Pasadena and Its Jewish History (1874-present)

[@SamAronow]

Project Homecoming 2: kzbin.info/aero/PLjnwpaclU4wV5RHTFL8xWYALVIf2hFoUu *NOTES/CORRECTIONS:* 1. Helen Rosenbaum wasn't Jewish; Moritz Rosenbaum's _second_ wife Minna was, though they weren't yet married at this time.

[@efafe4972]

the huntington is not in pasadena. it's in san marino

[@denisearonow4921]

It wasn't because children weren't allowed to celebrate Halloween. That would have been silly of me. It was because she said "We don't celebrate Halloween here, Jews were hanged from lampposts on Halloween" and though it may be true, as the mother of a five year old, I was concerned about her strident attitude around children. After all, I was trying to do things differently than my mother and I didn't want you frightened at such a young age.

[@SamAronow]

Thank you for the correction, though Halloween was never a rationale to persecute Jews; it's just that the Black Hundreds massacres of 1905 happened to overlap with 31 October in the Gregorian calendar.

[@FrazzP]

​@@SamAronowI take it this is your relative?

[@denisearonow4921]

@@FrazzP I'm his proud mama

[@FrazzP]

@@denisearonow4921 Very cool, no doubt you're proud. He has shown me a wealth of new information (in a great format) i didn't know since the number of Jews in my country is very small.

[@DiamondKingStudios]

I like this comment section… …so far. This is nice.

[@RugMerchant]

Hi Sam, I'm curious if you'll ever do a "Judaism in Yemen" video, I'm curious about the Yemenite Jews and often feel they are almost never mentioned on the channel. I'm Yemeni and very curious about their traditions, struggles and what they perhaps contributed to the rest of the Jewish world.

[@iddomargalit-friedman3897]

Yes! I'm part yemenite jew, and they are often ignored despite being one of the several unique traditions of judaism. There is so much history. My teachers (in Israel) never even knew about the muza genocide (75% of jews in yemem killed). Nor about the divisions within the community. Between these, it's history, their deep connection to hebrew and jewish education, and so on, this is a fascinating community.

[@2bit8bytes]

@@iddomargalit-friedman3897 Muza genocide? Only found two things similar: Musa Dagh, regarding a pocket of resistance during the Armenian genocide, and Mawza Exile, 1600s banishment of Yemenite Jews to Mawza (basically trail of tears for Yemenite Jews). Doesn't mention death toll specifically, though, and no 75% number. Do you have better online sources?

[@DanielLLevy]

Oh yes please! There's too little knowledge of these communities, and written accounts of how they came to be seem to be scarce if they exist at all. Oral memories of Jewish life in Yemen swirl around my extended family, including Dear Nephew Orel Tsabari's youtube channel. These also emphasize the complexity and the cultural diversity of the Yemeni Jewry, telling about how these various communities first came together, awkwardly and confrontationally, in the early years of Israel's statehood. Also, it'd be useful to answer the question of the historicity of the Qur'anic stories about the Jewish tribes of Arabia ca. the Seventh Century, such as the conquest of Khaybar and so on. I never got any answer from my history-minded rabbinical friends, who seem to dismiss this as unimportant. Altogether a challenging task, but I'm confident Sam can pull it off!

[@Lawarch]

Also at 12:00 Pasadena City Hall was used as the outside filming location for the Town Hall for Pawnee in Parks and Recreation so I think that adds to the typical American city vibe may come. Also Pawnee is in Indiana so it feels cyclical

[@SamAronow]

Most of the real-life locations in Pawnee were shot in Pasadena.

[@nattiedraws]

"this train station... is still a train station!" that bit was hilarious

[@CivilWarWeekByWeek]

So what I’m getting from this is the Zoro stories are in the Talmud

[@brianalice]

Yes. The current day Zorowitzes take great pride in their heritage.

[@graphixkillzzz]

Zoro is to the Talmud what Queen's Gambit is to Dragonball Z, same general storyline, completely different everything else 🤔🤷‍♂️

[@graphixkillzzz]

bruh... is Adam LZ your brother or a close cousin or something? 🤔🤣👉

[@MarcosElMalo2]

*Zorro

[@bennysigner4518]

As a valley Jew, I appreciate hearing about Jewish life on the other side of the mountains. My dad always says that Pasadena historically was a very goyish area (and South Pasadena even more so), but clearly there are little nuggets of a community there. Keep up the great videos!

