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Beit Olam: A home everlasting -- the Jewish cemeteries of East Los Angeles
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Beit Olam: A home everlasting -- the Jewish cemeteries of East Los Angeles
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Content
BEIT OLAM: A HOME EVERLASTING—
THE JEWISH CEMETERIES OF EAST LOS ANGELES
By
Rachel Elizabeth Trombetta
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF HERITAGE CONSERVATION
AUGUST 2018
Copyright 2018 Rachel Elizabeth Trombetta
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am so thankful for my colleagues, friends, and family, whose advice and support were essential
for the completion of this thesis. I am profoundly grateful for my program director and advisor,
Trudi Sandmeier, who provided valuable assistance and encouragement while supervising my
work. I am also greatly appreciative of my wonderful committee members. David Charles
Sloane’s incredible cemetery expertise and Caroline Luce’s wealth of knowledge about the Los
Angeles Jewish community were crucial for the success of my thesis, and I am also sincerely
grateful for their advice and encouraging words along the way. I also wish to thank those who
shared their time, knowledge, and valuable personal and professional collections with me. I am
indebted to Jill Glasband and Eric Rothman, who each talked with me for hours and generously
shared their archives with me. I am also very thankful to Shmuel Gonzales and Paul Pitkoff, who
kindly shared their extensive research on Jewish history and Jewish cemeteries. I would like to
extend my appreciation as well to the members of Los Angeles’ Jewish community who assisted
me including Richard George, Ted Gostin, Rabbi Moshe Greenwald, Yossi Manela, and Ivan
Wolkind. Finally, I am endlessly thankful to Mom and Dad, who have been the kindest and most
supportive parents, landlords, and proofreaders during this time, and to my furry siblings,
Sophie, Dixie, and Sasha, who were the best companions and cheerleaders throughout my thesis
writing process. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my sweet cat, Sasha, whose recent
passing brought my thesis subject close to home, and whom I miss very much.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...……………………………………………………………………...ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ………………………………………….………………………….....iii
LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………………………......v
LIST OF FIGURES ...…………………………………………………………………………....vi
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………...ix
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1
CHAPTER ONE: A Brief History of the Jewish Community in Los Angeles
The Beginning of Jewish Los Angeles: Downtown …………………………………………….10
Rising Jewish Life in Boyle Heights ……………………………………………………………12
A “Hopelessly Heterogeneous” Neighborhood ………………………………………………....15
The Mexican Community Grows in Boyle Heights …………………………………………….17
Jewish Movement West and to the San Fernando Valley ………………………………….…...18
Boyle Heights Becomes a Mexican Enclave ……………………………………………………20
Jewish Los Angeles and Boyle Heights Today …………………………………………..……...22
CHAPTER TWO: American Orthodox Jewish Burial and Cemetery Traditions
Burial ……………………………………………………………………………………….……25
Mourning ………………………………………………………………………………….……..28
Cemetery Design ………………………………………………………………………...………29
Ceramic Portraits ………………………………………………………………………………..31
CHAPTER THREE: The Establishment of the Jewish Cemeteries in East Los Angeles
The Earliest Cemeteries in Los Angeles—Before 1900 ……………………………..………….36
The New Jewish Cemetery, Home of Peace—Creation and Establishment …………………… 41
The Masonic Cemetery Association …………………………………………………………….43
Extension of the Stephenson Avenue Yellow Cars and the Funeral Streetcar ………………….45
Beth Israel Cemetery—Creation and Establishment ……………………………………………46
Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth—The Jewish Free Burial Society ………………………………….47
iv
Mount Zion Cemetery—Creation and Establishment …………………………………………...48
Agudath Achim Cemetery—Creation and Establishment ………………………………………49
Beth David Cemetery ……………………………………………………………………………50
CHAPTER FOUR: The Continuing History of the Jewish Cemeteries in East Los Angeles
Home of Peace—The Later Years ………………………………………………………………53
Beth Israel—The Later Years …………………………………………………………………...70
Mount Zion—The Later Years ………………………………………………………………….73
Agudath Achim—The Later Years ……………………………………………………………...84
CHAPTER FIVE: Issues of Cemetery Neglect and Suggestions for Programming Initiatives
An Uncertain Future ………………………………………………………………………….....88
Neglected Jewish Cemeteries: An International and Domestic Problem …………………….....90
“The Area is Unfortunate” ………………………………………………………………………92
Other Potential Reasons for Decreased Visitation ………………………………………………93
Technical Publications for Cemetery Conservation …………………………………………….95
Small Solutions ………………………………………………………………………………….96
The Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles ………………………………………..97
Historic Designation …………………………………………………………………………….99
Special Events and Activities at the Cemetery ………………………………………………...102
Programming Suggestions to Create Youth and Community Engagement ……………………103
CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………………………...108
BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………..…………………………………………………………….110
v
LIST OF TABLES
1.1 Los Angeles Jewish Population Statistics …………………………………………………...22
3.1 Cemeteries in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles ………………………………………...51
4.1 Jewish Cemeteries in Other Neighborhoods of Los Angeles ……………………………….60
vi
LIST OF FIGURES
0.1 The Eastside of Los Angeles …………………………………...……………………………..2
0.2 The Four Jewish Cemeteries in East Los Angeles …………………………………...……….4
1.1 B’nai B’rith Congregation at Ninth and Hope Streets, 1926 ……………………………......11
1.2 Beth Israel Congregation, the “Olive Street Shul, ”1937 …………………………………...11
1.3 Brooklyn Avenue & St. Louis Street, Boyle Heights, 1936 ………………………..……….15
1.4 Second Street Elementary School Band, Boyle Heights, 1930 …….……...………………..16
1.5 Mexican-American Friends in Boyle Heights, ca. 1920 …..……………………………..….18
1.6 Chicano Movement March, East Los Angeles, 1970 ……………………………………….21
1.7 Zellman’s Men’s Clothing, Boyle Heights, ca. 1935 & ca. 1983 ….………………………..21
1.8 Jewish Population Movement 1850s – 1970s …………………………….………………....23
1.9 Congregation Talmud Torah, the “Breed Street Shul,” 1976 & undated …….………..……24
2.1 Recent Burials with Mounded Earth in Agudath Achim Cemetery …………….…………..26
2.2 Upright Headstones and Concrete Beds, Pebbles Left by Visitor …………….…………… 28
2.3 Headstone Unveiling …………….…………………………………………………………..29
2.4 Graves Depicting Magen David, Hands, and Menorah …………….……………………….31
2.5 Ceramic Memorial Portraits …………….…………………………………………………...33
2.6 Photoengraving on Russian Grave in Home of Peace …………….………………………...34
2.7 Damaged Ceramic Memorial Portraits …………….………………………………………..35
3.1 The First Jewish Cemetery in Los Angeles…………….……………………………………37
3.2 Members of the Fraternal Order of Masons, ca. 1900 ………………………………………42
3.3 B’nai B’rith Congregation’s First Synagogue, ca. 1898 …………………………………….42
3.4 Possible Aerial View of New Masonic Cemetery, 1924 ……………………………………44
3.5 The Descanso Funeral Car …………………………………………………………………..46
3.6 Cemeteries in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles ………………………………………...52
4.1 Home of Peace Cemetery Aerial View, 1924 ….……………………….…………………...53
4.2 Illustration of Proposed Home of Peace Mausoleum, 1926 …..…………………………….54
4.3 Groundbreaking for Home of Peace Mausoleum …………………………………………...56
4.4 Mausoleum drawing, 1930s-era Home of Peace Pamphlet …………………………………57
4.5 Mausoleum floor plan, 1930s-era Home of Peace Pamphlet …………….………………….57
vii
4.6 Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 1940 …………………………………………………………..58
4.7 Jewish Cemeteries in Los Angeles …………….…………………………………………....61
4.8 Home of Peace Mausoleum, 2018 …………….…………………………………………….62
4.9 “Remarkably Accessible” Home of Peace …………….…………………………………….63
4.10 Damaged Gravestones, Benevolent Section, Home of Peace …………….………………..65
4.11 Home of Peace Map Displaying Burial Sections …………….…………………………….67
4.12 Home of Peace Memorial Park Satellite View, 2018 ….…………….………...…………..68
4.13 Gravestones in Home of Peace ….…………….…………………………………………...69
4.14 Orthodox Graves in Home of Peace …………….…………………………………………69
4.15 Chapel in Beth Israel Cemetery, Sanborn Map, 1928 …………….……………………….70
4.16 Beth Israel Cemetery Gates …………….………………………………………………….70
4.17 Beth Israel Cemetery…………….………………………………………………………….72
4.18 Beth Israel Cemetery Satellite View, 2018 …………….…...……………………………...72
4.19 Beth Israel Service Building, 2018 ………………………………………………………...73
4.20 Chapel in Mount Zion, 1928 and Replacement Office, 1950, Sanborn Maps ….………….74
4.21 Mount Zion Cemetery Satellite View, 2018 …………….……………...………………….74
4.22 Handmade Gravestone ……..…………….………………………………………………...76
4.23 Mount Zion Conditions, 2013 …………….………………………………………………..80
4.24 Ceramic Portrait with Bullet Hole, Possible Evidence of Cemetery Ritual…….……….....80
4.25 Mount Zion Site Plan, 2013 …………….………………………………………………….82
4.26 Mount Zion Restoration, 2014 …………….……………………………………………….82
4.27 Mount Zion Cemetery Gates …………….…………………………………………………84
4.28 Chapel in Agudath Achim Cemetery, 1950, Sanborn Map …………….………………….84
4.29 Agudath Achim Cemetery Satellite View, 2018 …………….……………………………..84
4.30 Genizah in Agudath Achim Cemetery …………….……………………………………….85
4.31 Agudath Achim Cemetery Gates …………….…………………………………………….87
5.1 Cracked Concrete in Agudath Achim Cemetery ……………………………………………89
5.2 Man Flashing Gang Sign in front of Breed Street Shul ……………………………………..93
5.3 Ashley Jewish Homesteaders Cemetery, North Dakota …………………………………...101
5.4 Coping Grave in New Orleans ………………..……………………………………………101
5.5 Cemetery Dogs Logo ……………………………………………………………………....103
viii
5.6 Funeral Program for Barney Dinosaurski ……………………………………………...…..105
5.7 Sign to Replace Broken Ceramic Pictures at Agudath Achim …………………………….106
ix
ABSTRACT
This master’s thesis explores the history and conservation issues of the four oldest extant Jewish
cemeteries in the Los Angeles area: Home of Peace Memorial Park (1902), Beth Israel Cemetery
(1907), Mount Zion Cemetery (1916), and Agudath Achim Cemetery (1919). These cemeteries
neighbor one other in an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County called East Los Angeles,
which borders the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Boyle Heights once was a
multicultural neighborhood containing a substantial Jewish population, but in the latter half of
the twentieth century, the Jewish population relocated to the Westside and San Fernando Valley,
and Boyle Heights became almost entirely Latino. The cemeteries discussed in this thesis range
in the level of care and attention they receive. Home of Peace, the oldest extant Jewish cemetery
in Los Angeles, still actively serves the Jewish community, though its popularity diminished
with the establishment of more modern Jewish cemeteries closer to postwar Jewish
neighborhoods; Beth Israel and Agudath Achim are small Orthodox cemeteries filled with
traditional upright headstones and concrete ledgers; and Mount Zion, established by a charitable
society, has sat in near-abandonment for almost fifty years, proving especially vulnerable to
damage from earthquakes and trespassers. This thesis aims to tell the history of these cemeteries
in the context of the early Los Angeles Jewish community, exploring how Jewish mourning and
burial traditions, lack of endowment funding, and the movement of the Jewish community away
from the Eastside contributed to the cemeteries’ vulnerability in the face of neglect and
vandalism. The thesis evaluates options for connecting the cemeteries with the contemporary
Jewish community and considers how these cemeteries might be able to be revitalized without
ostracizing a Latino community that already feels threatened by encroaching gentrification in the
area.
INTRODUCTION
Los Angeles is the metropolitan region with the second largest Jewish population in the
United States and the fifth largest Jewish population in the world. Only New York City surpasses
its number of Jewish inhabitants in the United States, and, besides New York City, only the
Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa surpass its Jewish population in the world.
1
These
statistics come as a surprise to those who have trouble connecting the American Jewish identity
to the laid-back beach culture associated with Southern California. Los Angeles covers an
expansive area and is divided into many neighborhoods and distinct nodes of activity. Because of
this, it can be difficult to delineate Jewish Los Angeles, despite the fact that more than 500,000
Jewish Angelenos live in the city.
