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Judy Ferguson

FAIRBANKS — Jewish connections with Alaska from its beginning were critical. In 1865, Louis Goldstone, a California fur house agent, reported to his employer that Russia was considering selling Alaska. Through personal contacts, Goldstone’s company reached U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, urging him to buy Alaska.

Part of a series focusing on Jewish Alaskan history, Perry Green, Master Furrier of Alaska (Sept. 2, 2007) and Meta Bloom Buttnick (June 29, 2008) have been presented. In November, expect Professor Judith Kleinfeld, followed in December by Rabbi Greenberg of the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch Center/Alaska Jewish Museum in Anchorage.

Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals shared his family’s origins in his Fairbanks home one evening. He began, “Jews like being in America. Since the last temple 2000 years ago, there has never been a country like America for Jews. From the country’s inception, George Washington made it an American principle to be tolerant of all faiths and this was something new. There’s never been anything like this before: America.”

He continued, “We are Ashkenazi Jews from East Prussia. When Jews came to America however, most didn’t talk about the old country and they never went back.”

As a child in 1895, Kleinfeld’s grandfather, Jacob Wolfram Kleinfeld, arrived with his father in New York.

“Historically, the careers no one else wanted were left to Jews: rag picking, peddling. Our grandparents were really poor,” he said. “However my mother’s father, a fingerprint detective in New York, was considered the ‘rich’ relative. He got a salary, and salaried people’s checks didn’t bounce.

“When I was a little kid,” Kleinfeld remembered, “we took drives. I’d get tired and want to stop at a motel. But my father would say, ‘No, that motel is ‘restricted,’ which meant that on check-in, there would suddenly be ‘no more rooms available.’”

Kleinfeld’s father, Irving Kleinfeld, born in 1916, graduated from Brooklyn Law School. In 1945, his son, Andrew Kleinfeld, was born in the Bronx. After the war, Kleinfeld Sr. became an adjudicator of veterans’ claims. By 1951 however, the post-war demand had eased. To keep his job, Kleinfeld Sr. moved his family to Philadelphia.

Kleinfeld’s first exposure to “colored segregation” was as a child on the train from New York City to Washington D.C.

“In Delaware, in what was perceived as the north,blacks were suddenly separated behind a curtain from whites,” Kleinfeld said. “Additionally, on Route 40, even black diplomats couldn’t get a hamburger or go to the bathroom.”

By 1959-60 when Kleinfeld was 14, he became interested in current events as well as politics. He read newspapers closely, focusing on economics, trying to understand. “Further,” he said, “discrimination didn’t strike me as right.” In high school, Kleinfeld became a freedom rider on Maryland’s segregated Route 40.

A move to the Washington D.C. area where President Kennedy appointed Kleinfeld Sr. to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, now known as The Court of, further opened Kleinfeld Jr.’s opportunities. “In Alexandria, professors,” he pointed out, “affiliated with think tanks, key governmental branches, as well as lobbies or unions invited bright teenagers to adult cocktail parties where opposing ideas were enthusiastically presented.

“I decided,” he said, “to attend Wesleyan University in Connecticut where the faculty-student ratio was 1-7. Further, in the religious department, John Maguire was a personal friend of Martin Luther King, as well as a real leader in the civil rights movement. “Rather than drunken parties, fraternities invited lecturers to discuss books.

“When I met Judy,” he added, “she wouldn’t give me her phone number until I satisfied her standards regarding my position on civil rights.

By 1968, he continued, “the world had turned upside down,” and he became the first Jew accepted as a summer law clerk at his law firm in Boston.

“My commitment,” he pointed out, “has always been to liberty and equality; at that time, the Democratic Party best served those goals.” Graduating with a degree in political science and pursuing a career in politics, Kleinfeld continued, “for several reasons, I began to consider Democratic-dominated Alaska.” Kleinfeld figured an Alaskan candidate could run a low budget campaign. Additionally due to Ernest Gruening’s wins, Kleinfeld felt that ethnicity would not be an issue. Further, Alaska’s population was only about a quarter of a million people. Kleinfeld figured if he worked hard that in 10-20 years, he could connect across the state. Wealth and aristocracy weren’t the big political factors as in Virginia.

“While a student at Harvard Law School,” Kleinfeld continued, “I read a lot of the Alaska Supreme Court decisions. Jay Rabinowitz wrote the best. I applied for a clerkship with him; his cousin, who happened to be my criminal law professor, interviewed me and I was accepted.”

When Kleinfeld arrived in Alaska in 1969, he wanted to be a senator, to help shape law on the frontier but he found, he didn’t like politics. He found he greatly preferred the practice of law.

Under Republican Governor Jay Hammond in 1980 and 2 years later under Democratic Governor Bill Sheffield, Kleinfeld was nominated by the Alaska Judicial Council for the Alaska Supreme Court.

“I was told if I wanted to be taken seriously, I had to be approved by Alex Miller, the powerful Democratic lobbyist,” he said. “Miller gave me a green light even knowing my politics had evolved into the Republican Party camp.”

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan selected Kleinfeld for the United States District Court. Five years later, Kleinfeld, the former president of the state bar association, was appointed by President H.W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, whose decisions create law for one-fifth of the nation. Kleinfeld, a judge of plain-spoken opinions, said, “In coming to Alaska that led to my opportunity for the 9th Circuit, my decisions are clearly presented to other federal circuit courts now as well as to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Alaska,” he concluded, “has been as good as I expected. We are an open, tolerant society, and offer people opportunities. We appreciate what people can do.”

Judy Ferguson is a publisher and freelance writer, the author of Alaska histories “Parallel Destinies,” “Blue Hills” and children’s books, “Alaska’s Secret Door,” “Alaska’s Little Chief,” “Alaska’s First People.” In 2009, expect Ferguson’s, “Bridges to Statehood, the Alaska Yugoslav Connection.”