History of the Jews in Los Angeles

The history of the Jews in Los Angeles began with Jacob Frankfort's arrival about 1841. Los Angeles has the second largest Jewish population in the U.S., second only to New York City, and has the fifth largest Jewish population of any city in the world.[1]

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Ethnicity in Los Angeles

History

19th century

In 1841 Jacob Frankfort arrived in the Mexican Pueblo de Los Ángeles in Alta California. He was the city's first known Jew.[2] When California was admitted to the Union in 1850, The U.S. Census recorded that there were eight Jews living in Los Angeles.[3]

Morris L. Goodman was the first Jewish Councilman in 1850 when the Pueblo de Los Ángeles Ayuntamento became the Los Angeles City Council with US statehood.[4] Solomon Lazard, a Los Angeles merchant, served on the Los Angeles City Council in 1853, and also headed the first Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.[4]

Joseph Newmark, a lay rabbi, began conducting the first informal Sabbath services in Los Angeles in 1854.[4]

"First Jewish site in Los Angeles"
1855 Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery marker.

In 1854 Joseph Newmark arrived in Los Angeles and helped found the Hebrew Benevolent Society for the evolving Jewish community, after organizing congregations in New York and St. Louis. The first organized Jewish community effort in Los Angeles was their acquiring a cemetery site from the city in 1855. The Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery was located at Lookout Drive and Lilac Terrace, in Chavez Ravine, central Los Angeles.[3] Present day historical marker for the "First Jewish site in Los Angeles" is located south of Dodger Stadium, behind the police academy, in the Elysian Park area. In 1910 the bodies were moved to the Home of Peace Cemetery in East Los Angeles.[4]

The oldest congregation in Los Angeles started in 1862, a Reform denomination, it is the present-day Wilshire Boulevard Temple congregation.[3]

In 1865 Louis Lewin and Charles Jacoby organized the Pioneer Lot Association which developed an eastern Los Angeles area, later known as Boyle Heights.[4]

In 1868 Isaias W. Hellman (1842–1920) and partners formed the Farmers and Merchants Bank in the city. In 1879 he was on the board of trustees to create the new University of Southern California.[5] In 1881 Hellman was appointed a Regent of the University of California, was reappointed twice, and served until 1918.[4]

20th century

From 1900 to 1926 there was no distinct Jewish neighborhood.[4] 2500 Jews lived "downtown" which in 1910 was described as Temple Street (the main Jewish Street) and the area to its south. In 1920, this was described to include Central Avenue. Smaller groups lived in the University, Westlake, and wholesale areas. Except for University, these areas steadily declined between 1900 and 1926.

In 1900 two Jewish community historians stated that "there were far too few Jews to form a definitively Jewish district."[6]

In 1900, there were 2,500 Jews. This increased to 5,795 Jews in 1910, 10,000 in 1917, 43,000 in 1923, and 65,000 in the mid-1920s.[7]

In 1902, the Kaspare Cohn Hospital (1902–1910), which later became Cedars of Lebanon Hospital (Melrose/Vermont), and eventually Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, was established in Angelino Heights. From 1902 to 1905 it treated tuberculosis sufferers from Eastern sweatshops, until rich neighbors forced them to stop treating TB patients.[4]

In 1906, the Sinai Temple was organized. It was the first Conservative congregation in Los Angeles and the first Conservative synagogue built west of Chicago.[4] From completion in 1909 to 1925 the congregation worshiped at 12th and Valencia Streets. The congregation moved to Westwood in 1961.[3] In 2013 the building was purchased by Craig Taubman who created the not for profit Pico Union Project a multi faith and cultural Center. In 1911 the Hebrew Sheltering Association began, eventually becoming the Jewish Home for the Aged, now in Reseda.

In the 1920s, after an initial period in the Northeast and Midwest, significant numbers of Jewish immigrants and their families moved to Los Angeles, eventually making Boyle Heights home to largest Jewish community west of Chicago. However, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 established annual quotas for immigrants from Europe and sharply limited migration of Southern and Eastern Europeans. However, the population of Jews in Los Angeles continued to increase rapidly as they moved West.

