Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune
Greater Los Angeles, where I spent two weeks in August, is a mega-city, sprawling over five counties in the southern part of California. The Los Angeles region has a population of more than 17.8 million – half that of all Canada.
A warm climate, and industries such as oil, rubber, aerospace, and, of course, motion pictures, brought in millions of people from all over the United States and the world through the decades.
Jews came to Los Angeles as early as 1845, while California was still a Mexican territory. In the latter part of the 19th century, Jews held public office and helped establish the Chamber of Commerce and other civic organizations. Of course, they predominated in running the film studios in the 20th century.
In a report published in 2000, Raphael J. Sonenshein of the political science department at California State University, Fullerton, noted that the Jewish community has a long history of activism in political and social rights.
“Jews have played a pivotal role in the development of progressive coalitions throughout the history of modern Los Angeles,” he wrote. In the early 20th century, the growing Jewish community became a major presence in Boyle Heights, which had between 70,000 and 80,000 Jews from the 1910s through the 1950s. “The Boyle Heights Jewish community was working-class and often militantly progressive in its politics.”
As Deborah Dash Moore in her 1994 book To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Dream in Miami and L.A., remarked, “The visible, immigrant, Yiddish-speaking community centred in Boyle Heights ardently supported FDR and the New Deal.”
This tradition continues today. I was at a picnic in Clover Park, Santa Monica, organized by Jerry Rubin, a Jewish activist running for city council. (He calls himself “the other Jerry Rubin,” so as not to be confused with the more famous radical, who died in 1994.) Pamphlets for numerous causes were on display and one of the speakers was a California state senator.
At the Workmen’s Circle, another left-wing organization on Robertson Boulevard, a very large audience came to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the murder of Soviet Jewish writers by Joseph Stalin on Aug. 12, 1952. A silent film, made in the Soviet Union in 1924, entitled Yidishe Glik, was shown, introduced by Kenneth Turan, the film critic of the Los Angeles Times.
By mid-century many Jews began moving west, to the Fairfax area, which became the centre of the LA Jewish community. In 1935, there were four synagogues in the Fairfax District; by 1945, there were 12. But in the 1960s Jews began moving further west.
Today, more than 600,000 Jews live in greater Los Angeles, especially in the Pico-Robertson area, where one can find a very large number of synagogues, Jewish community centres and schools, and kosher restaurants, cafés, bakeries and coffee shops. Many of these Jews are immigrants from Iran and the former Soviet Union.
During the past two decades, the Orthodox community has grown to become the largest Jewish denomination in the area. Chabad operates four schools, while Yeshiva University High School has campuses on both South Robertson Boulevard and West Pico Boulevard. Los Angeles is also home to the American Jewish University.
Los Angeles has about 150 synagogues and they span the entire spectrum of Judaism, with some testing the outer limits of what most Jews would consider proper.
The Wilshire Boulevard Temple, founded in 1862 as Congregation B’nai B’rith, is the oldest synagogue in the LA area. In 1929, the congregation built its current home on Wilshire Boulevard. It was, writes journalist Susan Freudenheim, “to be the fanciest building money could buy for the denizens of the silver screen’s Reform Jewish congregation,” and its dramatic, quasi-Byzantine-Moorish design is an architectural landmark. It is now being totally restored, at a cost of $50 million.
On one Friday evening I attended services at the Santa Monica Synagogue, a Reform congregation of 250 families, founded in 1981. The cantor, Daniel Leanse, accompanied the rabbi on a guitar and the service lasted just one-half hour.
Even less traditional was the non-denominational Nashuvah congregation in Brentwood led by Rabbi Naomi Levy, where I spent another Friday evening. There, a full band accompanied the worshippers in singing Hebrew prayers. The band, states their website, “links us to soulful music from across the globe. Our band represents a partnership between Nashuvah and Westwood Hills Congregational Church. The music they create connects us to one another and to G-d.”
Like the city itself, LA Jews are always pushing the envelope.
