Jewish Community of Solano County

This book contains images and stories of some of the Jews who have impacted Solano County. It is not a record of every Jew to pass this way, some of whom may have come intending to shed their Jewish identity by changing their names or converting. Wonderful stories emerged about extraordinary people who made their marks here with few suspecting their Jewish roots, yet they were traceable often because in death they chose to reclaim their heritage. Others came to live as Jews and built an enduring community. The story within these pages travels from the Old World to the edge of Gold Country, where there lives a tenacious, though often invisible, Jewish community.

A journalist and columnist originally from Los Angeles, Rachel Raskin-Zrihen came to Vallejo with her Israeli American husband and their two sons in 1996. She was instrumental in establishing a Jewish radio program in Vallejo, Kol D’var. Another of the show’s hosts, Rachel Rae Moncharsh-Lessem, is a teacher and mother of three. She is a child of Holocaust survivors and is a San Francisco native living in Fairfield since 1985. Also a teacher, Shoshana Deutscher-Nurik is a native New Yorker and mother of two who moved to Benicia in 1983 with her husband. A world traveler, she helped found an Israeli kibbutz and is active in Benicia’s arts community.