2
When considering areas that are most identified with Jewish
culture, Jews in Los Angeles would likely point to neighborhoods like Pico-Robertson or Encino,
located on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley to the north of the city. However, some
of the oldest and most significant physical reminders of Jewish history in Los Angeles can be
found in the city’s Eastside—an area east of downtown and the Los Angeles River. The Eastside
includes the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Boyle Heights, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights, as
well as the region of East Los Angeles, which is an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County
just beyond the Los Angeles border [Figure 0.1].
3
1
“Vital Statistics: Largest Jewish Populated Metropolitan Areas, United States,” Jewish Virtual Library: A Project
of AICE (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise), Last Updated January 2012, Accessed May 21, 2018,
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/largest-jewish-populated-metropolitan-areas-united-states; “Vital Statistics:
Largest Jewish Populated Metropolitan Areas, Worldwide,” Jewish Virtual Library: A Project of AICE (American-
Israeli Cooperative Enterprise), Last Updated January 2015, Accessed May 21, 2018,
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/largest-jewish-populated-metropolitan-areas-worldwide.
2
“Vital Statistics: Largest Jewish Populated Metropolitan Areas, United States.”
3
“Mapping L.A.: The Eastside,” Los Angeles Times, Accessed May 22, 2018,
http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/region/eastside/.
2
Boyle Heights is the Eastside neighborhood that is most associated with the city’s Jewish
community. Before World War II, Boyle Heights was known as a multicultural enclave, housing
a variety of low-income immigrant populations and serving as the center of Jewish residential
and commercial life in Los Angeles. Today, Boyle Heights is a majority Latino neighborhood
that is waging a fierce public battle against creeping gentrification in an attempt to keep
“colonialist businesses” from displacing the neighborhood’s low-income Latino residents.
4
Although Boyle Heights was the heart of the Jewish community from the 1910s to World
War II, and was once filled with landmark Jewish institutions such as the original Canter’s Deli,
few recognizably Jewish historic resources remain in the area. The last Jewish business in the
4
Jason McGahan, “Who’s Winning and Losing in the Boyle Heights Gentrification War,” LA Weekly, July 18,
2017, Accessed January 4, 2018, http://www.laweekly.com/news/boyle-heights-gentrification-war-shows-no-signs-
of-stopping-8438794.
Figure 0.1: The Eastside of Los Angeles. Map courtesy of Google Maps; notations by author.
3
neighborhood closed almost twenty years ago.
5
Architectural resources, like the Raphael
Soriano-designed Soto-Michigan Jewish Community Center, have been demolished.
6
Signs of
the former Jewish community are present, but can be easily missed if one fails to keep their eyes
peeled: a sign at the corner of Cesar Chavez Avenue and Soto Street memorializing the historic
Brooklyn Avenue Neighborhood Corridor and a couple of small Spanish-speaking churches with
Magen David (Stars of David) above their doors, which denote their former lives as Jewish
synagogues. The most visible Jewish resource in the area is the Breed Street Shul, an Orthodox
synagogue that was the focus of much community discussion and frustration for years as it
increasingly fell into dereliction. The Shul underwent a well-publicized rehabilitation in the
2000s that aimed to “transform the campus into a center of arts, culture, education and service,”
and “bring together the Jewish, Latino and other communities of Los Angeles,” but post-
rehabilitation programming appeared to hit a snag, and to this day, the building remains
underutilized and a shell of its former self.
7
Besides the Breed Street Shul, the most visibly
Jewish historic resources existing in the Eastside are four cemeteries located approximately one
mile away in East Los Angeles.
Los Angeles’ four oldest extant Jewish cemeteries, hidden behind bougainvillea and vine-
covered walls, sit within a two square mile section of Los Angeles County that contains eleven
cemeteries—ten of which were established by the 1920s. The Jewish cemeteries—Home of
Peace Memorial Park, Beth Israel Cemetery, Mount Zion Cemetery, and Agudath Achim
Cemetery—form a small cemetery district surrounded by residential houses, freeways, and the
neighboring Catholic Calvary Cemetery [Figure 0.2].
5
Wendy Elliott-Scheinberg, “Boyle Heights: Jewish Ambiance in a Multicultural Neighborhood,” (PhD diss.,
Claremont Graduate University; 2001), ProQuest UMI No. 3015947.
6
“Jewish, Architectural Landmark Destroyed in L.A. for Federal Project,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 23,
2006, Accessed May 15, 2018, https://www.jta.org/2006/03/23/archive/jewish-architectural-landmark-destroyed-in-
l-a-for-federal-project.
7
“Our Mission,” Breed Street Shul Project, Accessed May 15, 2018, http://breedstreetshul.org/our-mission/.
4
These cemeteries are unique and historic, but mostly forgotten by today’s Jewish
community. In the past approximately seventy years since Jews began moving away from Boyle
Heights and the Eastside, the Jewish congregations that owned these cemeteries sold them to
private companies, their caretaking organizations dissolved, and the cemeteries experienced
varying degrees of vandalism and neglect—a common occurrence with older cemeteries, and
increasingly, older Jewish cemeteries. At least three of the four cemeteries, are, at this time,
approaching imminent abandonment if they do not receive more attention and funding soon.
Researching these cemeteries, it became evident to me that there are clear contradictions
between the manner in which the Jewish community would like to treat their dead, and the way
that they ultimately sometimes do. Cemeteries and burial traditions are incredibly important in
Jewish culture. Throughout history, when Jews established communities in a new town, their
first order of business would be to establish a burial ground, symbolically and physically
cementing their decision to settle there, since it is against Jewish law to relocate bodies or to use
Figure 0.2: The four Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles, across the street from Calvary Cemetery.
Map courtesy of Google Maps; notations by author.
5
cemetery grounds for any other purpose once the land is dedicated.
8
In the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, American Jewish congregations and burial associations established their own
cemeteries and burial societies to properly execute burials and care for the graves according to
Jewish law. For Jews, the proper burial of deceased loved ones is an important community
obligation and good deed that shows kindness to the dead.
9
However, throughout the United
States, as time passed and Jews moved out of their neighborhoods, congregation numbers
dwindled, and traditional volunteer burial associations dissolved in favor of more modern for-
profit mortuaries, those who owned these cemeteries found themselves unable to maintain the
responsibility of caring for their dead. Strapped for funds, they sold their cemeteries to other
agencies or were forced to ultimately abandon them. Many of the older cemeteries were
established in years before the funerary industry made endowment funds—reserved funds that
care for cemeteries once they are full—a standard practice. These cemeteries’ futures became
unstable and unclear. Since many Jewish communities have, over the years, moved away from
where their communities were once centered and where these cemeteries are still located, many
Jews are often not even aware that these cemeteries are in danger, if they are even aware that
they exist at all. Although many Jewish cemeteries were established with the best of intents, time
and money have made it difficult for even those with good intentions to maintain them.
Cemeteries can be difficult to preserve because they occupy a unique place in the
conservation realm. Unlike many historic buildings, the majority of cemeteries cannot be
adaptively reused and given a new purpose while retaining their historic character and
significance. Once a cemetery is full and cannot accept more burials, what becomes of it? The
phrase, beit olam, used in the title of my thesis, gives a clue to the answer. Beit olam means
“house of eternity,” or “forever home” in Hebrew, and it is often used as a name for Jewish
cemeteries. Cemeteries, especially Jewish cemeteries, are cemeteries forever, even when they no
longer have room for new burials. As three of the four Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles
8
Max Vorspan and Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Los Angeles, (San Marino: Henry E. Huntington Library
& Art Gallery, 1970, 21; Matea Gold, “Lawsuit Charges Cemetery with Unauthorized Reburial of Man,” Los
Angeles Times, September 3, 1997, Accessed March 4, 2018, http://articles.latimes.com/1997/sep/03/local/me-
28368; Marilyn Henry, “All of Europe: A Graveyard,” Jerusalem Post (1950-1988), June 30, 2000,
http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/1443848101?
accountid=14749.
9
Rabbi Joe Black, “What to Expect at a Jewish Funeral,” Reform Judaism.org: Jewish Life in Your Life, Accessed
May 21, 2018, https://reformjudaism.org/what-expect-jewish-funeral.
6
teeter on the precipice of abandonment, the Jewish community, the Eastside community, and the
conservation community are all faced with some basic questions: why should these cemeteries be
saved, and whose obligation is it to save them?
Cemeteries can hold powerful meaning for the public. Often one of the oldest resources,
if not the oldest resource in a city, a cemetery can provide connections to a sense of history not
felt elsewhere in the area. Wandering a cemetery, one can learn about the people who are buried
there, their culture, their community, their burial traditions, and their spiritual beliefs. The
accompanying burial records can also provide important historical health information—
confirming the devastation of an early flu outbreak or highlighting common causes of death at
the time. Cemeteries certainly provide personal connections and comfort to relatives of the
deceased, but they also can serve as a source of spiritual meaning and cultural connection.
Ultimately, to let a cemetery fall into abandonment would mean to ignore its capacity for
valuable architectural, historical, personal, spiritual, and archaeological significance.
As they sit in East Los Angeles, these cemeteries are a physical manifestation of both
early Jewish Los Angeles history and various stakeholders’ level of care and respect for these
cemeteries and the local neighborhood. A quote attributed to William Ewart Gladstone, a late
nineteenth century British prime minister, states, “Show me the manner in which a nation or
community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender
sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.”
10
I
do not believe that it is an overstatement to suggest that when cemeteries go neglected, it reflects
back onto the community at large. It expresses an idea about how the cemetery owners’
community regards its dead, how the local neighborhood regards the cemeteries, and how the
cemetery owners’ community regards the local neighborhood.
I believe, and have confirmed through research, that, as a rule, the Jewish community has
a very strong sense of respect, admiration, and obligation towards its dead. However, over the
years, the Jewish community has become distanced from its East L.A. cemeteries due, in large
part, to the community’s movement away from the Eastside. As the Jewish community moved
west and to the San Fernando Valley, the congregations that managed these cemeteries shrank
and dissolved and the community became literally and symbolically removed from the
10
John F. Llewellyn, A Cemetery Should Be Forever: The Challenge to Managers and Directors, (Glendale, CA:
Tropico Press, 1998), 36.
7
Eastside—the newer generations growing up unaware that these cemeteries ever existed, and
thus, unaware of continuing neglect. The cemeteries became the object of vandalism from local
trespassers, exacerbated by lack of cemetery security, and possibly also a local lack of
understanding and awareness of the community represented in the cemeteries. The cemeteries,
approaching possible abandonment, also begin to reflect an idea about how the Jewish
community perceives the neighborhood surrounding their Eastside cemeteries. Abandoned
cemeteries do not just indicate a lack of care for those buried in the cemeteries, but also indicate
a lack of care for those who live around the cemeteries as well, who are forced to coexist with
something that becomes evidence of blight and a location for criminal activity. If the Jewish
community does not take action to actively care for these cemeteries, it suggests that they do not
care about the wellbeing of the inhabitants of residential East Los Angeles, who can see these
cemeteries from their front windows during the day, and must walk by them at night on their way
home. It is important that the Jewish community does what it can to counter this suggestion—to
show that they do care. But it is especially important now, at a time when neighboring Boyle
Heights residents are clashing with encroaching developers and high-income white residents,
who they feel do not care about the current and future quality of life of local Latino residents.
I focus on the Jewish community as the primary obligant not out of a sense of blame, but
because I know that the Jewish community does care deeply about its cemeteries, and the Jewish
community has the most to lose if these cemeteries become abandoned. When walking through
these cemeteries, looking at the unique style of the graves, the Hebrew epitaphs, and the
beautiful and evocative expressions of the faces in the ceramic portraits on the headstones, one
can see decades of Los Angeles’ early Jewish history—its people, its culture, its footprint, and its
unique burial traditions. When it is difficult to visualize the city’s Jewish culture, these
cemeteries provide valuable physical and visual evidence of early Jewish Los Angeles. As
neighboring Boyle Heights is facing the threat of change, these cemeteries contribute evidence of
the Eastside’s early history as a center of Jewish life and a multicultural enclave. This thesis
looks at the history of these cemeteries, and explores the issues and best practices to mitigate
their neglect and conserve them as the important historic resources that they are.