[@pamelaroyce5285]

I take you mean that *other* valley, the San Fernando Valley. We natives of San Gabriel Valley would say Pasadena *is* in a valley (as distinguished from “the” valley, so arrogantly designated) - ours. 🙂

[@RebeccaOver60]

We are three Jewish women living in Altadena and still looking for a good place to get a good bagel.

[@abbottabbott1120]

I had no idea about most of this information, and I was born and raised in Pasadena. My mother's (read: Jewish) side comes from Sacremento but I'm the fifth generation in Pasadena on my father's side. We had an apothecary in Old Town way back when most people came by horse. It's not often to see so much about Pasadena, thanks for this.

[@guildbrother]

Finally got some time to watch this in its entirety. Thank you very much for your history of Pasadena. Yes, for my wife and I, this section of Pasadena was indeed economical as we were students. We lived on West Mountain near North Lake. Your comment about David Lee Roth reminded me of spending an afternoon at the Van Halen house near Orange Grove. A friend was house-sitting for the residence and we spent the afternoon in the basement where I was told a wild party had occurred over the weekend

[@Lawarch]

US post office: Indiana Colony, California - FAKE NAME Funk, Nebraska - Perfectly acceptable move along

[@SamAronow]

The USPS of the 19th century had seemingly no problem whatsoever with sexually explicit placenames, which Funk would have been at the time.

[@jaystrickland4151]

Hey Sam this comment is not related to the video, but I just wanted to check in. Are you safe ? Is your family safe ?

[@عليياسر-ذ5ب]

He is in America 😂😂😂😂

[@johnswanson7504]

Thank you for a very interesting video. I have lived in Pasadena since 1947 and I am still here. There were a number of Jewish kids at my high school. I graduated from PHS in 1961. I hope many of them are still alive and doing well.

[@hypergraphic]

Hey that's pretty cool, Pasadena is my home town too! I had no idea about all the details you mentioned. Thanks for doing the research :)

[@tavenstrickert9658]

You know it's funny I didn't know that Washington square was a Jewish neighborhood until about a week ago when I was passing through on my way to a showing of Hair performed by a local troop Farnsworth amphitheater. As I was passing through I noticed many people walking and then we passed a temple and I realized it was Saturday night and therefore the Sabbath. I'm a secular Jew myself and I haven't been to a temple in many years, but it was so funny to me having just discovered that community that you were discussing so recent to the release of this video

[@SamAronow]

Eh? Washington Square isn't a Jewish neighborhood and there is no synagogue there.

[@tavenstrickert9658]

@@SamAronow you know what you are right I stand corrected, I was a few major city blocks East over on Washington and North altadena that's where a temple and Jewish community center is. It looked so close on the map so I had inferred a closeness in vicinity that wasn't as accurate.

[@ravendreaming3966]

Apparently some of my great grandparents lived in Pasadena for a while and went to that shul!

[@zekelucente9702]

That was interesting and well done thanks.

[@LAHockeyMaxx]

I went to Weizmann for 6 years before it closed. That Halloween rule still was there! The teachers didn't care though since they knew everyone celebrated it.

[@joaquinarellano1023]

This is very cool as i grew up in Pasadena

[@nataliesirota2611]

Toda raba! I really enjoyed this, especially as a member of PJTC!

[@asafcassuto9152]

Great video, not many creators can keep the video entertaining and interesting for almost 30 minutes, but you do so seemingly effortlessly

[@spicyspecial333]

Sam, Thank you for this channel and this video. As a native from the 'dena, Pasadena always felt like a desert compared to Valley Village and the likes. thanks for sharing this with us.

[@inferno0020]

I always enjoy your historical videos, and this one is better since a detailed Californian history is rarely discussed.

[@alexcarter8807]

A real Southern Californian will know the joke name of Pasadena, "Pass-The-Donuts" because of all the cops. It's really neat to learn about the town I was born in.

[@SamAronow]

I challenge you to find police _anywhere_ besides the South Lake Panda Express. Especially when you call them.

[@jas7256]

This is such a cool video about a city I live just a few miles away from which I had little idea about their history. Go SGV!

[@oliverpenname]

So cool to see this lived there for a bit and this history makes sense having been there

[@LesliePajuelo]

Very much appreciate the "all together pretty shitty human being" for Feyman. Often people put him on a pedestal for his science communication and say nothing else.

[@jonathanbowers8964]

Yeah. He deserved to go to jail for being a SA predator. There is a reason that Physics is still very much a boys club (while Biology and Chemistry have far higher rates of women in positions of authority even though all of academia still suffers from the "post doc glass ceiling").