In 1927, I.M. Hattem, a Sephardic Jew, opened the first supermarket in America. The first Sephardic synagogue in Los Angeles was dedicated in 1932.

In 1935, a mass meeting was held at the Philharmonic Auditorium to protest against the treatment of the Jews in Germany. In 1936 the Los Angeles Jewish Community Council was incorporated, the present day Jewish Federation Council.[4] In 1940 Los Angeles had the seventh largest Jewish population of all the cities in the United States. Large numbers of Jews began to immigrate to Los Angeles after World War II. 2,000 Jews per month settled in Los Angeles in 1946. Almost 300,000 Jews lived in Los Angeles by 1950. Over 400,000 Jews lived in Los Angeles, about 18% of the total population, by the end of the 1950s. By the end of the 1970s, over 500,000 Jews lived in Los Angeles.[8]

In 1989, there had been about 1,500 Soviet Jews who arrived in Los Angeles by December 4 of that year. Los Angeles area authorities anticipated that in the next two months an additional 850 Soviet Jews were to arrive.[9]

There are now 662,450 Jews living in the greater Los Angeles area. ["The Association of Religion Data Archives | Maps & Reports". Thearda.com. Retrieved 2012-06-11.]

Jews have played a role in creating or developing many Los Angeles business and cultural institutions, including the entertainment, fashion, and real estate industries.

21st century

Following the 2013 mayoral election, city councilman Eric Garcetti became the city's first elected Jewish mayor. He had previously served as the council president and was re-elected mayor in 2017.[10]

Demographics

As of 1996 most immigrants from Israel to Los Angeles are Jews who are Hebrew-speakers.[11]

Iranian Jews

As of 2008 the Los Angeles area had the largest Persian Jewish population in the U.S., at 50,000.[12]

The Beverly Hills Unified School District, the established Jewish community, and security attracted Iranian Jews to Beverly Hills, and a commercial area of the city became known as "Tehrangeles" due to Iranian ownership of businesses in the Golden Triangle.[13] After the 1979 Iranian Revolution about 30,000 Iranian Jews settled in Beverly Hills and the surrounding area.[14] The Iranian Jews who lost funds in Iran were able to quickly adapt due to their high level of education, overseas funds, and experience in the business sector.[13] In 1988 1,300 Iranian Jews settled in Los Angeles.[15]

In 1990 John L. Mitchell of the Los Angeles Times wrote that these Iranian Jews "function as part of a larger Iranian community" but that they also "in many respects[...]form a community of their own" as they "still manage to live their lives nearly surrounded by the culture of their homeland--going to Iranian nightclubs, worshiping at Iranian synagogues, shopping for clothing and jewelry at Iranian businesses."[14] There had been initial tensions with Ashkenazi Jews in the synagogues due to cultural misunderstandings and differences in worship patterns, partly because some Iranian Jews did not understand that they needed to assist in fundraising efforts and pay dues. The tensions subsided by 2009.[13]

Geography

Since the late 1960s Orthodox Jews have increasingly settled Hancock Park.[16] Today, Hancock Park (as well as the adjoining Beverly-La-Brea District) is home to a rapidly expanding Chassidic Jewish population with the majority of the Chassidic Dynasties represented in strong number.

As of 1990 the majority of Iranians in Beverly Hills were Jewish. By that year many Iranian restaurants and businesses were established in a portion of Westwood Boulevard south of Wilshire Boulevard.[14]

Jews have increasingly settled within the city of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley and in the Conejo Valley city of Thousand Oaks.

When Jews settled in Los Angeles, they were originally located in the Downtown area. Industrial expansion in the Downtown area pushed the Jews to Eastside Los Angeles, where The Los Angeles Jewish community formed in the years 1910–1920. The Brooklyn Avenue-Boyle Heights area, the Temple Street area, and the Central Avenue area were the settlement points of Jews in that period.[7]

In the 1920s the Jewish population saw Boyle Heights as the heart of the Jewish community. In 1908 Boyle Heights had 3 Jewish families. In 1920 there were 1,842 Jewish families there. In the mid-1920s about 33% of all of the Jews in Los Angeles lived in Boyle Heights. By 1930 almost 10,000 Jewish families lived in Boyle Heights.[7]

Since 1953, every representative of the City Council's 5th District has been Jewish.