The first chapter of the thesis gives a brief history of Jewish Los Angeles, focusing on the
movement of Jewish Angelenos across the city. During the nineteenth century, Jews primarily
lived in downtown Los Angeles, but beginning in the 1910s, working-class Jews began moving
8
east across the river to the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, which became a vibrant center for
Jewish residential and commercial life for the next approximately thirty years, as well as an
enclave for other ethnic minorities. After World War II, Jews increasingly moved to the
Westside and the San Fernando Valley, Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles became
progressively more Latino, and memories of Jewish Boyle Heights began to fade.
The second chapter explores Orthodox Jewish mourning and burial traditions. It explains
the strictly regimented mourning rituals followed by American Orthodox Jews. It also highlights
the distinct qualities of Orthodox cemeteries and provides background behind common planning
and design decisions in these cemeteries. This chapter introduces the reader to the unique
character of these cemeteries and the way that traditional interactions between American
Orthodox Jews and their cemeteries can affect their perspectives and attention toward them.
The third chapter describes the history of Los Angeles’ first Jewish cemetery and the
establishment of the Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles. The city’s first Jewish cemetery was
established in 1855 in the Chavez Ravine, but by 1900, many of the city’s cemeteries, including
the Jewish cemetery, were considered derelict and inadequate, and the city established legislation
forcing most new cemeteries to relocate outside the city boundaries. From 1902 to 1919, the
Jewish community established four cemeteries in East Los Angeles. Home of Peace was the
city’s main Jewish cemetery for many years, and the three smaller cemeteries—Beth Israel,
Mount Zion, and Agudath Achim—offered burials that adhered to Orthodox traditions.
The fourth chapter explores the history of these cemeteries after their establishment,
describing how in the 1940s, new and modern Jewish cemeteries began to emerge near the new
Jewish neighborhoods, and Home of Peace began to suffer financially. The Jewish congregations
that owned Home of Peace, Beth Israel, and Agudath Achim eventually sold their cemeteries to
private entities, and Mount Zion, a cemetery established by the Jewish Free Burial Society for
indigent Jews, was effectively abandoned by its owners and caretakers. In the ensuing years, the
three small cemeteries, especially Mount Zion, suffered from neglect and vandalism.
The fifth and final chapter discusses the problems facing the Jewish cemeteries in Los
Angeles and Jewish cemeteries in general, and suggests best practices to mitigate them. One of
the greatest issues facing East L.A.’s Jewish cemeteries is the Los Angeles Jewish community’s
lack of awareness and connection with these cemeteries, which leaves them without an engaged
9
support system. Methods to enhance the relationship between Los Angeles Jews and these
cemeteries range from historic designation to educational programs.
This thesis itself is the first step in creating more awareness of the important Jewish
resources that still exist in the Eastside. These cemeteries give testament to the early history of
the Jewish community in this city, and also provide evidence of the layers of multicultural
history in Los Angeles’ Eastside. By reading about the history of these cemeteries and the threats
facing them, I hope this thesis can help to spark interest and appreciation in these historic burial
grounds.
10
CHAPTER ONE: A Brief History of the Jewish Community in Los Angeles
11
The Beginning of Jewish Los Angeles: Downtown
At the time of its incorporation as a city in 1850, Los Angeles counted eight Jews among
its approximately two thousand residents. The Jewish population at first increased slowly and
steadily, rising to one hundred by 1860, as immigrants from Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, and
Poland joined the community. Most of these Jews lived in what is now considered downtown
Los Angeles: largely on Grand Avenue, Broadway, Main Street, and Los Angeles Street. In
1851, at least eight German Jewish men lived in the Bell’s Row building, which was at the
corner of Aliso and Los Angeles streets. Jews worked downtown as well—primarily as
merchants, bankers, wholesalers, and retailers. They were active in civic affairs—serving on the
Los Angeles City Council—and were heavily involved in social clubs and charity associations.
In 1862, the Jewish community built the city’s first synagogue at 218 S. Broadway in
downtown Los Angeles to house the B’nai B’rith Congregation, which stayed at the site until
1894, when the congregation built a new synagogue a few blocks south at the corner of Hope and
Ninth streets [Figure 1.1]. By 1900, a sizable Jewish population existed in the downtown area
(about one-third of the 2,500 Jews in Los Angeles), and so most fixtures of Jewish community
life could be found downtown as well.
12
The Orthodox alternative to B’nai B’rith’s Reform style
of worship, Beth Israel, established itself in a synagogue in 1902, “on Olive Street, near most of
the members’ homes” [Figure 1.2].
13
The congregants at Beth Israel were mostly Eastern
European immigrants from Russia and Poland who, at the turn of the century, settled along
Temple Street and in nearby Bunker Hill. Other Jewish institutions such as the Kaspare Cohn
11
The majority of the information in this chapter is derived from the following sources, unless otherwise cited:
James P. Allen and Eugene Turner, The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California, (Northridge: The
Center for Geographical Studies, Department of Geography, California State University, Northridge; 1997),
Ricardo Romo, East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), George J.
Sánchez, “‘What’s Good for Boyle Heights is Good for the Jews:’ Creating Multiracialism on the Eastside during
the 1950s,” American Quarterly 56, no. 3 (September 2004), http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://search-
proquest-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/223302593?accountid=14749, Neil C. Sandberg, Jewish Life in Los
Angeles: A Window to Tomorrow, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), Stephen J. Sass, ed. Jewish
Los Angeles—A Guide: Everything Jewish Under the Sun, 2
nd
ed., (Los Angeles: Jewish Federation Council of
Greater Los Angeles, 1982); and Max Vorspan and Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Los Angeles, (San
Marino: Henry E. Huntington Library & Art Gallery, 1970).
12
Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California: 1853-1913, 4th ed., Maurice H. and Marco R. Newmark,
(Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984), 608.
13
Max Vorspan and Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Los Angeles, (San Marino: Henry E. Huntington
Library & Art Gallery, 1970), 160.
11
Hospital (which would eventually evolve into the Cedars half of Cedars-Sinai Hospital) and the
offices for the Federation of Jewish Charities located themselves in the Bunker Hill and Temple
Street areas to be accessible to the community.
14
14
Wendy Elliott-Scheinberg, “Boyle Heights: Jewish Ambiance in a Multicultural Neighborhood,” (PhD diss.,
Claremont Graduate University; 2001), 181, UMI No. 3015947.
Figure 1.1: B’nai B’rith Congregation’s second synagogue at the corner of Ninth and Hope streets, 1926.
Courtesy of the Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00081601.
Figure 1.2: Beth Israel Congregation at the “Olive Street Shul,” 1937. Courtesy of the
Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00081596.
12
At the turn of the twentieth century, Jews began migrating to Los Angeles in large
numbers. Most were originally from Eastern Europe, but spent time in cities such as New York
or Chicago before heading to the west coast.
15
Los Angeles attracted Jews from other American
cities because of its open space and clean, dry air. After living in crowded tenements and
working in the sweatshops of eastern port cities, many Jewish immigrants developed lung
ailments and sought relief in Los Angeles’ temperate climate.
16
The New York-based Industrial
Removal Office amplified this migration by facilitating the westward transportation of nearly
eighty thousand immigrants from overcrowded eastern cities between the years 1900 and 1917.
Rising Jewish Life in Boyle Heights
In 1908, the city implemented a zoning ordinance reserving the west side of Los Angeles
for strictly residential use. Simultaneously, the real estate industry effected restrictive racial
covenants in the neighborhoods west of downtown Los Angeles, preventing the selling or renting
of houses to non-whites, a category that sometimes included Jews. Since industry was now
limited to the downtown, eastern, and southern parts of the city, working-class immigrants and
ethnic minorities stayed close to these areas to be near the factories that employed them, while
upper and middle-class whites fled these increasingly multicultural communities for the
segregated neighborhoods west of downtown.
17
Downtown Los Angeles became so flooded with factories that in the 1910s, Jews began
to relocate from the area, seeking single-family residences and relief from the overcrowded
density of downtown. Affluent members of the Jewish elite, often German Jews who wished to
assimilate into white Los Angeles, moved to the West Adams, Hollywood, and Wilshire
neighborhoods. Working-class Jews, often recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, moved to the
Temple Street area and the Central Avenue area (at the northwestern and southern edges of
downtown), or across the river to Boyle Heights.
15
A small population of Sephardic Jews from Turkey and the island of Rhodes also immigrated to Los Angeles at
this time; Catherine Luce, “Reexamining Los Angeles’ “Lower East Side”: Jewish Bakers Union Local 453 and
Yiddish Food Culture in 1920s Boyle Heights,” in Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic, ed. Karen S. Wilson, (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 29.
16
Danny Weizmann, “In Search of the Last Jews of Boyle Heights: A Cultural Odyssey,” Los Angeles Reader (Los
Angeles), September 1, 1995, Chicano Resource Center, County of Los Angeles Public Library: East Los Angeles
Branch, 10.
17
Caroline Luce, “Visions of a Jewish Future: the Jewish Bakers Union and Yiddish Culture in East Los Angeles,
1908-1942,” (PhD diss.; University of California, Los Angeles; 2013), 67, ProQuest Doc. ID: 1399596926.
13
Boyle Heights, named for Andrew Boyle, an Irish immigrant and early developer in the
area, was originally home to agricultural land and the large estates of the Los Angeles elite.
18
At
the turn of the twentieth century, the city constructed bridges and streetcar lines that connected
the neighborhood to downtown and enabled its transition into a streetcar suburb. Boyle Heights
attracted Jews with its range of affordable housing, proximity to downtown (where many of them
worked in offices, garment factories, and millinery shops), and healthy climate.
19
Word spread
that Boyle Heights, which was further inland and at a higher elevation, had more sun and less
moisture in the air than the rest of the city. In 1910, Kaspare Cohn established a new hospital for
tuberculosis sufferers near Boyle Heights on what is now Whittier Boulevard. “Lungers” or
“tuberculars,” as those suffering from tuberculosis were nicknamed, came out to Boyle Heights
from tuberculosis sanitaria elsewhere, and soon their friends and families followed.
20
The recently formed Congregation Talmud Torah moved to Boyle Heights from
downtown in 1912. The Orthodox synagogue, called the Breed Street Shul, became the spiritual
heart of the neighborhood and encouraged many observant Jews to move to Boyle Heights.
21
European Jews often formed congregations with their landslayt, compatriots from their
hometown in Europe, but many of Los Angeles’ Jews had spent time in multiple American cities
before arriving in Southern California. Because of this, and the resulting disconnect between
these Jews and their landslayt, they instead established new synagogues based on the
neighborhood in which they lived. With the increasing Jewish population in Boyle Heights,
religious leaders established dozens of synagogues, primarily Orthodox, in the neighborhood.
22
Between the mid-1910s and 1923, before the federal government made immigration
quota laws more stringent, Los Angeles’ Jewish population quadrupled, increasing from 10,000
to 43,000.
23
The Jewish population in Boyle Heights swelled to approximately 10,000
18
Elliott-Scheinberg, “Jewish Ambiance,” 36-42; Luce, “Visions,” 65.
19
Luce, “Visions,” 65-66.
20
David Weissman, “Boyle Heights—A Study in Ghettos,” The Reflex, July 1935, 31, Chicano Resource Center,
County of Los Angeles Public Library: East Los Angeles Branch; Weizmann, “In Search,” 10.
21
Luce, “Visions,” 66.
22
Luce, “Reexamining,” 30.
23
In 1921, the United States government established laws restricting immigration from countries to three percent of
the population of foreign-born immigrants from each country that existed at the time of the 1910 census. In 1924,
the government changed the law to restrict immigration to two percent of the ethnic background of the American
population at the time of the 1890 census. This opened up immigration opportunities for British and Western
Europeans—the background of many American families—and limited immigration from Southern and Eastern
Europe (“The Immigration Act of 1924: The Johnson-Reed Act,” Office of the Historian, Accessed March 28, 2018,
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act).
14
households in the 1920s, compared to just three Jewish families in 1908. A large portion of
Boyle Heights’ Jewish population was made up of immigrants from Eastern Europe. By 1920,
Russian-born Jews made up fourteen percent of the area’s residents.
24
Eastern European Jews
often spoke Yiddish and were generally more religiously conservative than their German Jewish
counterparts, which meant that some of them wore traditional clothing out of an adherence to
ritual and modesty. This caused them to appear more visibly foreign, intensifying their status as
outsiders and ostracizing them from the more affluent, assimilated Jews.
America experienced an increase in anti-Semitism in the 1920s due to a revival of the Ku
Klux Klan, which in part influenced the increasingly strict immigration legislation at the time.
