A Sweet & Sour New Year
A New Scroll of LA Jewish News
Folks,
This pomegranate, ripening in our backyard, is not quite ready for Rosh Hashanah, and neither am I. Though the Jewish New Year, comes later in the calendar than usual, I find myself, unsettled, thinking the coming year will be more like sweet and sour, and wishing the change could come even later, say, after October 7, and after November 5. Then, I will be ready for a real welcome of a fresh new outlook, of a sweet bite of apple and honey. But Jewish events are not timed to either the redness of the fruit, or my own internal clock. The moon, and sun, tell us when to celebrate the New Year, and we must adjust. Say the prayers. Sing the songs of our fathers and mothers, and let the sound of the horn change our season.
At the New Year, I hope you are ready once again to support MegilLA. With each issue, I work to bring you a fresh perspective on the Jewish life around us. To continue the effort, I am asking you to begin the New Year by SUBSCRIBING today.
Shanah tovah umetukah,
May you have a good and sweet New Year.
Edmon J. Rodman
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Old shul renewed
at Rosh Hashanah
Finishing touches are underway to the restoration of the former home of Congregation Mogen David, in West Adams area.
Edmon J. Rodman
In a year when the preservation battle to save the B’nai B’rith building was lost after a determined effort, the successful completion of another preservation project of a historic Jewish community building is about to be celebrated.
The former synagogue building for Congregation Mogen David, located in the West Adams District, has been restored and renovated. On October 5, the day after Rosh Hashanah, the restored building will be open for a tour and program.
Members of both the West Adams Heritage Association, and the Art Deco Society, as well as their friends have been invited to attend.
The event will consist of a presentation on the cultural history of the space, as well as an account of the building’s restoration, and tour. There will also be an interlude of musical entertainment by Janet Klein who will sing Hebrew/Yiddish Vaudeville songs.
The tour will include access to the 22 stained glass windows (including one in memory of Clark Gable), both stages, the backstage dressing rooms, the upstairs apartment and offices as well as the grounds.
For many decades, the building was home to the Church of Divine Guidance. In 2020, during the pandemic, the church closed and was sold to preservationist Regina O’Brian, a set decorator with a degree in Architecture (Environmental Design) from Otis College of Art, and her husband Hardy Wronkse, who has a Masters in Real Estate Development from USC, and a background in construction and home building.
The restoration and renovation of the 7,200 square foot property has taken three years. The former synagogue building, which sits on a corner of a block of large apartment buildings, is not on the city’s list of cultural-historic monument sites, and a different buyer might have applied to have it torn down.
Congregation Mogen David, a Traditional Ashkenazi synagogue was founded in 1925. In the beginning, the congregation used private homes in the vicinity for their prayer services until the women’s auxiliary raised the funds to buy a lot at 1518 S. Gramercy Place.
Formerly known as the Pico Heights Jewish Community, the congregation of around 35 families, ran its first ad for High Holy Day services in 1926. Rabbi Nathan Masovetzky officiated.
There is record in the B’nai B’rith Messenger of a “house warming” in the “shul building” as early as 1930. A Talmud Torah was in use and services were held at the site as early as 1931, and the building was completed in 1933.
In the 1930s, the area’s business district along Pico included a kosher market, which had a kosher meat department, and in the 1940s, a club that held a Jewish dance every Sunday was nearby.
In 1954, following the westward migration of its members, the congregation moved to 9700 block of W. Pico Boulevard, where the Ashkenazi and Sephardic shul remains today.
Tour Tickets available HERE through the Art Deco Society
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Moving High Holy Days
The Movable Minyan, Los Angeles’ oldest independent, lay-led, and egalitarian Jewish prayer community, will be holding High Holy Day services at the J, formerly the Westside Jewish Community Center.
This year, the group will be discussing Rabbi Alan Lew’s thought-provoking book on understanding the High Holy Days “This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared.”
In our 36th anniversary year, the minyan’s services feature group singing, prayer and discussions, followed by a communal meal.
For more info click HERE.
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Play Review:
The battle on Bald Mountain
Ann Noble and Leo Marks as Lani Riefenstahl and Walt Disney.
Photo by Matt Kamimura
Edmon J. Rodman
In an election year when our country seems poised on the brink of falling into deep chasm of autocracy or even fascism, “Crevasse,” a new play that takes place when Hitler’s Germany was on the rise, is about to re-open for an extended run at the Victory Theatre in Burbank.
The play is part of “Reflections on Art and Democracy,” a celebration of plays, salons, lectures, and concerts in Los Angeles “aimed at raising awareness about the rise of fascism and antisemitism, the power of art and design to resist them,” says Son of Semele, a Los Angeles-based theater company, who co-produced the show, along with the Victory Theatre.
Written, and researched in wonderful detail by Tom Jacobson, the play takes us back to 1938, where we observe a dangerously dangling dialogue between Leni Riefenstahl, propagandist of the Third Reich, and Walt Disney, animation studio head, who is intrigued by her talent.
Unlike “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” where the famous painter meets Albert Einstein in a bar, the meeting between the propaganda film maker and the maker of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” actually took place.
Riefenstahl had come to America to sell “Olympia,” her film about the ’32 Berlin Olympics to Hollywood. After the bad publicity of Kristallnacht, Disney was the only studio head left who would take a meeting with her.
