UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The New Jewish Pioneer: Capital, Land, and Continuity on the US-Mexico Border A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Chicana/o and Central American Studies by Maxwell Ezra Greenberg 2021 © Copyright by Maxwell Ezra Greenberg 2021 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The New Jewish Pioneer: Capital, Land, and Continuity on the US-Mexico Border by Maxwell Ezra Greenberg Doctor of Philosophy in Chicana/o and Central American Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2021 Professor Robert Chao Romero, Chair Ethnic Studies epistemologies have been central to the historicization and theorization of the US-Mexico border as an ordering regime that carries out structures of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and white supremacy. While scholars of Jewish history have explored the connections between colonial borders, transnational economic structures, and Jewish merchants, little is known about the role of Jewish entrepreneurs in the process of modern US-Mexico border formation. This dissertation explores how state, corporate, and military imperatives of US imperialism between the American Southwest and Northern Mexico created the conditions for Jewish inclusion into a white settler class and a model of Jewish continuity beyond Europe since the mid-nineteenth century. To explore the imprint of US settler colonialism on Jewish settlement, inclusion, and continuity, Chapter one reviews how Jews have been historicized as exceptional subjects in the contexts of colonial Mexico and the modern American West. Subsequently, Chapter two utilizes archival sources to reinscribe the Jewish border entrepreneur into the history of capitalist and ii military expansion across the new US imperial frontier. Working across the economies of extraction, policing, and revolution, Jewish border entrepreneurs reflect how commercial middlemen were neither separate nor above the racial and colonial contexts in which they existed, but were rather active and benefiting participants. Next, Chapter three investigates a regional movement for Jewish agricultural colonization and immigrant re-settlement that originated in late-nineteenth-century California and imagined a semi-sovereign Jewish nation-state in Baja California, Mexico. The plan to establish a “Palestine on the Pacific” persisted through 1939 and suggests that ideologies of Jewish nation-building were informed by structures of US settler colonialism, including liberal articulations of peoplehood, citizenship, and territorial belonging. Finally, Chapter four employs place-based, autoethnography in a Jewish cemetery in the Sonoran Desert to understand Jewish interpolation into US settler society as an ongoing process that can be explored through the Jewish American non-profit industrial complex. To conclude, I discuss how writing Jews into a modern, critical history of the US-Mexico border region contributes to Jewish and Chicana/o Studies by expanding methodological approaches to the analysis of settler colonial and neoliberal economies, and racial ordering in North America. iii The dissertation of Maxwell Ezra Greenberg is approved. Aomar Boum Rubén Hernández-León Sarah Abrevaya Stein Robert Chao Romero, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2021 iv DEDICATED TO Michelle Rein and Justin Shlomo Sims For teaching me about difference. May your memories be for a blessing. V TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Vita xii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: A Settler Colonial Critique of Jewish Historiography 24 in the US-Mexico Border Region; or, How Jews Might Fit in Ethnic Studies Chapter 2: Jewish Border Merchants between Economies of Extraction, 52 Policing, and Revolution, 1848–1920 Chapter 3: Baja California Dreaming: How US Settler Colonialism 97 Shapes Jewish Nationalism, 1891–1939 Chapter 4: Preserving Jewish Pioneer History on the US-Mexico 140 Border; or, Reimagining Jewish Continuity on Stolen Land Conclusion 176 Bibliography 185 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Not so long ago, I received the sage advice that historians must treat archivists with the reverence they deserve, but do not always receive. Indeed, it is not a stretch to say that archivists and librarians make this, and other worlds possible. I am grateful to the UCLA Library Special Collections, and the generous spirit of Xaviera Flores at the Chicano Studies Research Center; the San Diego State University Library Special Collections, including Laurel and Stan Schwartz at the Jewish Historical Society of San Diego. A special thank you to Elena Saad for donating her personal archives to SDSU, and for the many hours discussing Jewish Mexican history. I would also like to thank the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas at the