The Elkind Family in the San Francisco Fillmore District (1930s)

“Inspired by the Jews of the Fillmore exhibition that the Magnes presented at the Jazz Heritage Center in San Francisco (2009), I asked my aunt Ruth and my uncle Chuck to help create a small gallery of family memories and photographs.

I always heard stories about the Elkinds in the Fillmore from my aunt and uncle, and my father. This project brought these memories back to life for me. This was a time and place in which a close-knit Jewish community lived in San Francisco. My grandfather, Morris Elkind, was a central character in the neighborhood. Family legends abound about his business ventures. At one point he ran a saloon (a bar, I guess) on Skid Row in San Francisco…

I feel that it is important to keep these stories and memories alive for my children and grandchildren. These documents also give an idea about the “background”: how the neighborhood looked at the time, who the classmates at school were, and the ethnically mixed world in which my relatives grew up.”

Risa Elkind Nye