The Klan blamed Jewish bankers for American financial problems, Jewish movie studio
executives in Hollywood for attacking American morals, and Jewish intellectuals for attempting
to influence American values with their own foreign allegiances.
25
Los Angeles was not immune
to the influence of the Ku Klux Klan, and some white Angelenos began to feel resentful against
Jews, whom they felt had too much political influence in the city. As Jews began to be excluded
from civic affairs and membership organizations, they refocused their attentions on the affairs of
the Jewish community, establishing and expanding community centers and social welfare
institutions for Jewish orphans, elderly, and the infirm.
During the 1920s and the 1930s, as Boyle Heights grew in Jewish population and as a
center of Jewish culture, distinct districts began to appear within Boyle Heights. Brooklyn
Avenue became the commercial center of the neighborhood where Jewish residents purchased
kosher groceries and patronized Jewish-owned movie theaters [Figure 1.3]. The area around it
also became a gathering place for political leftists and labor union headquarters. A Zionist
community emerged south of Brooklyn Avenue, while more religious Jews tended to live on the
north side. A community of Yiddish secularists lived in the neighborhood of City Terrace, which
was located in the hills northeast of Boyle Heights. This period before World War II was the
peak of Jewish life in Boyle Heights, and by 1930, approximately 24,000 Jews—one-third of Los
24
Luce, “Reexamining,” 29.
25
Adam Hochschild, “Ku Klux Klambakes,” New York Review of Books, Published December 7, 2017, Accessed
March 30, 2018, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/07/ku-klux-klambakes/.
15
Angeles Jews—lived in the area.
26
Boyle Heights gained a reputation as Los Angeles’ “Lower
East Side,” a reference to the working-class immigrant neighborhood in New York City.
A “Hopelessly Heterogeneous” Neighborhood
Despite some contemporary nostalgia for Boyle Heights as a primarily Jewish
neighborhood, this mischaracterization ignores that it was, in fact, home to many other
immigrant and minority populations, and that Jews were never actually a majority of the
population. Black, Mexican, Armenian, Polish, Russian Molokan, Greek, Italian, and Japanese
communities settled in Boyle Heights, seeking the same affordable housing and accessibility to
downtown that appealed to Jews [Figure 1.4].
27
26
Bruce A. Phillips, “Not Quite White: The Emergence of Jewish ‘Ethnoburbs’ in Los Angeles, 1920-2010,”
American Jewish History 100, no. 1 (January 2016): 80, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-
com.libproxy1.usc.edu/docview/1759326215?accountid=14749.
27
Ibid.; Home Owners Loan Corp, “Boyle Heights: Area Description,” Testbed for the Redlining Archives of
California’s Exclusionary Spaces, Accessed January 2, 2018, http://salt.umd.edu/T-RACES/.
Figure 1.3: Intersection of Brooklyn Avenue and St. Louis Street in Boyle Heights, 1936. Storefronts
include a delicatessen, Warsaw Bakery, and a dentist’s office. Note the streetcar lines. Courtesy of the
Shades of LA; Jewish Community Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00107880.
16
Boyle Heights also became a multicultural haven due to its greater acceptance of
diversity and lack of discriminatory housing covenants.
28
In the late 1930s, real estate appraisers
from the Home Owners Loan Corporation created detailed area descriptions and maps for cities
throughout the United States, including Los Angeles, that rated neighborhoods based on whether
they were desirable for mortgage lending purposes.
29
The Home Owners Loan Corporation
classified presence of blacks, Mexicans, Asians, Jews, and other ethnic minorities as derogatory
and subversive racial elements, which made the neighborhood less desirable for lenders.
Neighborhoods with increasing populations of non-whites received a lower rating, and
neighborhoods with already-established multiethnic populations received the lowest ratings.
30
The Home Owners Loan Corporation’s description of Boyle Heights in 1939 indicates that real
estate appraisers gave Boyle Heights a red grade (the lowest rating), and states:
This is a “melting pot” area and is literally honeycombed with diverse and subversive
racial elements. It is seriously doubted whether there is a single block in the area which
28
Luce, “Visions,” 67.
29
Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al., “Mapping Inequality,” American
Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, Accessed March 30, 2018, https://dsl.richmond.edu/
panorama/redlining/#loc=10/34.0050/-118.1565&opacity=0.8&text=intro&city=los-angeles-ca.
30
“Color Codes,” Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California’s Exclusionary Spaces, Accessed March 28,
2018, http://salt.umd.edu/T-RACES/; Home Owners Loan Corp., “Beverly to Melrose, Gardner to Edinburgh: Area
Description,” Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California’s Exclusionary Spaces, Accessed January 2, 2018,
http://salt.umd.edu/T-RACES/.
Figure 1.4: Second Street Elementary School band with students of Japanese, Mexican, Armenian, and Russian
background, Boyle Heights, 1930. Courtesy of the Shades of LA: Mexican American Community Collection/Los
Angeles Public Library; image 00107880.
17
does not contain detrimental racial elements, and there are very few districts which are
not hopelessly heterogeneous in type of improvement and quality of maintenance.
31
James P. Allen and Eugene Turner state in The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern
California that, “Discrimination in housing was a minor and short-lived factor in the evolution of
the Jewish distribution [in Los Angeles].”
32
It is possible that, although Jews did experience
discrimination in housing, especially in neighborhoods where there was a Ku Klux Klan
presence such as Glendale and Inglewood, the ability of Jews to assimilate and minimize
evidence of their Jewish heritage (sometimes even going to such lengths as to change their name,
as seen in many Hollywood stars of the day), may have enabled them to bypass racist housing
policies to a certain extent. In the 1940s, society began to embrace the idea of minimizing
differences between white ethnicities in favor of the overarching category of the “Caucasian,”
enabling Jews to take advantage of what historian, Matthew Jacobson, termed, “the invisible
mask of Jewish privilege.”
33
As for within the multicultural neighborhood of Boyle Heights,
when Jewish residents later reflected on the relationship between Jews and other neighborhood
minorities, they reported that, except for some incidents between Jews and Mexicans
surrounding World War II, they felt mostly free from anti-Semitism in Boyle Heights.
34
The Mexican Community Grows in Boyle Heights
As the Jewish community was establishing itself in Boyle Heights, the Mexican
community was doing the same. Like the Jews, Mexicans began moving into Boyle Heights in
the 1910s, when increasing industrial and commercial development began surrounding their
Sonoratown neighborhood near the old Mexican plaza in downtown. Since racial discrimination
prevented Mexicans from moving to the northern or western parts of the city, and since they also
needed to stay close to the downtown factories that employed them, many moved east of the Los
Angeles River into Boyle Heights and adjacent East Los Angeles, a part of unincorporated Los
Angeles County that was previously farmland and vacant lots. By 1930, the same number of
Mexicans lived in Boyle Heights as Jews [Figure 1.5].
35
31
Home Owners Loan Corp., “Boyle Heights.”
32
Allen, Ethnic Quilt, 50.
33
Sánchez, “What’s Good for Boyle Heights,” 636.
34
Wendy Elliott, “The Jews of Boyle Heights, 1900-1950: The Melting Pot of Los Angeles,” Southern California
Quarterly 78, No. 1 (1996): 6.
35
Phillips, “Not Quite White,” 80.
18
Jewish Movement West and to the San Fernando Valley
Even as Boyle Heights maintained a strong working-class Jewish community, other
neighborhoods began to attract Jewish families. Jews increasingly began to move west of
downtown to areas previously settled by more affluent Jews at the turn of the century. The
Fairfax District contained approximately 7,800 Jews (8.6 percent of the Jewish community) in
1930, when the area was considered the far western end of the city of Los Angeles.
36
By 1935,
the neighborhood had four synagogues. By 1945, there were ten synagogues and the Fairfax
District was on its way to becoming known as the new Los Angeles Jewish quarter.
37
The
neighborhood became a popular destination for middle-class families due to its reasonable
housing rates and public transportation lines, which allowed easy commutes to downtown or
Hollywood, where many worked in the entertainment industry. Wilshire Boulevard also provided
a Jewish-friendly business climate due to the efforts of a real estate development company
owned by a young Jewish man named Walter Marks.
When World War II ended, Boyle Heights’ position as the center of Jewish Los Angeles
was already diminishing as the neighborhood underwent a period of overcrowding. Veterans
returned from war and Japanese-American Boyle Heights residents were returning from forced
internment. At the same time, Mexican agricultural workers from the bracero program migrated
36
The Fairfax District and nearby neighborhoods like Hollywood, while considered fairly far west in the mid-
twentieth century, are now considered to be part of Central Los Angeles. The term, “the Westside” is now used to
describe the collection of neighborhoods west of Central and South Los Angeles (“Mapping L.A.: Neighborhoods,”
Los Angeles Times, Accessed May 29, 2018, http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/; Ibid. 81,102).
37
Phillips, “Not Quite White,” Ibid. 81,102.
Figure 1.5: Mexican-American friends posing with a car in Boyle Heights, ca. 1920. Courtesy of the
Shades of LA: Mexican American Community Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00005991.
19
to Los Angeles from California’s Central Valley, seeking housing with the familiar Mexican
community in Boyle Heights.
38
The neighborhood strained to accommodate the influx of
residents, and since Boyle Heights’ status as a “red grade” neighborhood eliminated the
possibility of mortgage loans in the area, potential home-buyers struggled to afford the limited
housing. According to historian George Sánchez, “If you’re a returning serviceman trying to start
a family, it is likely to cost you more to purchase a house in Boyle Heights, even the same house,
as the San Fernando Valley, [which] is given the best rate to get a new mortgage.”
39
In the
1920s, the San Fernando Valley contained nothing but agriculture, but after World War II,
numerous brand new communities of single-family housing tracts in the area drew thousands of
residents and investors. A booming postwar economy, returning veterans with G.I. loans, the rise
of Los Angeles’ automobile culture, and a desire to live in what were deemed “safe,”
homogeneous neighborhoods contributed to “white flight”—white families moving away from
the center of the city in search of newer, suburban, single-family homes. The racial composition
of potential homeowners in the Valley was highly regulated, but by the 1940s, Jews were largely
accepted as white, and actively participated in “white flight.” By 1950, approximately 22,000
Jewish families lived in the San Fernando Valley.
40
Some of the Jewish residents of Central Los Angeles, the Westside, and the San Fernando
Valley were Jews relocating from Boyle Heights, but a much larger number of them were Jews
who had moved to Los Angeles after the war. The Jewish population of Los Angeles increased
dramatically during the post-War period, with approximately 500 Jews moving to Southern
California per week in 1946. The city’s Jewish population more than doubled in size, from an
estimated 130,000 before the war to approximately 300,000 by 1951. Boyle Heights’ position as
the center of Jewish Los Angeles ultimately diminished not just because its Jewish population
moved elsewhere, but because a new Jewish population moved directly to the other Jewish
communities with no knowledge of or nostalgia for Boyle Heights’ Jewish history.
41
In 1948, the
38
The bracero program was the result of a series of agreements between the U.S. and Mexico. It imported workers
from Mexico into the United States due to wartime labor shortages (“About,” Bracero History Archive, Accessed
March 30, 2018, http://braceroarchive.org/about).
39
Gilbert Estrada, Ph.D., “The Historical Roots of Gentrification in Boyle Heights,” KCET, September 13, 2017,
Accessed March 30, 2018, https://www.kcet.org/shows/city-rising/the-historical-roots-of-gentrification-in-boyle-
heights.
40
Phillips, “Not Quite White,” 82.
41
Weizmann, “In Search,” 10.
20
state of California outlawed racial housing covenants, opening up even the most segregated
neighborhoods to Jews, and enabling them to look further outside of Boyle Heights.
As Jewish families established their lives outside of Boyle Heights, Jewish businesses
from Brooklyn Avenue picked up and followed west, creating new Jewish commercial centers in
Beverly Fairfax, Pico-Robertson, and Venice-Ocean Park.
42
Jewish synagogues and social
institutions moved as well, with the Jewish Federation offices, formerly in downtown, splitting
into two locations—one at the eastern edge of Beverly Hills and one in Woodland Hills.
43
By the
late 1950s, the residential neighborhood of West Adams had lost much of its Jewish population,
declining forty percent, from 36,000 in 1951 to 22,000 in 1959.
44
At this point in history, one
would likely point to Fairfax Avenue rather than Brooklyn Avenue as the primary Jewish
commercial strip in Los Angeles.
