Staying Jewish on the Arizona Frontier The Drachman family
played a very important role in the foundation of Jewish life on
the Arizona frontier. Chapters in American Jewish History are
provided by the American Jewish Historical Society, collecting,
preserving, fostering scholarship and providing access to the
continuity of Jewish life in America for more than 350 years
(and counting). In 1852, a boat landed in New York carrying
among its many passengers the members of two Polish-Jewish
families who were destined to change the history of Arizona. One
family’s name is well known: the Goldwaters. The other family,
the Drachmans, is less well known, but in the early years of
Arizona Jewish history, no less important. When he was only ten
years old and living in a Pietrokov near Lodz, Poland, Philip
Drachman’s parents decided that he and his younger brother
Samuel would someday flee to America rather than, at age 13, be
drafted into the Czar’s army. According to a family memoir, the
boys’ parents removed floorboa