Then and Now: Go west — and north — young Jews

What could be farther west than

San Francisco, Jewish pioneers wanted to know? Try Alaska.

Long before former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as played by Tina Fey on “Saturday Night Live,” said she could see Russia from her house, San Francisco businessmen (and brothers-in-law) Louis Sloss and Lewis Gerstle saw the economic possibilities of the brand new state.

In 1868, they created the Alaska Commercial Co., which quickly became the world’s

principal provider of seal pelts, helping the U.S. earn back its

purchase price of the huge territory from Russia. Neither of the principals ever visited Alaska, and most Jews who did are characters in  “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” the novel by Berkeley writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon in which millions of Jews populate the metropolis of Sitka in a historical fantasia.

San Francisco’s China Beach is cold in February, but not

as cold as the Gerstle River, just east of Fairbanks.

This column is provided to j. by the Contemporary Jewish Museum (http://www.thecjm.org), where “California Dreaming: Jewish Life in the Bay Area from the Gold Rush to the Present” is on view.