Boyle Heights Becomes a Mexican Enclave
As Jews began leaving Boyle Heights and real estate became more available, Mexican-
Americans and Mexican immigrants readily rented and purchased these homes. Even though
racial housing covenants were outlawed, Mexicans still faced discrimination in mostly-white
neighborhoods, and settled instead in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. Immigration from
Mexico greatly increased in the 1950s and 1960s as Mexicans sought work in California’s
agriculture industry, and new Mexican immigrants chose to live in the Eastside, where they
found supportive communities with Spanish-speaking businesses and restaurants to patronize.
After the construction of several freeways cutting through Boyle Heights, property values
lowered even further, European ethnics continued to move away, and the neighborhood became
an increasingly Mexican enclave.
45
The few Jews who remained in Boyle Heights strongly identified with the
neighborhood’s history as a gathering place for leftist and politically radical ideas, and when the
neighborhood became majority Mexican, it remained a place for liberal ideas and an embrace of
multiculturalism. In the 1960s, the Eastside became the backdrop for the developing Chicano
42
Josie Carscaden, “Boyle Heights: The Transitioning of a Community From the Thirties to the Fifties,” (CHS 445
Term Paper; California State University, Los Angeles; 1993), 3-4, Chicano Resource Center, County of Los Angeles
Public Library: East Los Angeles Branch.
43
Ibid., 69; “Contact the Federation,” Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Accessed January 3, 2018,
https://www.jewishla.org/who-we-are/contact/.
44
Phillips, “Not Quite White,” 96.
45
McGahan, “Boyle Heights Gentrification War.”
21
movement, which used rallies, walkouts, music, murals, and literature to instill pride in Mexican
heritage and fight for political justice for Mexican-Americans [Figure 1.6]. By the 1970s, due to
relocation and the aging population, Jewish life in Boyle Heights was almost completely gone—
with a couple of Jewish businesses and the almost-abandoned Breed Street Shul marking some of
the only obvious physical reminders of Boyle Heights’ era as the epicenter of the Los Angeles
Jewish community [Figure 1.7].
Figure 1.6: Chicano Movement March, East Los Angeles, 1970. Courtesy of Security
Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00048207.
Figure 1.7: Zellman’s men’s clothing, Boyle Heights, ca. 1935 (left); Manny Zellman in his store, ca. 1983
(right). Zellman’s was the last Jewish-owned store on Brooklyn Ave (later, Cesar Chavez Ave) and closed in
2000 (Elliott-Scheinberg, “Jewish Ambiance,” 230). Photos courtesy of Shades of L.A.: Jewish Community,
Shades of L.A.: Russian American Community Collection, Shades of L.A.: Canadian American Community/Los
Angeles Public Library; images 00093890, 00107760.
22
Jewish Los Angeles and Boyle Heights Today
Since the 1970s, Jewish life has expanded throughout Los Angeles County, with
substantial Jewish populations located in South Bay in addition to Fairfax, Pico-Robertson, the
San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, and the broad region known as the Westside [Table 1.1,
Figure 1.8]. Fairfax Avenue remained the most notable Jewish commercial and cultural center
for a time, and provided support for the many Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union that arrived
in adjacent West Hollywood in the 1970s. Recently, though, the Fairfax District has been
replaced by the Pico-Robertson area further west, which holds the current title as the epicenter of
Jewish Los Angeles.
46
46
Scott Garner, “Neighborhood Spotlight: Pico-Robertson an Evolving Hub of Jewish Culture,” Los Angeles Times,
February 3, 2017, Accessed March 31, 2018, http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hp-
neighborhood-spotlight-pico-robertson-20170204-story.html.
Los Angeles Jewish Population Timeline
Year Jewish Population City Population County Population
1850 8 1,610 3,530
1860 100 4,385 11,333
1880 - 11,183 33,381
1881 136 - -
1900 2,500 102,479 170,298
1910 - 319,198 507,131
1912 10,000 - -
1920 28,268 576,673 936,455
1923 43,000 - -
1930 91,337 1,238,048 2,208,492
1940 - 1,504,277 2,285,643
1941 130,000 - -
1950 319,627 1,970,358 4,151,687
1958 323,000 - -
1960 - 2,479,015 6,039,834
1979 503,000 - -
1980 - 2,950,010 7,477,657
1997 519,000 - -
2000 - 3,694,820 9,519,338
Note: These numbers are rough estimates taken from different sources.
The sources providing Jewish population statistics did not identify
whether the numbers were in the city or county.
Sources: Phillips, “Not Quite White,” 87; Romo, East Los Angeles, 65;
Sandberg, Window to Tomorrow, 26-27; Vorspan, History, 287;
“Historical General Population: City and County of Los Angeles, 1850-
2010,” Los Angeles Almanac, Accessed March 31, 2018,
http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po02.php.
Table 1.1: Los Angeles Jewish Population Statistics.
23
Boyle Heights no longer has any semblance of a Jewish community. In 1993, the last
elderly attendee stopped worshipping at the Breed Street Shul, and the synagogue became
devastated over the years by earthquakes and gang activity [Figure 1.9]. In 1994, the city made
the decision to officially change the name of Boyle Heights’ thoroughfare, Brooklyn Avenue, to
Cesar Chavez Avenue, in honor of the Chicano civil rights activist and the neighborhood’s
Chicano history. The decision was unpopular with some of the city’s Jewish community, who
Figure 1.8: Jewish population movement from the 1850s to the 1970s. Map courtesy of
Google Maps, notations by author.
24
felt their history was being erased. In concession, a six-block stretch of the street was labeled
with signs naming it the Brooklyn Avenue Neighborhood Corridor.
47
Today, Boyle Heights’
population is 94% Latino and 81% Mexican (East Los Angeles’s population is 96.7% Latino).
48
However, some of the members of Boyle Heights’s Latino population are now feeling threatened
as well.
With the Los Angeles real estate market continuing to inflate, developers recently began
focusing their sights on Boyle Heights’ quality architecture and proximity to downtown Los
Angeles. Noting the arrival of coffee shops and art galleries as some of the first signs of
gentrification, local activists are taking an aggressive hard line against these incoming “urban
colonizers” who will inevitably push out the current inhabitants residing in this neighborhood.
49
Whether this activism will do anything to deter, or will simply slow the transition of Boyle
Heights from a low-income Latino neighborhood to a higher-income, increasingly white
neighborhood, remains to be seen. However, the transitional nature of the neighborhood warrants
sensitivity and awareness of the histories of the different peoples who have made the Eastside
their home.
47
Harriet Elliott, “City Preserves Jewish Heritage of Los Angeles,” East Los Angeles / Commerce Tribune,
Published March 23, 1994, 1, Chicano Resource Center, County of Los Angeles Public Library: East Los Angeles
Branch; Danny Feingold, “A Stitch in Time,” ReveLAtions, Accessed Online November 24, 1999, Chicano Resource
Center, County of Los Angeles Public Library: East Los Angeles Branch.
48
Boyle Heights’ current Latin population consists of primarily Mexican-Americans, Mexicans, and Central
Americans (Hector Tobar, “A Look at the Boyle Heights Melting Pot, Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2011,
Accessed March 31, 2018, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/09/local/la-me-tobar-20111209); McGahan, “Boyle
Heights Gentrification War;” “East Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Times, Accessed March 31, 2018,
http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/neighborhood/east-los-angeles/.
49
McGahan, “Boyle Heights Gentrification War.”
Figure 1.9: Congregation Talmud Torah, the “Breed Street Shul,” exterior, 1976, (left), interior with graffiti,
undated, photographed by Gary Leonard (right). Courtesy of the Security Pacific National Bank Collection (left)
and Gary Leonard Collection (right)/Los Angeles Public Library; images 00050673, 00029232.
25
CHAPTER TWO: American Orthodox Jewish Burial and Cemetery Traditions
Burial
American Jewish burial traditions and attitudes towards mourning vary based on the
denomination and ethnic origin of the community.
50
Generally, the more assimilated a Jewish
community is into American Anglo-Saxon society, the more their choices for how to bury, where
to bury, and how to mourn their dead reflect that influence. Jews with Northern European
backgrounds, whose families have been living in the United States for more than a generation,
who belong to a Reform congregation, or who are secular tend to fall into this category.
All of the cemeteries that will be discussed in this thesis offer or once offered options for the
Orthodox Jewish community—Beth Israel and Agudath Achim catered specifically to Orthodox
congregations, Mount Zion offered Orthodox-style burials, and Home of Peace contains sections
within the cemetery for Orthodox congregations. Therefore, for the purposes of this thesis, I will
be focusing on the burial and mourning traditions of Orthodox Judaism— the branch that most
strictly adheres to the laws and ethics outlined in the Talmud.
The Jewish community believes that it is a community obligation and a mitzvah, or
commandment, to see to the proper burial of its members. According to the Talmud, when
someone dies, no one in the city is allowed to work until that person is buried, but an exception
is made if the city forms a burial society, known as a Chevra Kadisha, to carry out the burial
according to proper traditions. Customarily, Chevra Kadisha members are volunteers, and each
member pays annual dues to cover burial costs.
51
Jews also consider it one of the highest mitzvot
to provide burials for poor Jews because it is a kindness that can never be repaid. As a result,
50
There are three major denominations in American Judaism. Ranging from most religiously strict to least, they are
Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. Other smaller, though still substantial, denominations include
Reconstructionist and Humanistic Judaism, and other more specific sects of these denominations exist (for example,
Hassidic Jews are a subgroup of Haredi, or Ultra-Orthodox, Judaism). For the purposes of my thesis, when I speak
of Orthodox Judaism I am speaking of the larger umbrella branch of Orthodox Judaism, and not distinguishing
between the subgroups. For more information, please see: “The Jewish Denominations,” My Jewish Learning,
Accessed March 17, 2018, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-jewish-denominations/.
51
Rochel U. Berman, Dignity Beyond Death: The Jewish Preparation for Burial, (Jerusalem: Urim Publications,
2005), 34; Francis, Doris, Leonie Kellaher, and Georgina Neophytou, The Secret Cemetery, (Oxford, UK: Berg,
2005), 63.
26
many Jewish communities also create an association called a Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth to
provide burials for indigent Jews.
52
When a Jew dies, he or she must be buried within twenty-four hours. Members of the
Chevra Kadisha carry out tahara—rites of purification—on the deceased before dressing the
body in a white linen shroud that “protects the soul against evil and decomposes easily, allowing
the soul to soar.”
53
Chevra Kadisha members place the body in a plain pine box held together
with wooden dowels, and when ready, a funeral procession brings the deceased to the cemetery.
Friends and family members lower the coffin into the earth and place the dirt in a mound on top
of the coffin to allow the dirt to settle properly and ensure that no one steps on the grave [Figure
2.1]. Everyone then washes their hands, the rabbi recites a prayer, and several mourners recite
the Kaddish, which is a traditional “mourner’s prayer.”
54
Very specific rules and timing must be adhered to during burial for the deceased to have a
peaceful and honorable departure from this life. Orthodox Jews do not allow their deceased to be
embalmed or buried with any metal fastenings or non-biodegradable materials—the body and
everything it is buried with must be able to return back to the soil unimpeded. European
Orthodox Judaism also requires that graves be marked with an upright headstone rather than a
52
Mareleyn Schneider, History of a Jewish Burial Society: An Examination of Secularization, Vol. 9 of Jewish
Studies, (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 92.
53
The phrase Chevra Kadisha will be in italics for the remainder of this thesis to distinguish it from the for-profit
mortuary, Chevra Kadisha Mortuary, which takes its name from the traditional burial society, and now owns
Agudath Achim and Beth Israel cemeteries; Frances, Secret Cemetery, 63.
54
Ibid. 63-64; Jill Glasband (former funeral director at Glasband Mortuary) in discussion with the author, December
2017.
Figure 2.1: Recent burials with mounded earth at Agudath Achim Cemetery. Photo by author.
27
flat marker. Although it is not explicitly documented why this is required, considerations
influencing this tradition include the biblical story of Jacob erecting a matzeva, or pillar, on
Rachel’s grave, and the need to explicitly mark the location of graves to warn Cohanim, a line of
priests who are forbidden from entering cemeteries, not to enter the grounds. Another influence
for having an upright headstone is the Kabbalistic idea that the nefesh, the deceased’s soul,
hovers over its grave for the first twelve months after death. As a result, an obvious marker will
honor the nefesh and help it more easily find its body.
