Jewish History Bus Tour
The bus tour was a mind blower! What a wealthy history! In 1850, according to the first United States statistics in Los Angeles, there was only eight young Jewish immigrants which happened to live in the same building and the Jewish population has increased to over 700,000 people since then!
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Bus Tour of Jewish L.A. History |
Back Row: L-R:
Tour Guide Jerry Freedman, Jay Malmeth, Hana Niv, |
We visited Boyle Heights and saw the first and only Temple, the Breed Street Shul on Breed Street. It was an Orthodox Jewish community. This Temple closed in 1992 after failing to get a minyan to continue services. The Rabbi had a permit to demolish the building but was blocked by the Jewish Historical Society who fought against it and won the battle to preserve it as a landmark building, being the only Temple in Boyle Heights. There used to be over one hundred kosher restaurants with Yiddish and Hebrew signs everywhere along Brooklyn Avenue. We saw Canter's Deli's original site on Brooklyn Avenue, before they moved to their current site on Fairfax Avenue in 1948.
We visited Wilshire Boulevard Temple and Sinai Temple's original sites which are now are churches. We learned about the famous story of Kaspare who ran the first Jewish hospital from a house on Carroll Street taking care of people who had tuberculosis. It eventually became Cedars of Lebanon, then Cedars Sinai Medical Center.
Kaspare Cohn House on Carroll Street
We all had lunch at Philippe's, a well-known restaurant for french dip sandwiches. Then we continued the bus tour to see the original site of Home of Peace cemetery, original site of the Jewish Federation Building, went through Hollywood's movie history of theatres, studios, and Fairfax Avenue.
Los Angeles is the second largest Jewish community in the world with 700,000 Jews! Approximately 270,000 live in the San Fernando Valley. New York is first and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are third and fourth! Calabasas, Tarzana and Westlake is now the fastest growing Jewish community.
This is a brief history of our trip as the list is endless of what other sites we visited. It was an educational day for many of us!
Our tour guide, Jerry Habash Freedman really knows the history by heart with no notes or books! He was full of interesting stories.
A big thanks to Koli Cutler who did an outstanding job on interpreting all day without a harness!