[@zacharytrosch3406]

Based on that Jewish population chart, looks like Philly, Chicago, and Boston would be ripe for exploration in future videos. I'm a bit biased, but I'd love to see Detroit's Jewish history, especially its intersection with Motown Records.

[@SamAronow]

Boston, Detroit, and Cleveland will get some attention soon.

[@stuffguy6664]

I live down the road near San Luis Rey de Francia Mission in Oceanside, Born raised in SD..

[@mccoyfleming6664]

Sam - please stay safe if you are in Israel. I will pray for your safety

[@bazbuco]

Sam, I don’t at all mean to cause you any self-consciousness, but if you’re born-and-raised in Pasadena, your American accent has an unexpected feature to it. You use what’s (in phonetic/linguistic terms) called an “open-mid back rounded vowel” (symbolized in IPA as ⟨ɔ⟩ ) for words like “Chicago”, “brought” “thought” and “because” (you say ChicAWgo, or becAW) but NOT for most of your other words which are caught-cot merged like most Americans. My grandparents were working-class Ashkenazi Jews raised in Boston who used a mixture of that same feature and the classic non-rhotic R you hear in Boston and New England. Often times Mainers and Canadians use ⟨ɔ⟩ as well. I’m just curious, where do you think that comes from? Do either of your parents sound like you?

[@SamAronow]

No they do not, nor do I speak the way I did growing up in Pasadena. This is the accent of someone who grew up in Pasadena, overcorrected and ended up sounding posh, and then spent six years in a non-English-speaking country.

[@bazbuco]

That’s so interesting! Well anyway, I really appreciate your videos, so thank you, and thanks for indulging my curiosity too! 🙏🏻

[@highnoon9333]

I'm surprised to hear that you're from California because I hear so much New York in your accent (notably in "caused" and "Chicago"). But honestly I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the Southern California accent is similar to the Northeast.

[@SamAronow]

This isn’t my native accent. The Pasadena accent is more like Chicago, but I learned to speak the eastern way.

[@highnoon9333]

@@SamAronow gotcha!

[@DarthFhenix55]

2:04 I have my doubts about the Franciscanos even controlling that zone since in 1767 king Charles III of Spain enacted the pragmatic sanction, wich ended in the jesuits expelled from the spanish colonies and the rest of the missionaries not much later.

[@MarcosElMalo2]

So the Californian Missions are just a figment of the collective imagination?

[@rosswebster7877]

Great history of your home town and possibly my favorite city in all of the Los Angeles metro area, Sam!

[@guildbrother]

Wow! Checking the 'old neighborhood' on google maps, I realized that I used to walk over to the Roma Italian deli that you feature, at Mountain and Lake Avenues

[@guildbrother]

Just for fun, based on the street you lived on, this was our neighborhood. I remember taking walks up North Hudson, and Belvedere, and farther north

[@guildbrother]

Can't overlook hiking up at the Cobb estate, once owned by the Marx Brothers maps.app.goo.gl/nrfBE1AsmtjxYWCt8

[@alexcarter8807]

You might be interested in doing one of these on Lithuanians in Pasadena. My mom's folks left out of Vilnius in the 1870s or so and tarried a bit in Connecticut, maybe to work in factories or something, then went to Pasadena. My grandmother and grandfather had a mens' clothing store and my grandmother was a skilled tailor. They had ... very Jewish names. No, more Jewish than that. My mother's maiden name was so Jewish (how Jewish was it??) I refrained from reading a book about a young Jewish girl because I thought it might be about my mom and what could be more boring? Europe, the part of if in thrall to the Russians, was such a horror and a charnal house that a lot of people wanted to leave behind everything from "the old country". The Lithuanians are concentrated around the church of "Saint Casimir" in Pasadena.

[@nevonitay]

Hey there, Sam! I love your videos! I really learnt a lot from each one that I watched. Dash Ham Me-israel :-) P.S. Do you speak/understand Hebrew?

[@rizzard1979]

washinton square is my childhood home Palm Terrace between Washington and Mountain. Roma Deli guy yelled at me once over mozerella

[@DrDeuteron]

Russ. (Rosoloni?). He was there yesterday.