Orthodox Jews often choose to place concrete ledgers [Figure 2.2] over their graves as
well—a convention that likely originated out of need in Europe and Israel when the water table
was too high or the terrain too rocky for normal burials. A stone slab covering the length of the
grave would prevent the deceased from being disturbed by the elements or wild animals.
55
Although in American Orthodox cemeteries there is usually no longer a need for this protection,
the tradition took on a symbolism of its own. It also helps to make graves more visible, as
previously mentioned, and prevents visitors from disrespecting the graves by stepping or
standing on them.
56
The origin of placing a concrete ledger over a grave also relates to the origin
of the Jewish practice of placing a pebble on a headstone upon visitation [Figure 2.2].
Traditionally, when one visits the grave of a loved one, one places a small stone rather than
flowers on the grave. Originally, in the days when Jews were laid to rest in a simple shroud
without a casket, those who buried the body would cover it with dirt and a pile of large stones, to
once again prevent disruption from wild animals. When visitors returned to pay their respects to
the deceased, they would place a small stone upon the pile each time to make sure the grave had
enough stones to secure it. This practice, no longer necessary for protection, evolved into a
symbolic gesture still practiced today, where the stone is an expression of love and
remembrance.
57
55
Yossi Manela (Operator of Chevra Kadisha Mortuary) in discussion with the author, November 2017; Rabbi
Joshua L. Segal, A Field Guide to Visiting a Jewish Cemetery: A Spiritual Journey to the Past, Present and Future,
(Nashua, NH: Jewish Cemetery Publishing, LLC, 2005), 4-5.
56
Yossi Manela (Operator of Chevra Kadisha Mortuary) in discussion with the author, November 2017; Gonzales,
“Downey Road;” Frances, Secret Cemetery, 25.
57
“Origins of Leaving a Visitation Stone,” Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts, Accessed March 10,
2018, https://www.jcam.org/Pages/Foundation/visitationstones.htm.
28
Mourning
When a family member passes away, Jews adhere to a period of mourning that is as
strictly regimented as their burial traditions. The first period of mourning, called aninut, lasts
from the time that the bereaved learns about the death until the burial. During this time, the
mourner is exempt from their normal duties to attend to the burial arrangements, and the focus is
on caring for the deceased rather than comforting the mourner. After the burial, the family stays
at home for seven days of mourning called the shiva, when the family recites the Kaddish daily
and confronts head-on the reality of death and the sadness that they feel. After sitting shiva for a
week, mourners will return to work, but continue the mourning process for a period called
shloshim, which lasts until thirty days after the burial. During this time, the mourner avoids
entertainment and performs mitzvot, good commandments, in the name of the deceased. If the
deceased is a parent, the mourning period continues for another eleven months, where the
mourner, often the son, is expected to recite the Kaddish at synagogue daily. The mourning
period ends with the placement and unveiling of the headstone on the yarzeit, the anniversary of
the death [Figure 2.3].
58
58
Frances, Secret Cemetery, 63-67; “Timeline of Jewish Mourning, My Jewish Learning, Accessed March 17, 2018,
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/timeline-of-jewish-mourning/.
Figure 2.2: Upright headstones and concrete ledgers at Home of Peace (left). Pebbles left by visitor at Beth
Israel (right). Photos by author.
29
This ritual period of mourning is intended to guide the grieving process, so that the
bereaved are able to acknowledge and accept the death of their loved one. Not only does the
mourning period force the bereaved to sit with their sadness, fixate on remembrance of the
deceased, and give them tasks to focus on during this time, but it also gives an end date to this
sadness. The expectation is that once the first yarzeit passes, the headstone is set, and the official
mourning period is over, the bereaved return back to the celebrations of life.
Mourning rituals also help the soul to make its journey from this life without distractions
by restricting the family’s cemetery visits to once at the end of each period of mourning.
59
After
the formal mourning period is complete, Orthodox tradition continues to discourage cemetery
visits with the exception of the anniversary of the death and certain solemn holidays like Rosh
Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Tisha B’av. Orthodox Jewish doctrine teaches that Judaism is a
religion of life, not death, and one must limit the amount of death that they bring back into their
life. Those who lose loved ones often choose to memorialize them at home instead of frequently
visiting them at the cemetery. Visitors also wash their hands when leaving a cemetery, ritually
washing off the association of death, and Orthodox Jews are forbidden to eat anything that grows
in or near a cemetery.
60
Cemetery Design
Jewish mourning and burial rituals combined with the history and traditions of Eastern
European Orthodox Jewish communities to greatly influence cemetery design in these
59
Frances, Secret Cemetery, 65-67.
60
Ibid., 102-103, 203.
Figure 2.3: Headstone unveiling on the yarzeit of the deceased at Beth Israel. Photo by author.
30
communities. As previously stated, individual graves each have an upright headstone and a
concrete ledger over the length of the grave in order to call attention to the burial sites and ensure
that no visitors walk or stand on them. Unlike in many other cultures, where it is common to
stand on the grave while visiting and reading the headstone or even to picnic atop the grave with
one’s family, Orthodox Judaism teaches that it is an affront to the dignity of the deceased to do
so. Instead, cemetery workers lay out pathways within the grounds so that visitors can travel
throughout the cemetery without treading on any graves.
61
Historian Kenneth T. Jackson states that, “…for immigrants, cemeteries fostered a sense
of identity and stability in a new country characterized by change.”
62
Orthodox Jews looked to
their history for cemetery design. They did not follow the idea of a cemetery as a green, open
space that was embraced by Anglo-American cemeteries in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, instead choosing to organize their cemeteries in tight, orderly rows reminiscent of
graveyards back in the ghettos of Eastern Europe. The communities that established these
cemeteries were often recent immigrants of lower income who were used to living on restricted
amounts of land in their home countries. Because of this, these cemeteries tend to maximize
space and convey a sense of equality over aesthetics, with plots of regulated size and shape
located as close to each other as possible in tight rows.
63
Trees and grassy areas are scarce—flowers are especially rare. The cemetery is simple
and austere, though there is some opportunity for creativity and individual memorialization in the
images and writing on headstones. For Orthodox Jews, cemeteries provide a place to
occasionally visit their loved ones to say a prayer for them and ensure that the grave is clean and
well maintained. However, these cemeteries are not designed as places that one would wish to
stay a while, because Orthodox doctrine encourages Jews to minimize their time in cemeteries—
to focus on life rather than dwelling on death, and to focus one’s prayers on G-d rather than on
deceased loved ones.
64
An Orthodox Jewish participant in a study on modern memorial practice
at British cemeteries reiterated the Orthodox cemetery’s functionality and austerity by stating,
61
Schneider, History, 87-88.
62
Richard E. Meyer, “Ethnic Cemeteries in America” in Ethnicity and the American Cemetery, ed. Richard E.
Meyer, (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), 4-5.
63
Roberta Halporn, “American Jewish Cemeteries: A Mirror of History” in Ethnicity and the American Cemetery,
ed. Richard E. Meyer, (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), 143, 147;
Frances, Secret Cemetery, 50-51.
64
“Visiting the Cemetery,” Shiva.com, Accessed March 17, 2018, https://www.shiva.com/learning-center/death-
and-mourning/visiting-the-cemetery/.
31
“The cemetery is not a place to stay and sit, and it is not what I want to do. It does not pull me
back, it does not say ‘come and see me I’m so lovely.’”
65
Since these cemeteries’ spare and
unassuming visual characteristics do not encourage visitation beyond immediate family members
saying prayers for loved ones, as time passes and family members move away or pass away
themselves, these cemeteries become more and more at-risk for neglect and eventual
abandonment.
Ceramic Portraits
Orthodox Jewish cemeteries are often designed to be functional rather than aesthetically
pleasing, and cemeteries regulate much of individual grave design to maximize space and
promote a sense of equality in death. Excess decorations are discouraged, though they are not
prohibited. Headstones, however, do provide an opportunity to recognize the individual. Jewish
headstones often have a symbolic image etched into the stone—common images used are the
menorah, Magen David (recognized in English as the Star of David), hands (usually to indicate a
Cohanim) or pitcher—and also feature insignia from fraternal organizations to which the
deceased belonged [Figure 2.4].
66
Names, dates, and, sometimes, short epitaphs are engraved on
the stone in English and Hebrew. In this way, the headstones allow individualization, though
they do not differ too strongly from standard Anglo-American headstones.
The most striking and unique feature found on many of these headstones are the ceramic
portraits—a memorial custom mostly seen in early twentieth century cemeteries for immigrants
65
Frances, Secret Cemetery, 103.
66
Segal, Field Guide, 4-5.
Figure 2.4: Graves depicting Magen David, hands, and menorah. Photo by author.
32
from Eastern Europe, Italy, Asia, and Latin America. The invention of the photograph enabled
those of lower income to acquire images of their loved ones—a luxury once limited only to those
who could afford to commission paintings or sculptures from an artist. The availability of
photographs also enabled poor families to preserve their deceased loved ones’ likenesses as a
form of memorialization. Memorial portraiture in the cemetery emerged in the nineteenth
century, with daguerreotypes installed on headstones as early as 1851. By the turn of the
twentieth century, photo-ceramics became a popular medium, where a craftsperson fired a copy
of the photo onto an enamel or porcelain surface and then coated it with resin. Families often
sent the photo back to Europe for an artisan to complete this process, though by the 1910s, the
Sears-Roebuck catalog advertised the service as well.
67
Memorial portraits strengthened immigrants’ connections with their heritage and
reflected the importance that their cultures placed on honoring the dead. Many of the
communities that featured memorial portraits in their cemeteries had strong traditions of
honoring and communicating with the dead. Jewish memorial portraits display an interesting
conflict. While it is of high importance to properly honor the dead and comfort the mourner in
Jewish tradition, some might also argue that memorial portraiture is in violation of the second of
the Ten Commandments, which prohibits “graven images” of humans as a means of
discouraging idolatry. However, over the years, the Second Commandment’s meaning has
shifted, loosened, and been reinterpreted in countless ways. In addition, “graven images” is also
sometimes described as only applying to engraved or sculpted images. Either way, it appears
Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, largely accepted and embraced memorial portraiture in their
cemeteries [Figure 2.5].
68
67
Lisa Montanarelli, “A History of Photographic Tombstones” in Forgotten Faces: A Window into Our Immigrant
Past, ed. Geoffrey Link, (San Francisco: Personal Genesis Publishing, 2004), 22, 26, 63; John Matturri, “Windows
in the Garden: Italian-American Memorialization and the American Cemetery,” in Ethnicity and the American
Cemetery, ed. Richard E. Meyer, (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), 23.
68
Lisa Montanarelli, “Memorial Portraiture Across Cultures,” in Forgotten Faces: A Window into Our Immigrant
Past, ed. Geoffrey Link, (San Francisco: Personal Genesis Publishing, 2004), 85, 88; Segal, Field Guide, 56-57.
33
Fired in kilns at extremely high temperatures and covered with a hard resin, these
memorial portraits could theoretically withstand the elements for hundreds of years. Artisans
would sometimes outline and sharpen the features of a person’s face when firing the image in
anticipation of future fading from the sun, but one hundred or so years later, many of the photos
look like they could have been taken just a few years ago. Unfortunately, ceramic memorial
portraits tend to be prime targets for vandalism and they are easily cracked, shattered, or scraped
from the headstone. This vandalism, combined with an increasing desire for assimilation and
uniformity in the cemetery, led to many cemeteries establishing regulations prohibiting
photographic memorialization starting in the 1940s.
69
After this, ceramic memorial photographs
became an uncommon practice. However, starting in the late 1980s, the more recent generation
of Russian Jewish immigrants began embracing a new technique for memorial portraiture—laser
photoengraving of large, extremely lifelike portraits directly onto their headstones, which are
usually made of ultra-shiny black granite. Home of Peace Memorial Park and other cemeteries
favored by the Russian Jewish community in the later twentieth century and early twenty-first
century, like Hollywood Forever Cemetery, contain an abundance of these portraits [Figure
2.6].
70
69
Matturri, “Windows in the Garden,” 27; Montanarelli, “History of Photographic Tombstones,” 27, 63.
70
Halporn, “American Jewish Cemeteries,” 147; Alexis C. Madrigal, “Lasers for the Dead: A Story About
Gravestone Technology,” The Atlantic, July 28, 2011, Accessed March 18, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com
/technology/archive/2011/07/lasers-for-the-dead-a-story-about-gravestone-technology/242601/.