Universidad de Baja California, and to David Piñera, who welcomed me to Tijuana con un almuerzo caldito; the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City; the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City; the University of Arizona Library Special Collections; and the Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center in Tucson, Arizona. A personal thank you to Cindy Hayostek of the Douglas Historical Society for showing me a different type of archive: the Bisbee-Douglas Jewish Cemetery. Between research trips and residencies, from Arizona to Mexico City, I was graciously housed by my dear cousins Jeffery Rein and Mri Argawal, Patti Behr and Donn Alpert, Bobby Present and Deborah Oseran, and Mauricio Cadena and Sergio Molina. Thank you for being homes away from home. The financial support that I received during my doctoral study made the completion of this dissertation possible, along with research trips, conferences, residencies, lectureship opportunities. Special recognition and appreciation goes to UCLA’s César E. Chávez Department of Chicano Studies, the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, the Jewish Studies vii Program at UC Davis, the Gold Shield Alumni Network at UCLA, the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University, the Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center in Tucson, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA, the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Maurice Amado Research Grant, the Jack H. Skirball Fellowship in Modern Jewish Culture, the Knapp Family Foundation, the Bluma Appel Research Grant, the Mellon Foundation and the Urban Humanities Initiative Research Grant, and the Chaskel and Sara Roter Summer Research Travel Grant. I am fortunate to have been nourished and challenged by teachers who’ve left indelible imprints on my life and studies. It has been a gift and privilege to wonder, think, write, and teach in the company of such fine scholars, educators, and mentors. My advisor, Robert Chao Romero, offered me the rare combination of guidance, faith, and autonomy. Thank you for your kindness, for always bringing order and clarity to my writing, and for trusting me to following in your footsteps; that is, to find and make meaning from, the silences in Chicana/o Studies. To my unofficial advisor and committee member, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, who welcomed my transition into Jewish Studies during a moment of compounding, life transitions. Thank you for showing me how to write and teach with grace and disruption. To my committee members, Rubén Hernández-León and Aomar Boum: you brought an interdisciplinary rigor to this project, which challenged my thinking, diversified my methods, and made me a better researcher. Other faculty, staff, and fellow graduate students across departments at UCLA and elsewhere, shaped this dissertation and fueled my cognitive and corporeal endurance. To my Chicano/a and Central American Studies cohort—Nadia Zepeda, Rafael Solórzano-Ramirez, Brenda Nicolás, Kaelyn Rodriguez, Isabel Durón and Daniela Jimenez—you have taught me a lifetime’s worth of lessons in mentorship, care, and solidarity. Many thanks to Audrey Silvestre, viii Alana de Hinojosa, and Maga Miranda for your brilliance and friendship. To Kendy Rivera- Cárdenas, whose impact on me and this project cannot be quantified. Thank you for showing me the border, and for being the igualada who asked me all the right questions. To Rachel Smith and Jessie Stoolman, this work has become less lonely, and more hopeful with you by my side. To my intellectual accomplices, Ben Raskoff and Caroline Luce, you’ve sharpened my proverbial pen, and quickened my metaphorical tongue. Next year in Nanjing, always. I am indebted to the wisdom and guidance of the entire Chicana/o and Central American Studies faculty, with special thanks to Maylei Blackwell, Gaye Teresa Johnson, Leisy Abrego, Genevieve Carpio, and Alicia Gaspar de Alba. Thank you for modeling how to walk alongside, and not in front of, our students. A special thank you to Chela Sandoval, who gave of her time generously and compassionately, and helped me trust the non-linearity of the process. To Ellie Hernández and Isamara Ramírez, thank you for being the fires that fuel the department, and for advocating on behalf of thousands of emerging Chicana/o and Central American Studies scholars. To UCLA’s cityLAB and the Urban Humanities Program, especially Dana Cuff and Todd Presner, thank you for teaching me to speculate and create across disciplines and geographic borders. While much time has passed, I want to acknowledge the role played by my early mentors, my high school and college teachers, who rigorously supported my language, critical thinking and writing skills. To Fernando Cruz, who demonstrated to me the art of repetition.