[@ColleenJousma]

I'm glad you included the "pre history" people. That's why the architecture there reminds me of Michigan! The cuts to your avatar are cracking me up. I hate driving on the Aroyo Secco Parkway. lol I'm sorry, but that term for your dad's military service can go eat rocks. Everyone had their part (saying that as someone who hates war when you aren't defending yourself from invasion.) I'm glad your uncle (I assume) and dad lived. Dude that was quite the twist there when you said you didn't know the history of Jewish Pasadena. I love it. I know it probably wasn't as big of a community that you thought it was, but it feels like it mattered greatly to you. And it feels like your parents made your heritage matter greatly to you and I love that. Do you think the academic connection that a lot of Jewish people have to Pasadena likely impacts the growth of the Jewish community? Like the academics likely influence a less religious Judaism? Thus likely influencing smaller family units and a more dare I say loosely "secular" Judaism?

[@ColleenJousma]

Sorry if this comment makes no sense. I like to do a free flow comment with what pops up while I watch videos.

[@ravendreaming3966]

I really appreciate the effort you go to to include the different Native American groups and that you include them on your maps instead of just blobbing them together as "native american".

[@israelilocal]

Pasadena looks massive how does it compare with any Israeli city? it is so sprawled out if I live in one end how am I supposed to reach the center in reasonable time, as someone who lives in the a rural Karmel Mountain village this seems unimaginable I really liked the video great job Sam, I imagine that the collab was delayed because if not than the Zion Mule corps was very weirdly scheduled since people have asked similar questions, which European Jewish neighborhood/Ghetto was the most important? I am sure there are many great contenders but i'd suggest warsaw due to it's importance in the developments of Jewish politics in Poland and being the home of Many Hassidic Rebbes but I am 1000% biased

[@SamAronow]

Pasadena has almost exactly the same land area as Tel Aviv with about 1/3 the population. You have a train and lots of very straight streets.

[@alexcarter8807]

@@SamAronow And according to the Beach Boys, those streets are driven on, too fast, by "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena".

[@MarcosElMalo2]

There is the metro rail (gold line) and the bus system isn’t terrible. The rail line runs between Azusa to downtown L.A. I think Pasadena has 6 stops.

[@MarcosElMalo2]

@@alexcarter8807 She’s from South Pasadena. Check out the song. It’s South Pasadena, which is a whole ‘nother thing.

[@itayeldad3317]

1:36 so I assume "haha" is the "laughing" part. I always find it weird when a language, especially one with no connection to ones I do speak, suddenly has some very obvious onomatopoeia word

[@eucaliptuspin7208]

Does it happen to you people ask you your family name and when you answer they think you said: « I don’t know »?

[@AncientAmericas]

Finding out that my home state has a connection to Pasadena was a very pleasant surprise.

[@Hbomb117]

Love your vids!

[@forgetful9845]

Ancient Americas! Love your videos

[@RowanJacobs]

Vroman's bookstore shoutout!!! Great video and I would love one on the history of the Jewish communities of the West Valley, where I grew up.

[@SamAronow]

Voted the worst independent bookstore in America due to systemic wage theft!

[@RowanJacobs]

@@SamAronow oh booooo I had no idea! Awful!!

[@ellarogokos9673]

I find it interesting that I went to the same high school as Van Halen

[@beadingbusily]

Jackie Robinson was living in such a drastically different era, compared to now, it would feel like Mars.

[@DrDeuteron]

Pasadena is the world center of Mars exploration, see: The Center of The Universe, so that metaphor has got to go.

[@OkeyoJumal]

Nice telling of History!

[@mlovecraftr]

Notes: Tongva is not historical? Why is it used now? I heard it in the Netflix show "City of Ghosts" (really great animated show about the history of some neighbourhoods of Los Angeles) John Green has made all of us see the impact of tuberculosis. It's incredible that I had heard about The Rose Bowl through American TV shows. I wonder what Sam thinks about The Big Bang Theory and the depiction of Howard Wolowitz. That's where I learned about Caltech. I mostly learned about Richard Feynman by reading XKCD, so I had never heard about the darker side of his life.

[@SamAronow]

"Tongva" was only coined by linguist C. Hart Merriam in 1905 after misunderstanding one of his subjects

[@mlovecraftr]

@@SamAronow Thanks! I'll look into it.

[@ethanpf449]

Thank you for showing Lake Tulare on the maps

[@SamAronow]

The once and future!

[@jeffreyschweitzer8289]

Wow， I was an active member of PJTC for 10 years, and never heard most of this…and my kids went to school there up until middle school, and did not hear it either

[@HistoryandHeadlines]

You have nice, clear audio when narrating!

[@sfcpa]

omg you left off the Marx Brothers large land estate purchase up the hill in Altadena!