Figure 2.5: Ceramic memorial portraits. Photos by author.
34
Ronald William Horne estimates in his book, Forgotten Faces: A Window Into Our
Immigrant Past, that approximately forty to fifty percent of memorial portraits from the early
twentieth century have disappeared or been vandalized beyond recognition.
71
Yet in the Beth
Israel, Mount Zion, or Agudath Achim cemeteries where memorial portraits once graced many
headstones, it is possible that a far larger number of portraits have been destroyed. Trespassers
scraped off and smashed many portraits, and bullet marks indicate where gang members shot
portraits out when using them for target practice [Figure 2.7].
72
Although a sign posted at the
gates of Agudath Achim Cemetery states that one may call a displayed phone number to replace
a ceramic portrait, many of the family contacts that the cemetery has on file and many of the
family members who had access to the original photos have passed on or moved away.
Descendants might not even know that they have family members buried in these cemeteries, let
alone visit to see that the portrait is missing.
71
Ronald William Horne, “The Significance of the Holy Cross Memorial Portrait Collection.” Forgotten Faces: A
Window into Our Immigrant Past, ed. Geoffrey Link, (San Francisco: Personal Genesis Publishing, 2004), 60.
72
Shmuel Gonzales, in discussion with the author, November 2017.
Figure 2.6: Photoengraving on Russian grave at Home of Peace. Photo by author.
35
These ceramic portraits are a very unique and beautiful memorial tradition, reflecting the
first few generations of immigrants from a specific set of countries between approximately 1900
and 1940. Unfortunately, due to their fragile nature, many of these portraits have been lost to
vandalism. In the Orthodox Jewish cemeteries of Los Angeles, these portraits add a sense of
evocative beauty to what are otherwise austere and uninviting burial grounds, and they maintain
a record of the faces of the thriving Jewish community that once existed in nearby Boyle
Heights. In an 1843 letter from poet, Elizabeth Barrett (later, Elizabeth Barrett Browning) to
author Mary Russell Mitford, Barrett remarked, after seeing an early daguerreotype, “It is not
merely the likeness which is precious in such cases—but the association, and the sense of
nearness involved in the thing…the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed
forever!”
73
Nowhere is this quote more appropriate than in the context of memorial portraits,
which not only bring a face to the name, but also convey a sense of familiarity, allowing
cemetery visitors to feel a more personal connection with the deceased, and providing the
deceased, in a small way, with a more profound legacy.
73
Elizabeth Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett (Browning) to Mary Russell Mitford, December 7, 1843, Letter,
The Daguerreotype: an Archive of Source Texts, Graphics, and Ephemera, Gary W. Ewer, ed., Ewer Archive #
S8430001, http://www.daguerreotypearchive.org/texts/S8430001_BARRETT_LETTER_1843-12-07.pdf; Matturri,
“Windows in the Garden,” 20.
Figure 2.7: Damaged ceramic memorial portraits. Photos by author.
36
CHAPTER THREE: The Establishment of the Jewish Cemeteries in East Los Angeles
74
The Earliest Cemeteries in Los Angeles—Before 1900
In the first years of the city’s existence, Los Angeles residents drove their deceased via
horse and cart to be buried at Mission San Gabriel or Mission San Fernando, both located miles
away from the city. To avoid this cumbersome process, the first burials within Los Angeles
occurred in 1823 next to the Catholic church, La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los
Ángeles, which was located in the pueblo plaza in downtown Los Angeles. In the following
decades, any new cemeteries were located in and around the city center in downtown. In 1844,
the Catholic community established Calvary Cemetery just north of downtown at what is now
the site of Cathedral High School and the 110 Freeway. In 1853, the Protestant community
formally established the Fort Moore Hill Cemetery (also known as the City Cemetery) on Fort
Moore Hill in downtown, which on either side had private sections for fraternal orders including
the Odd Fellows and Masons.
75
Two years later, the Jewish community dedicated their own
cemetery.
As a Jewish population began to take shape in Los Angeles, one of the community’s first
priorities was to establish a Jewish burial ground, since for the Jews, “the purchase of a burial
ground symbolically indicates that a person has decided on his home town.”
76
The first charitable
institution in American-era Los Angeles, the Gemilat Chesed, or Hebrew Benevolent Society,
formed in 1854 to sponsor charitable and religious services and procure land for a burial ground.
A year later, in 1855, the Hebrew Benevolent Society paid one dollar for approximately three
acres of land near what is now Lilac Terrace in the Chavez Ravine north of downtown,
approximately one mile west of the Catholic cemetery [Figure 3.1]. Storekeeper, Harris Casper,
74
The majority of the information in this chapter is derived from the following sources, unless otherwise cited: Phil
Blazer, and Shelley Portnoy, Wrestling with the Angels: A History of Jewish Los Angeles, (Sherman Oaks, CA:
Blazer Communications, 2006); Shmuel Gonzales, “Downey Road Cemeteries,” PowerPoint, 2017; Paul Pitkoff,
“History of Mount Zion Cemetery and the Jews of Los Angeles” from Facebook Post, Mount Zion Cemetery East
Los Angeles Facebook Page, Posted January 20, 2016, Accessed May 10, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/
historicLA/; Stephen J. Sass, ed. Jewish Los Angeles—A Guide: Everything Jewish Under the Sun, 2
nd
ed., Los
Angeles: Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, 1982; and Max Vorspan and Lloyd P. Gartner, History
of the Jews of Los Angeles, San Marino: Henry E. Huntington Library & Art Gallery, 1970.
75
During the earliest years of their existence, the Odd Fellows and Masonic burial grounds were alternately
described as their own separate cemeteries and private sections of the City Cemetery; Hadley Meares, “What Lies
Beneath: LA’s first graveyards were abandoned, defiled, dug up, and bulldozed in the name of progress,” CurbedLA,
October 6, 2016, Accessed January 13, 2017, https://la.curbed.com/2016/10/6/13177830/los-angeles-cemetery-
history.
76
Vorspan, History, 21.
37
became the first to be buried in the Jewish cemetery according to reports at the time, following
his February 1855 murder.
77
In 1870, the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society formed to assist in
caring for this land, which was intended to be “a burying ground for the Israelites forever.”
78
A
petition from the Hebrew Benevolent Society in 1873 describes the cemetery as picturesque—
laid out in rows, planted with trees, surrounded by a picket fence, and filled with white marble,
wood, and granite grave markers.
Despite its initially picturesque appearance, the cemetery exhibited serious problems.
Although City Council granted an additional three acres to the Hebrew Benevolent Society in
1868, by the end of the century, the cemetery was already running out of space for burials. In
addition, the cemetery’s location began to prove treacherous for those visiting or engaging in
funeral processions. The cemetery was previously the site of a reservoir, and, after rain, the hill
leading up to the burial ground became so saturated that visitors would become stuck attempting
77
Norton B. Stern and William M. Kramer, “Harris Caspar & Tan Rotchild: Two Murder Victims Buried in the
New Jewish Cemetery, 1855 & 1863,” Pioneer Jews of Los Angeles in the Nineteenth Century – An Anthology of
Articles Presented Over the Past 38 Years in the Western States Jewish History Journal, ed. David W. Epstein and
Gladys Sturman, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3/4 (Spring/Summer 2006/5766), 209.
78
Sass, Guide, 9.
Figure 3.1: The first Jewish Cemetery in Los Angeles. Original photo courtesy of the Seaver Center for
Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Original photo has been
edited by author with street and cemetery identifiers courtesy of “Site of First Jewish Cemetery 1855,”
B’nai B’rith Messenger, September 20, 1968, B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public
Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University.
38
to wade through the muddy earth.
79
Although the city proposed developing a street leading to the
cemetery in 1869, the steep topography of the land prevented the plan from moving forward.
At the same time, many of the other early cemeteries were being declared overcrowded,
derelict, or a health hazard for the downtown community. By 1869, the city assumed
responsibility for the crowded and poorly managed Fort Moore Hill Cemetery, which until then
had simply been public land, which people occupied with burials via squatters’ rights.
80
A year
later, the city granted the southeast corner of the cemetery to the local chapter of the Independent
Order of the Odd Fellows to allow them to officially continue use of the grounds as a private
cemetery.
81
However, as Los Angeles realized its downtown burial grounds had rapidly
approaching expiration dates due to overcrowding and complaints of negligence, new cemeteries
emerged further east and west of the city center. In 1877, in an attempt to block another cemetery
from opening within the city, City Council passed an ordinance preventing burials within the city
limits except for in the already established Fort Moore Hill Cemetery, Catholic Cemetery, and
Jewish Cemetery. Yet once the Council realized this required that they open a new public
cemetery, they granted an 1877 burial permit to allow Evergreen Cemetery to establish itself on a
large parcel in the spacious, and quite agricultural at the time, neighborhood of Boyle Heights.
The city also established a small potter’s field at the eastern edge of the new Evergreen
Cemetery.
82
Within the next couple of decades, regulations on burials were decidedly murky. An 1874
California State Law indicated that the authority to establish burial permits and organize
cemeteries was under the purview of the County Board of Supervisors, which made allowances
for new cemeteries at its own discretion. However, the city seemed to often have its own hand in
these decisions, and so the subject of cemeteries continued to be a contested subject in city
newspapers and among the public.
83
In 1879, Los Angeles City Council banned the purchase of
any additional burial plots at the Fort Moore Hill Cemetery.
84
In 1884, Rosedale Cemetery, later
79
Newmark, Sixty Years, 104; Meares, “What Lies Beneath.”
80
Meares, “What Lies Beneath;” Edwin H. Carpenter, Early Cemeteries of the City of Los Angeles, (Los Angeles:
Dawson’s Book Shop, 1973), 22.
81
“Odd Fellows’ Petition: Quit Claim Deed to Cemetery,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1896, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (1886-1922), 32.
82
Carpenter, Early Cemeteries, 38-39.
83
“At the City Hall: It Takes Another Turn,” Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1895, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (1886-1922), 9.
84
Carpenter, Early Cemeteries, 29.
39
known as Angelus-Rosedale, opened southwest of downtown, and the city took advantage of its
opening by selling several parcels as residential lots in the Fort Moore Hill Cemetery, excavating
and transporting the bodies in these lots to Rosedale and Evergreen. Fort Moore Hill Cemetery
soon became the site of an upscale residential neighborhood and public high school, with
occasional and haphazard attempts for years to relocate the bodies underneath. The Independent
Order of the Odd Fellows, taking its cue from Evergreen, established a new Odd Fellows
Cemetery in Boyle Heights in 1889.
85
In 1891, Jewish women established the Home of Peace Society, taking over the care of
the Jewish cemetery with the goal of beautifying its grounds. Yet as the rapidly industrializing
downtown crept closer, the cemetery became “almost inaccessible, completely surrounded by oil
wells, derricks and tanks, and brickyards and kilns, the smoke from which…so discolored the
shrubbery and monuments that they [became] black and unsightly.”
86
By the end of the century,
the Hebrew Benevolent Society was actively seeking a new location for its cemetery.
Calvary Cemetery had been deemed overcrowded as early as 1860, fewer than twenty
years after it opened, when an article in the Los Angeles Star stated that the cemetery was
“unsuited to the necessities of the community…small, and of course sadly over crowded—a fact
which made itself painfully apparent on a recent melancholy occasion—the reeking odor causing
many to leave the grounds ere the conclusion of the sad ceremonies.”
87
It was not until 1895 that
the Catholic Church announced that it would abandon the burial ground and open a New Calvary
Cemetery on fifty-two acres recently purchased in Boyle Heights. The City Health Officer
approved the purchase of the acreage for a new cemetery, following an ordinance adopted by
City Council the previous year that appointed the Health Officer to be the sole person with the
ability to grant burial permits and allow the establishment of new cemeteries. Outraged residents
filed a petition, protesting that Boyle Heights could not handle any more cemeteries, which they
claimed depreciated their real estate. A judge, who appeared before City Council to hear the
petition, accused the Church of foul play, on the basis that the Church had previously submitted
and then withdrawn an application for the new cemetery in Boyle Heights. The Judge declared
that after withdrawing the application, the Church had influenced City Council to insert into last
year’s city ordinance a provision granting the responsibility of approving new cemeteries to the
85
Ibid., 32.
86
Blazer, Wrestling, 62.
87
Ibid., 17.
40
Health Officer, who may have been more willing than others to do the Church’s bidding.
