, since the two congregations were originally founded as one.
The mistake was discovered by Rabbi William Kramer after studying the early newspaper accounts of the two synagogues’ founding in 1851 – not 1850.
Family
Emanuel and Karoline Berg had three children, Fanny,, Moses and Henriette.
Fanny was the first Jewish child born in San Francisco!
Emanuel M. Berg died in 1855 at the early age of 38.
His widow later married Max Morgenthau, a San Francisco wholesale merchant.
More information can be found in the following issue of Western States Jewish History:
- Berg, Emanuel M., Pioneer Jews of San Francisco, Part One, A-L, Norton Stern, 41/1
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