[@elh93]

The first rose bowl game was between the best team of the east, Michigan (who played in the "Western Conference", now Big 10), and the "champion" of the west 3-2-2 Stanford. Michigan won 49-0. Go Blue

[@joejr.betancourt6847]

Didn’t they live in Boyle heights in east Los Angeles

[@MarcosElMalo2]

There was a big Jewish population there, but it wasn’t the only population of Jews in the L.A. area.

[@AngloFrancoDane]

Thanks! I grew up in La Canada, next door and I suspect it has an even more obscure Jewish history.

[@adamodeo9320]

very well-made video - is there any truth to the rumor that at one point Jews were not allowed to live in Pasadena and that's why they established Beverly Hills?

[@SamAronow]

I don't know _where_ you got that idea. Jews were never banned from Pasadena. I'm pretty sure the entire video disproves that. They _were_ banned from Beverly Hills, which was absolutely not a Jewish-established town. They were also banned from San Marino, as were all nonwhites and non-Protestants. Of course the Supreme Court ruled such ordinances unconstitutional in 1948, and the 1968 Civil Rights Act made it enforcible.

[@denisearonow4921]

San Marino

[@guildbrother]

You may find it interesting my wife and I and others in our apartment complex were keeping Shabbat and kosher and the high Holy Days about a block away from your families. One of our Jewish professors at Ambassador college, Mark Kaplan, grew up in Brooklyn an Hasidic Jew. His family had the Sukkot on the fire escape during the Festival. When he joined the worldwide Church of God they had a public funeral for him as he was, so to say, dead to the faith. In the late 1980s he had a son and his parents came out to visit him in Pasadena and stay with the family. It was explained to me that when one has a son there is hope once again for the family line. He, as well as we in the organization, understood why this had to be and we all consider the Jewish people as God's chosen people

[@vonPeterhof]

Just when I thought that the section on Mission Hill in the San Francisco video uncovered the truth behind Sam's accent, this video throws it into question again..

[@SamAronow]

I don't speak with my native accent.

[@emlillthings7914]

,,,,, and all this time, I thought you were a real cartoon-person. ,,,,, you've shattered all my dreams 😞

[@stephenberg6438]

So strange how we can live in a community for decades and have no clue about its history. It's just part of being a child, I guess. I had a similar experience when I looked into the history of my own childhood Jewish community, which is even smaller than Pasadena's. I recognized lots of names and faces, but only as an adult could I really place them in the broader context of the community's story.

[@nortonshaw2100]

I think this is a complete continuation of your socio-cultural historical contextual framing of Jewish experience. You could not describe the post world war 2 Jewish-American consciousness except in terms of assimilation and intermingling with the diverse and accepting localities sought out. Those aware of Jackie Robinson’s innate sense of self-worth would connect it with a city culture fostering his and his Olympic -meddle-winning brother’s identity as anything -is-possible-in-America ,we’re-all-in-this-together people

[@benrokh]

So Sam+Pasadena=Freddie Mercury? Wonder what effect would Miami have 🤔

[@miltonblipp]

Is that Elliott Smith in the thumbnail?

[@formulaone07]

Imagine if David Lee Roth made a career change to being a Cantor. Everyone would come back to shul.

[@jamestown8398]

"Places of education, elementary, of Aranow's." I love how you worded this.

[@tobybartels8426]

I always wondered where you got your accent from (nobody says ‘fast’ quite like you do), but now I find that it's from Pasadena!? I lived in Pasadena in the 1990s, and while I was mostly on campus I did get out and see the town sometimes, but I didn't notice anything unusual about the people's accents.

[@Noor-fd8yk]

Coming from a family of late 20th century latin american immigrants, I knew hardly anything about the history of Pasadena until meeting you and watching this video so I'd like to thank you for enlightening me on the history of this beautiful city I've lived my whole life. I would definitely consider Pasadena, at least as I know it, an Armenian city, but I didn't know they had been here for so long. I knew they were "Western" Armenian because of some comments a few Armenian friends of mine made about eastern accents but I had no idea they immigrated here from Palestine!

[@MarcosElMalo2]

In the 70s there was a wave of Lebanese Armenians to Pasadena, Glendale, and Burbank. We started seeing more and more Armenians from Armenia in the 1980s (especially in Glendale, where I am from).

[@welcometonebalia]

Thank you.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Oh... not the Texas Pasadena I know like the back of my hand. Well, it is still nice to see some real world footage. Not a complaint about your maps.