By the 1980s, a large number of Jews moved to the Pico-Robertson neighborhood in Los Angeles' Westside. They joined an already established community of German Ashkenazi Jews who settled the area in the 1910s, and a newer population of Iranian Jews who had fled the revolution.[17] Today, the neighborhood is home to a substantial Jewish community, with over six major Jewish private schools, and over thirty kosher restaurants (including Chinese, Mexican, Israeli, Thai, Delis, Steakhouses, and more), over twenty Synagogues, and five mikvahs.[18]

Other Jewish communities in Southern California of various denominations and nationalities are in Orange County, Riverside County (esp. the Coachella Valley with its resort city Palm Springs) and San Diego.

Media

Film
See also: List of Jewish American businesspeople in media § Television, film and video

Jews played a major role in creating the film industry in Hollywood during the first half of the 20th Century. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. were all started and led by Jews, almost all of them recent or children of immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe. In his book An Empire of Their Own, Neal Gabler wrote that in the movie industry, there "were none of the impediments imposed by loftier professions and more entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out." Gabler also argued that because of discrimination in a predominately WASP America due to their Jewishness, "the Jews could simply create new a country--an empire of their own, so to speak . . . an America where fathers were strong, families stable, people attractive, resilient, resourceful, and decent." The 20th Century American Dream was to a considerable degree depicted and defined by Hollywood.[19]

Very quickly, Protestants attacked the movie industry as a Jewish conspiracy to undermine "Christian" and "American" morals, especially in a period of large-scale immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Such beliefs in Jewish control, power, and conspiracy are traditional elements of anti-Semitic thinking. The role of these "Hollywood Jews" has been debated for years, but one thing is agreed on: most of them avoided identifying themselves as Jews at all, since their major desire was to assimilate and be accepted by the non-Jewish white establishment. Some African Americans, angered by negative images of blacks in movies and by the small number of major black directors and producers from the 1910s to 1960s, raised charges that Jews in Hollywood were both stereotyping and also unfairly excluding blacks. Hollywood leaders responded that there was no conspiracy controlling Hollywood and that Jews in the industry had been leading supporters of liberal causes, including civil rights and the expansion of black participation in the industry.[19]

In more recent times, the role of Jews in Hollywood has become less central, but individual Jews are still leaders in the industry.[19]

Newspaper

The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles is a local Jewish newspaper. The Jewish Home Los Angeles is one of the local weekly newspapers in Los Angeles.

Politics

Jewish voters usually vote in favor of politically liberal candidates or causes, but may vote differently in order to protect their interests/causes.[20] By 2008 Jews made up about 33% of white voters in Los Angeles, while in 1993 they made up 25% of the white vote.[21] Jewish voters in the San Fernando Valley tend to be more politically conservative while those in the Los Angeles Westside tend to be more liberal; Jews in both areas largely support the Democratic Party.[22] Jews vote in favor of immigrants.[23] Raphael J. Sonenshein, in "The Role of the Jewish Community in Los Angeles Politics," wrote that the Jewish community had a significant impact in Los Angeles politics even though it is proportionally a small part of the city's population.[24]

In the 1970s the Westside Jews were in favor of desegregation busing in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) while those in the San Fernando Valley opposed it.[21] In previous eras Jews and blacks formed a political coalition although this coalition later declined after Tom Bradley stepped down from his position as Mayor of Los Angeles.[23] That year the Jewish vote was split between mayoral candidates Richard Riordan and Mike Woo.[25] Jews opposed Proposition 187, which passed in 1994.[23] In 1997 80% of Jews supported the LAUSD school bond, then the largest such bond in history; and 71% of Jews supported Riordan against Tom Hayden.[25] Jews supported Antonio Villaraigosa as Mayor of Los Angeles in the 2001 primary; while he had a slim margin with Westside Jews in the 2001 runoff, the Jewish vote went to James Hahn. However Villaraigosa received most of the Jewish vote in the 2005 election.[23]

Culture

When Jews moved to Los Angeles, many of them established delicatessens.[26] By 2013 several of the delis had closed due to the aging of their customer bases, newly established dining options, and issues in the economy.[27]

Education
Milken Community High School
Yeshiva University Boys High School

Milken Community High School is located in Bel-Air.