Having grown up in a mid-sized Jewish community in Anaheim, the home of the Magic Kingdom, I found the play’s premise evocative of what many in my community thought in the 60’s: that Walt Disney was an antisemite, though without any damning proof.
In 1933, Disney did make “Three Little Pigs,” which had a scene, later changed, of the big bad wolf disguised as a Jewish peddler, but countering that, he also made “Der Fuehrer's Face” (1943) a biting satire about Hitler.
Yet, this old charge reverberated as I watched Riefenstahl and Disney verbally sparring. As they passed though the various departments of the animator’s studio. the language is sharp, revealing the internal monologue, and agenda of each character. Each was a celebrated manipulator, whose success depended on the right mix of light and shadow. Who would bend the other to their view?
Will Disney find a way to distribute Riefenstahl’s Nazi-tinged documentary, which he very much admires? Will Reifenstahl, end her attachment to der Fuehrer, and accept Walt’s offer to come America, and even make a Disney film?
The outcome is in doubt until the two give their views on “Night on Bald Mountain,” a rather dark segment of Disney’s “Fantasia,” where life seems on the verge of falling into a dark and evil crevasse.
In the segment, the devil Chernabog awakens at midnight to summon evil spirits and restless souls from their graves to Bald Mountain. The spirits flow and fly through the air, Chernabog advances towards the sleeping village, until the ring of a bell at dawn sends them back.
It is here that the play’s connection to “Reflections on Art and Democracy,” rises like a lick of flame casting shadows on our coming election. During these months, we are having our own night on Bald Mountain in which many are feeling the pull of fascism; the promise of easy, draconian solutions to problems, some real, and some imagined.
As we approach our night of reckoning on November 5, the debate between the two forces increases in temperature and tenor, and truth is twisted like a bag tie. Each side says the other is the big bad wolf, and will lead us all into the crevasse.
One side will lead us into the light, the other, darkness. Remarkably, the forces seem equally balanced; dramatically so. In the theater, the playwright shapes the outcome. When the show is over, and lights and hope return, the future rests with the audience.
Crevasse, October 4-27
The Victory Theatre Centre
3326 W Victory Blvd
Burbank, CA 91505
Tickets & Info
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* Live from the Archive
When Rosh Hashanah
was a double feature
During the High Holy Days, more people than usual attend services, and providing enough seats for this expanded congregation is a good problem with various solutions.
Some congregations, like where I grew up, had two services at peak occasions such as Kol Nidre. Others, like the combined Los Angeles congregation of Rodef Sholom-Etz Chayim, shown in this September 1948 ad from the California Jewish Voice, solve the problem by renting a nearby movie theater.
Many High Holy Days ads and posters of the time also featured the synagogue’s “stars,” like Cantor Itzikel Schiff, known for his musical interpretations, and Rabbi Yonah Ganzweig, a student of Rabbi Osher Zilberstein of the Breed Street Shul, known for his inspiring topical sermons.
Sometimes the connection between movie house and house of worship would become year-round.
A few decades later, a movie theater would become a permanent feature of Rodef Sholom-Etz Chayim congregation’s billing. In 1958, the synagogue with the wordy name, after a second merger with Agudath Achim, changed its name to Judea Congregation. Together they shared a larger building at 1218 S. Fairfax (now a Korean Chruch).
When Judea’s membership began to decline, they merged with B’nai David on Pico becoming B’nai David-Judea, where together they prayed in the former Fox Stadium Theatre that had been converted into a synagogue.
*The Rodman Archive of Los Angeles Jewish History is a collection of approximately 1000 objects, photos, clothing, art, books, recordings, and ephemera relating to the lives and endeavors of Jewish Angelenos between 1850 and 1980.
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Seen on the way: Hollywood
Before Rosh Hashanah, in the month of Elul, and during the Ten Days of Repentance, the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, are two times of the year when it is customary for Jews to visit a cemetery like Beit Olam in Hollywood founded in the 1920s.
A cemetery visit on the yahrtzeit, or during the Ten Days of Repentance is called Kever Avot, which literally means “graves of the fathers.” During this time of year, in many communities a service led by a community rabbi is offered at the cemetery.
In LA, Kever Avot will be at either Hillside, or Eden on Sunday October 6 at 10 a.m.
While visiting a Jewish cemetery you may notice the Hebrew abbreviations on the headstones, and wonder what they mean.
The Hebrew letters peh, nun פ״נ stand for, po nikbar (masculine) or po nikb’ra (feminine), and means “here lies.”
A single letter reish ר״ means “reb” a sign of respect, like mister. It does not mean rabbi.
On a woman’s headstone you may see the letter mem מ״ or mem reishמר״,
meaning Mrs., or miss, a traditional Ashkenazi form of address for a woman.
Chiseled into many markers is the abbreviation ל " ז zayin, lamed meaning zichrono or zichrona leveracha—meaning, may his or her soul be a blessing.
At the bottom of many headstones and plaques are the letters
tav, nun, tsadi, bet, hay, ת׳נ’צ’ב ‘ה
an abbreviation for
“te’hi nafsho, or nafsha, tsarurah b'tsror ha’chayim," meaning “let his or her soul be bound up in the bonds of life.”
It is a verse adapted from Samuel also found in El Malei Rachamin, the traditional memorial prayer recited at funerals, and when visiting a grave.