Tag Archives: Immigrants

Jews of the Week: Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis

Inventors of Your Favourite Pants

Jacob Davis

Jakobs Jufess (1831-1908) was born in Riga, Latvia. He became a tailor before immigrating to the US at age 23. Upon arriving in New York, he changed his name to Jacob Davis and opened up a tailor shop. Over the next 15 years, he moved all across North America trying to make a living, spending time in Maine, California, Nevada, and British Columbia, working as a tobacco salesman, gold miner, and brewer. By 1869, Davis settled in Reno, Nevada and opened another tailor shop. His primary merchandise was originally tents, horse blankets, and wagon covers. To make his stuff stronger and more durable, he started using the toughest cotton denim he could find, which happened to come from a small dry goods store in San Francisco called Levi Strauss & Co.

Levi Strauss, the name behind Levi’s jeans.

Levi Strauss (1829-1902) was born in Buttenheim, Germany. When he was 18 years old, his family immigrated to the US, joining two older brothers that had settled in New York some years earlier. The brothers had set up a dry goods shop, and Levi went on to open a new store location in Louisville, Kentucky. During the California Gold Rush, the family saw opportunity in the West and opened another branch in San Francisco. Strauss headed that branch (together with his sister’s brother, David Stern), importing from his brothers in the East and selling high-quality merchandise at his Levi Strauss & Co. shop. He became very wealthy, and built San Francisco’s first synagogue, Temple Emanu-El. Strauss gave generously to many charities, too, and his Levi Strauss Foundation donated to multiple orphanages and universities (including UC Berkeley). In 1871, Strauss received an offer from Jacob Davis to go into business together. Davis had designed a new type of work pants using blue denim and copper rivets to make the material extra strong. The first set of such “jeans” was custom-tailored for a lumberjack. Before long, everyone wanted a pair, and Davis couldn’t keep up with demand. Strauss helped Davis get the proper patents, and the two partnered up. To make his jeans distinct, Davis soon started to sew the back pockets with the now-ubiquitous orange double-stitch. Meanwhile, Strauss built a large jeans factory in San Francisco and Davis moved there to run the plant. Davis worked at the plant for the rest of his life, outfitting every miner, railroad worker, and cowboy with “Levi’s jeans”, his special pants. The modern jeans that Davis and Strauss brought to the world grew rapidly in popularity, first in the workforce, then among teenagers and “greasers” in the 50s and 60s, and today being the most popular type of pants in the world.

Coronavirus and the Coming of Mashiach

Words of the Week

Few are guilty; all are responsible.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Jew of the Week: Genndy Tartakovsky

Hotel Transylvania and Dexter’s Lab

Genndy Tartakovsky (Credit: Sony Animation)

Gennady “Genndy” Borisovich Tartakovsky (b. 1970) was born in Moscow. His family escaped the Soviet Union to Italy when he was still a child, and were soon forced to move again after experiencing tremendous anti-Semitism. They ended up in Chicago, where Tartakovsky grew up, enjoying his new-found comic books, American cartoons, Japanese anime, and comedy shows. Tartakovsky had a difficult youth. He was made fun of for being an immigrant, and always felt like an outsider. His father passed away when he was a teenager, and the family barely scraped by living in subsidized housing. Although he wanted to be a businessman and get his family out of the gutter, Tartakovsky was placed in an animation class and decided this was his life’s work. He would go on to study at the prestigious California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. After finishing his studies, Tartakovsky got a job in Spain working on a Batman cartoon. His big break came when he was hired by Hanna-Barbera and given the chance to come up with a show. Tartakovsky brushed off an old student project, Dexter’s Laboratory,which ended up on television and became hugely popular. It won three Annie Awards and was nominated for four Emmys. It would later be ranked among the 100 best cartoons and credited with launching ” a new generation of animated series that played on two levels, simultaneously fun for both kids and adults.” Tartakovsky then co-produced The Powerpuff Girls, followed by the hit Samurai Jack, which won him an Emmy and was also ranked among the 100 best cartoons. Tartakovsky’s shows boosted the Cartoon Network’s viewership from 12 million to 72 million. In 2005, Tartakovsky was hired by George Lucas to direct Star Wars: Clone Wars. The show won three Emmy Awards. In 2012, Tartakovsky made his film debut with Hotel Transylvania (originally created by Todd Durham), which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Golden Globes. Hotel Transylvania spawned two sequels, earning the trilogy nearly a billion dollars at the box office. Tartakovsky has worked on many other films and shows, including The Flintstones and Iron Man 2, and even wrote and illustrated for Marvel Comics. The key to a good comedy cartoon, he says, is writing with parents in mind and remembering that kids are really smart, too.

Words of the Week

I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct… I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people – more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system.
– George Lucas

Jew of the Week: Jonas Phillips

Revolutionary War Hero

phillipsJonas Phillips (1736-1803) was born in Germany to an observant, Yiddish-speaking family. When he was 21, Jonah set forth for the New World. He first made his way to London, anglicizing his father’s name “Phaibush” to “Phillips”. There, he sold himself into indentured servitude in order to pay for his passage to America. After working several years on an indigo plantation, Phillips earned his freedom and moved to New York to work as a merchant. He became a wealthy man and married a prominent Sephardic Jewish woman, with whom he would have 21 children. Unfortunately, Phillips lost much of his wealth because of British restrictions on commerce. Not surprisingly, Phillips became a strong supporter of the American Revolutionary War, and joined the Philadelphia Militia. He fought valiantly, and earned a reputation as an American war hero. In 1787, he took part in the Constitutional Convention that drafted the United States Constitution. He played a key role in ensuring that the Constitution would protect people’s religious freedoms, and give equal civil rights to all citizens. Meanwhile, Phillips was a founding father of one of America’s oldest synagogues, Philadelphia’s Mikveh Israel. One of his grandsons became the Chief Justice of South Carolina’s Supreme Court, while another was America’s first Jewish commodore in the US Navy, and also a famous war hero. His great-grandson was a governor of South Carolina.

Words of the Week

Brothers, half of the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis. Who are the Palestinians? Egyptian! They may be from Alexandria, from Cairo, from Dumietta, from the North, from Aswan, from Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians. We are Arabs.
— Hamas Minister Fathi Hammad on Al-Hekma TV (Egypt), March 23, 2012 (Click here to watch)