the way we frame jews on the pacific coast what was your intent in writing this book? sure. well, the field of american jewish history has been so traditionally framed by the east coast. particularly new york. one of the things we wanted to do with this book was to reorient that in some way and demonstrate the importance of the communities here and also demonstrate they are not just some sort of shadow of the eastern experience but a unique experience here really distinctive in some ways of what happened back east. what is distinctive about the jewish immigration experience to the pacific coast? well, it is people who wanted to take a chance. they tended to be step migrants, therefore they stopped in the eastern u.s., or midwest, probably, before they came to the west, who by the time they got here, they were fairly well americanized, they weren t really needed to sit in an immigrant community but could work with everybody, and ready to have experience to build their ow