In the Fairfax District, there are several Orthodox Jewish schools. Yeshiva Rav Isacsohn/Toras Emes Academy is a Haredi school with separate buildings for boys and girls grades K-8. Mesivta Los Angeles is a Hasidic Yeshiva for boys of high school age that focuses on preparing young men for studies at Kollel. Yeshiva Gedolah of Los Angeles is an all-boys Litvish Haredi Yeshiva high school that similarly focuses on Talmud learning to prepare its students for higher-level Yeshiva study and Kollel. Bais Yaakov of Los Angeles is a Haredi girls-only high school that offers secular studies and college prep in addition to religious studies. Bnos Devorah High School is a very small Hasidic girls-only school. Yavneh Hebrew Academy is a Modern Orthodox K-8 school which is coed until 6th grade.

There are also a couple Orthodox Jewish schools in Pico-Robertson. Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles is Modern Orthodox and has separate campuses for boys and girls. Mesivta Birkas Yitzchok is a Haredi boys-only high school that aims to offer both Talmud study and secular studies.

Jewish schools in the San Fernando Valley, as of 1988, included Valley Torah High School, Emek Hebrew Academy, Einstein Academy (grades 7-12) in Van Nuys, Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School (K-9) in Northridge, and Kadima Hebrew Academy (PreK-6) in Woodland Hills.[28]

Rohr Jewish Learning Institute in partnership with Chabad is active throughout Los Angeles.[29][30][31][32]

American Jewish University is located in Bel Air, Los Angeles.

Notable residents

See also

References
  • Gurock, Jeffrey S. American Jewish History: The Colonial and Early National Periods, 1654–1840, Volume 1. Taylor & Francis, 1998. ISBN 0415919258, 9780415919258.
  • Sonenshein, Raphael J. "The Role of the Jewish Community in Los Angeles Politics: From Bradley to Villaraigosa." Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Summer 2008), pp. 189–205. Available at JSTOR.
    • Originally a paper presented on November 13, 2005 at the conference "Jewish L.A. - Then and Now" at the Center for Jewish Studies in the Autry Museum; it was revised for publication as a journal article.