[@SomasAcademy]

~8:07 Oh hey, my town has one of the non-original Busch Gardens, neat

[@mother104]

Indeed a remarkable topic 👍

[@rezajafari6395]

8:45 omg the Pasadena Cheesecake Factory

[@OliveOilFan]

What’s the most important Jewish neighborhood in American history? Wouldn’t it be somewhere like The Lower East Side?

[@SamAronow]

I don't think "most important neighborhood in American history" is a meaningful statement in any way.

[@OliveOilFan]

@@SamAronow it’s for lack of better words but the point it still a valid one. Usually ethnic people had 1 or 2 enclave that was important to their history within America

[@sphengosine]

ikh bin a china boytshik fun slobodka un ikh bet dir hak mir nit a tshaynik

[@tavenstrickert9658]

​@@SamAronowI agree because it places a value judgment on the individual communities. Prolific could be a better word in which case something like the lower East side could definitely qualify. I grew up in California so when I think of the most prolific Jewish community I think of the area over on Fairfax. I grew up in Corona and we do have a couple but we were very small Jewish community however even we produced a couple of Jewish man's and quite a few prominent business owners and community members, although I would find at the Jewish identity be expressed in public was a little muted in comparison to other communities and that could be due to assimilation with the local community.

[@SamAronow]

@@tavenstrickert9658 Oh then it's gotta be Boyle Heights. But it's going to be a long time before we talk about that, or Southern California, again.

[@Mark_Williams300]

Wouldn't a float made entirely of roses be structurally suspect?

[@moshezadka8414]

The proper term is "uncrewed" or "unstaffed" NASA missions, not "unmanned".

[@DrDeuteron]

Unmanned is correct, though uninhabited is also used, incorrectly.

[@therongjr]

Yes, good, but what about the little old lady who's the terror of Colorado Boulevard?

[@graphixkillzzz]

bruh, are you related to Adam LZ? 🤔🤷‍♂️🤣👉

[@Artur_M.]

Who else said "tuberculosis" out loud at 4:52?

[@alexklotz3980]

Sweet, a Long Beach mention.

[@AlexToussiehChannel]

Considering the title I would think by minute f**ing 10 you'd talk about the Jewish history of Pasadena. I'm leaving. Misleading title.

[@HistoryandHeadlines]

What is the most important Jewish neighborhood in Ohio?

[@OliveOilFan]

Probably Cincinnati

[@HistoryandHeadlines]

@@OliveOilFan I have been on car rides through that city a few times.

[@pdholland]

I've assumed it was beachwood and other eastern suburbs of cleveland

[@kenshin891]

​@@pdhollandoriginally it was around the university circle area and then around cleveland heights, then beachwood

[@SamAronow]

I can't be impartial in this question; I have to rep for Glenville.

[@leanderbarreto980]

Is sam born in 2005

[@MichaelJBrown-xc2sc]

Your thesis is that Pasadena is a Midwestern Jewish community in the West

[@ArmandoDiaz-d1g]

I grow up in Glendale...but I dreamed of living in Pasadena.

[@IAmGlutton4Life]

Is there really a lot of Armenians in Glendale

[@Bbenja4]

I was disappointed to learn that the little old lady from Pasadena was not Jewish.

[@zekelucente9702]

Why do you keep showing Hunter Biden?

[@nicholasshaler7442]

"Enslaved the locals."" That is false.

[@aaronsirkman8375]

What is asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence. Many have seen and read the evidence of native populations mistreatment under the Spanish in America. Where's your evidence that Sam was wrong?

[@DarthFhenix55]

​@@aaronsirkman8375At least in the rest of their colonies the mistreatment was usually caused by the Criollos who were the owners of the plantations of products like tobacco, the Jesuits were in conflict with those groups due to them having the monopoly over the education of the indigenous people.

[@nicholasshaler7442]

@@aaronsirkman8375 There have been many books written defending Junipero Serra from these wild charges of enslaving locals. The natives loved him, and he demanded leniency towards them from the Spanish Imperial forces.

[@nicholasshaler7442]

@@DarthFhenix55 The California missions were and are Franciscan, not Jesuit, and had a different system by which they were run.

[@DarthFhenix55]

@@nicholasshaler7442 Yeah but most missionaries were nice with the indigenous people and actually thought them how to read and thinks like that, not only the Jesuits.

[@Marc-ny6mg]

I was born in Pasadena, and raised in Santa Barbara. Now I’m a history major at UC Davis. It’s so cool to learn about the history of Pasadena, and what a history it is. Thank you for the wonderful video Sam!