Reference notes
  1. "The Jewish Community of Los Angeles". The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot.
  2. Harnisch, Larry. "Bringing the history of Jews in L.A. into clearer focus." Los Angeles Times. May 24, 2013. Retrieved on March 31, 2014.
  3. Los Angeles Times: "10 Selected sites that recall Jewish history in Los Angeles" (April 24, 1986) . accessed 05.18.2014
  4. Jews in LA timeline
  5. About USC: History. University of Southern California.
  6. Romo, Ricardo. East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio. University of Texas Press, July 5, 2010. ISBN 0292787715, 9780292787711. p. 94-95.
  7. Romo, Ricardo. East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio. University of Texas Press, July 5, 2010. ISBN 0292787715, 9780292787711. p. 95.
  8. Gurock, p. 38.
  9. Schrader, Esther. "Undertow: LA copes with the flood of Soviet emigres." The New Republic. December 4, 1989. Vol.201(23), p.11(2). ISSN 0028-6583. ""And Los Angeles has a higher concentration of Soviet Jews than any American city except new York: the community has grown by about 1,500 this year, and 850 more are expected in the next two months."
  10. "LA mayor-elect Eric Garcetti at a glance". Associated Press. June 30, 2013. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
  11. Bozorgmehr, Mehdi, Claudia Der-Martirosian, and Georges Sabagh. "Middle Easterners: A New Kind of Immigrant" (Chapter 12). In: Waldinger, Roger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr (editors). Ethnic Los Angeles. Russell Sage Foundation, December 5, 1996. Start page 345. ISBN 1610445473, 9781610445474. Cited: p. 348.
  12. Hennessy-Fiske, Molly and Tami Abdollah. "Community torn by tragedy." Los Angeles Times. September 15, 2008. p. 1. Retrieved on March 11, 2015.
  13. West, Kevin. "The Persian Conquest." W Magazine. July 2009. Retrieved on March 11, 2015.
  14. Mitchell, John L. "Iranian Jews Find a Beverly Hills Refuge : Immigrants: Khomeini's revolution drove 40,000 of them into exile. At least 30,000 may live in or near the city that symbolizes wealth." Los Angeles Times. February 13, 1990. Retrieved on March 11, 2015. p. 1.
  15. Mitchell, John L. "Iranian Jews Find a Beverly Hills Refuge : Immigrants: Khomeini's revolution drove 40,000 of them into exile. At least 30,000 may live in or near the city that symbolizes wealth." Los Angeles Times. February 13, 1990. Retrieved on March 11, 2015. p. 2.
  16. Watanabe, Teresa. "Change drives tension in staid Hancock Park." Los Angeles Times. October 1, 2007. p. 1. Retrieved on April 2, 2014.
  17. "Neighborhood Spotlight: Pico-Robertson an evolving hub of Jewish culture". Los Angeles Times. 2017-02-03. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  18. "Pico/Robertson Synagogues". haruth.com. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  19. BLACKS & JEWS
  20. Sonenshein, p. 190.
  21. Sonenshein, p. 196.
  22. Sonenshein, p. 196, 198.
  23. Sonenshein, p. 198.
  24. Sonenshein, p. 189.
  25. Sonenshein, p. 199.
  26. Bennett, Sarah. "The Slow Death of L.A.'s Jewish Delis." Los Angeles Weekly. Wednesday June 24, 2015. Retrieved on March 8, 2016.
  27. Hsu, Tiffany. "Jewish delis in a pickle." Los Angeles Times. February 22, 2013. Retrieved on Retrieved on March 8, 2016.
  28. Lingre, Michele. "Early Linguists : Private Foreign-Language Schools Give Bilingual Education a New Twist." Los Angeles Times. April 28, 1988. p. 3. Retrieved on June 29, 2015.
  29. Lakein, Dvora (October 6, 2014). "How Does She Do It?". Chabad Lubavitch World HQ / News. Retrieved 17 November 2014. Mrs. Shula Bryski, representative to Thousand Oaks, California, and a mother of six, says that the Rebbe “empowered women in a way perhaps never done before.” Embracing modernity, the Rebbe understood that today, “women need more sophisticated Judaism, more depth, more spirituality.” Bryski’s personal emphasis in this affluent Los Angeles suburb is educating women through a weekly Caffeine for the Soul class, monthly Rosh Chodesh Society meetings, and the wildly popular bat-mitzvah classes she leads. Bryski also serves on the editorial board of the Rosh Chodesh Society, a project of Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) and is a prolific writer.
  30. Posner, Menachem. "300 Rabbinical Students Heading Out for Summer Sojourns". Lubavitch World Headquarters. Chabad.org is a division of the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center. Zarchi was followed by Rabbi Efraim Mintz, who served as a Roving Rabbi in California in 1990. Mintz, who directs the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, shared tips and advice on honing a Torah “elevator pitch,” as well as ideas about presenting more advanced Torah thoughts on a variety of subjects to share with others during the course of their travels.
  31. "What Chabad on Campus Offers". Chabad of UCLA. Los Angeles, California. Archived from the original on 2014-12-31. Retrieved 2014-12-31. Our Sinai Scholars program (in conjunction with the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute) is popular among college students as they discover the inner meaning of the 10 Commandments, and JLearn programs are run every semester covering a wide variety of Jewish and Chassidic topics.
  32. "10 Commandments program". LOS ANGELES, California: Shturem. Based on Article by Bradford Wiss/Chabad.com. The dinner for the first graduates at USC took place at West Coast Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Westwood, and began with a videotaped speech from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, in which he said that Torah study was an important birthright of all Jews, regardless of their class, education, or age.
  33. Geis, Sonya. "Iran Native Becomes Mayor of Beverly Hills." The Washington Post. Sunday April 1, 2007. Retrieved on March 11, 2015.

Further reading
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