88
After
the statement by the judge, City Council then introduced a motion that,
No cemeteries other than those now established, be allowed inside the corporate limits of
Los Angeles, and that the City Attorney be instructed to present the necessary ordinance
to prevent any more cemeteries in the city and to prevent any more burials in the Boyle
Heights territory, except in Evergreen and Odd Fellows’ cemeteries.
89
The Catholic Church conceded and moved the new cemetery slightly to the east, outside of the
city limits into unincorporated East Los Angeles.
90
Throughout the nineteenth century, many cities across the United States established
similar ordinances requiring cemeteries to be relocated outside of the city limits due to fears of
the spread of disease by miasma—a deadly gas, which, according to beliefs at the time, emerged
from decay.
91
An 1895 article in the Los Angeles Times discussing how San Francisco citizens
were attempting to also have burials prohibited within city limits, stated, “The idea of having
several thousand corpses slowly turning to corruption within a stone’s throw of one’s residence
is certainly not a very pleasant one…That in some cases cemeteries have been the cause of much
sickness is an undoubted fact.”
92
San Francisco would ultimately ban all burials within city limits
in 1900 due to the fact that cemeteries were filling up, regarded to be a medical hazard, and
taking up valuable real estate. In 1912, the city began a process of relocating more than 150,000
bodies just south to the city of Colma, clearing San Francisco of most of its cemeteries.
93
The
1895 Los Angeles Times article noted that growth in the area around Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery
had slowed due to the presence of the cemetery, which echoed the Boyle Heights residents’
concern that a new cemetery would depreciate their real estate.
94
88
“At the City Hall, City Council: Boyle Heights People Up in Arms Against the New Cemetery,” Los Angeles
Times, December 5, 1895, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (1886-1922), 8.
89
Ibid.
90
Jay Berman, “The Former Downtown Dead Zone,” DT News, May 4, 2009, Accessed January 27, 2018,
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/the-former-downtown-dead-zone/article_4b0bb876-8ab5-5fa0-98fd-
c42f0ed1c0d3.html.
91
David Charles Sloane, The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1991), 35.
92
“City Cemeteries,” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 1985, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (1886-
1922), 22.
93
John Branch, “The Town of Colma, Where San Francisco’s Dead Live,” New York Times, February 5, 2016,
Accessed April 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/sports/football/the-town-of-colma-where-san-
franciscos-dead-live.html.
94
“City Cemeteries.”
41
The placement of the New Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles set off a chain
reaction. Since cemeteries could officially no longer be located within city limits, East Los
Angeles provided open space, mostly agricultural at the time, for cemeteries outside of the city
limits.
95
Several more cemeteries emerged within a mile radius from the Catholic cemetery over
the next half-century—ethnic and religious cemeteries that reflected the growing immigrant
population east of downtown. Five separate Jewish cemeteries, a Serbian cemetery, and a
Russian Molokan cemetery were established to serve immigrant populations that largely resided
in East Los Angeles and neighboring Boyle Heights.
96
The Chinese community also founded a
new cemetery as an alternative to the potter’s field adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery, which, due
to overt racism, was one of the few places the Chinese could be buried at the time [see Table 3.1
and Figure 3.6 at the end of this chapter].
97
Many of these cemeteries were small, containing five
or fewer acres, and shared the practice of displaying ceramic memorial portraits of the deceased
on their headstones.
98
The New Jewish Cemetery, Home of Peace—Creation and Establishment
In 1902, B’nai B’rith, the city’s first Jewish congregation and one of its most prominent,
declared its intention “to establish a new Jewish cemetery in which Jews belonging to any
congregation in Los Angeles [could] be buried at uniform prices.”
99
The congregation that
managed this cemetery had its origins in a downtown synagogue, established in 1862 on Fort
Street. At the time of the cemetery’s establishment, Congregation B’nai B’rith had recently
constructed and moved into a new synagogue at the corner of Hope and Ninth streets in
downtown.
100
Worshippers at the temple included many prominent Jewish families (such as the
95
“East Los Angeles Community History,” County of Los Angeles Public Library, Accessed April 8, 2018,
http://www.colapublib.org/history/eastla/.
96
Molokans, an alternative sect of the Russian Orthodox Church, fled religious persecution in Russia starting in
approximately 1905. Many came to Los Angeles and established a community in Russian-town near Boyle Heights.
A Serbian colony also emerged in downtown, and then in East Los Angeles at the turn of the century (Romo, East
Los Angeles, 65-67; Hugo Martin, "Laid to Rest Among Their Ancestors,” Los Angeles Times, Sep 14, 1998, 1;
Hadley Meares, “The Faces of a People: The Serbian Cemetery of East L.A.,” KCET, September 16, 2015, Accessed
February 3, 2018, https://www.kcet.org/history-society/the-faces-of-a-people-the-serbian-cemetery-of-east-la).
97
Sherri Gust, ed., “The Historic Los Angeles Cemetery (CA-LAN-3553) Summary Report, Los Angeles Metro
Gold Line Project, East Portal Area, Los Angeles, CA,” Written by Sherri Gust, Amy Diaz, and Kelly Houck with
contributions by Armando Abeyta, Marina Adame, Ileana Bradford, and Michael Mirro. (Los Angeles: Cogstone
Resource Management, August 2006), 24.
98
Sloane, Necessity, 125.
99
Blazer, Wrestling, 61.
100
Newmark, Sixty Years, 608.
42
Newmarks, Hellmans, and Cohns), and members of the congregation were often involved in
fraternal organizations such as the International Order of the B’nai B’rith and the Free and
Accepted Masons Lodge #42. The leader of Congregation B’nai B’rith, Rabbi Abraham Wolf
Edelman, was the Grand Master of the Masonic lodge, and the first synagogue on Fort Street
even bore a Masonic “eastern star” on its façade [Figure 3.2, Figure 3.3].
The congregation, with financial assistance from its president, Kaspare Cohn, purchased
thirty acres off of Stephenson Avenue (now Whittier Boulevard) in East Los Angeles, directly
Figure 3.2: Members of the Fraternal Order of Masons, ca. 1900. Rabbi Abraham Wolf Edelman is seated second
from left. Courtesy of Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00001032.
Figure 3.3: B’nai B’rith Congregation’s first synagogue at 218 S. Broadway, ca. 1898. Note the Eastern Star
on the façade. Munsey Photo, courtesy of Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public
Library; image 00081599.
.
43
across the street from the new Catholic cemetery. B’nai B’rith dedicated the cemetery, which
became known as Home of Peace, on May 18, 1902. The new cemetery was a large, grassy
rectangle with gravestones organized in rows. Although no pictures or records could be found
describing the cemetery’s earliest layout, it appears that, from the start, the cemetery exhibited a
more geometric design than the Catholic cemetery across the street. While the slightly older New
Calvary Cemetery exhibited a combination of rolling hills, mausoleums, and curving walkways
reminiscent of earlier rural cemeteries, Home of Peace exhibited a more streamlined and linear
approach that anticipated the formal style of more modern cemeteries.
101
Though Congregation
B’nai B’rith owned and operated the burial grounds, it enabled other Jewish congregations,
fraternal organizations, and private societies to purchase their own sections, and donated a
portion of the cemetery to the Hebrew Benevolent Society for the burial of indigent Jews. The
cemetery also allowed a small community of Boyle Heights Subbotniks—ethnic Russians of a
Christian background that adhered to the laws of Judaism—to bury their dead in sections of
Home of Peace, since Subbotniks followed Jewish burial traditions.
102
Over the next eight years, between 1902 and 1910, the community used horse-drawn
wagons to transfer those buried in the Chavez Ravine cemetery to the newly established Home of
Peace Cemetery, where they were placed in the “Benevolent” section on the east side of the
property.
103
The Hebrew Benevolent Society sold back portions of the old burial ground in the
Chavez Ravine to the city, and in 1943 the federal government purchased the remaining land,
which eventually became the site of the Naval and Marine Corps Training Center and is now the
Frank Hotchkin Memorial Training Center for the Los Angeles Fire Department. In 1968, the
California State Office of Historic Preservation installed a plaque on the site, declaring it a
California Historical Landmark for its history as the first Jewish Site in Los Angeles.
104
The Masonic Cemetery Association
As the Fort Moore Hill cemeteries were rapidly becoming developed for other purposes,
the Masonic community decided to remove the original Free and Accepted Masons Cemetery
101
Sloane, Necessity, 121-127.
102
“The Subbotniki in Los Angeles,” Spiritual Christians Around the World, Accessed April 11, 2018,
http://www.molokane.org/subbotniki/Aldacushion/HTML/6_Los_Angeles.html.
103
“About Us,” Home of Peace Memorial Park Mortuary, Accessed January 27, 2018,
http://www.homeofpeacememorialpark.com/About_Us.html.
104
“First Jewish Site in Los Angeles,” California State Parks Office of Historic Preservation, Accessed January 27,
2018, http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/ListedResources/Detail/822; Meares, “What Lies Beneath.”
44
from Fort Moore Hill to a new location outside of the city limits.
105
The Free and Accepted
Masons Lodge #42 purchased thirty acres of land adjacent to the new Home of Peace Cemetery,
and in 1905, they incorporated the Masonic Cemetery Association, a for-profit stock company.
106
That year, the Los Angeles Times reported that crews were hard at work, struggling to disinter
170 deceased Masons from the old cemetery.
107
After 1905, there do not seem to be any other written records of the Masonic Cemetery
Association utilizing their purchased land in East Los Angeles as a burial ground for Masons, nor
records of them transferring the burials to an alternative cemetery elsewhere. Within a year of
purchasing the land, the Masonic Cemetery Association began transferring large sections of the
parcel to Jewish congregations and organizations, perhaps because of the strong overlap between
the Masonic and Jewish communities. The only evidence of this new burial ground actually
being used for Masons is a 1924 aerial image that shows a very small portion of the original
parcel along Stephenson Avenue being used for what appears to be the Masonic Cemetery
[Figure 3.4]. By 1937, the section of the property that briefly served as a Masonic cemetery
became the location of a residential development and the Sephardic Beth David Cemetery.
While it is unclear where the Masons were reburied, it is likely that Jewish Masons could have
been reburied in the Masonic section of Home of Peace.
105
Carpenter, Early Cemeteries, 19.
106
Meares, “What Lies Beneath;” Curry, C.F., Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of California for
the Fifty-Second and Fifty-Third Fiscal Years Beginning July 1, 1900, and Ending June 30, 1902, (Sacramento,
1902), 80, from the collection of Paul Pitkoff.
107
The process of disinterring bodies at the Masonic cemetery was apparently so gruesome that men were quitting
daily, and even a “gang of Slavonians” that the Masons employed found the work too distressing to continue; “Men
Faint at Their Jobs,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1905, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
(1886-1922), 3.
Figure 3.4: Aerial view of what might have briefly been the New Masonic Cemetery in 1924. This
photo is a cropped version of the photo in Figure 4.1 on page 53. Courtesy of the Security Pacific
National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00073989.
45
Extension of the Stephenson Avenue Yellow Cars and the Funeral Streetcar
Much of what made Boyle Heights such an attractive neighborhood in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries was its access to streetcar lines, which enabled residents to travel
over the river into downtown. As streetcar lines expanded throughout the Eastside, they enabled
residents to reach the cemeteries in East Los Angeles with relative ease. The first horse-car
railway reached Boyle Heights via Aliso Street in 1877. In the 1880s, a cable car line began to
run along East First Street, reaching the southwest corner of Evergreen Cemetery and enabling
people to visit the cemetery via public transportation. At the turn of the century, companies like
the Pacific Electric Railway Company, with its signature Red Cars and the Los Angeles Railway
Company (LARy) with its signature Yellow Cars began to buy up cable car lines and turn them
into electric streetcar lines. LARy created multiple additional lines that ran through Boyle
Heights including one on Stephenson Avenue.
108
In 1908, LARy announced an extension of the
Stephenson Avenue line. The extension, which was partially funded by the Catholic, Masonic,
and Jewish cemeteries, would send its signature Yellow Cars past the city limits to service the
East Los Angeles cemeteries.
109
The next year, the company constructed a special Yellow
Funeral Car named the Paraiso (Spanish for Paradise, sometimes used to indicate Heaven), later
known as the Descanso (Spanish for Rest, sometimes used in the Spanish equivalent of the
phrase, Eternal Rest), which funeral parties could charter for approximately twenty five dollars
to transport their deceased loved ones via public transportation to the cemeteries. Although the
Descanso ceased use as a funeral streetcar in 1924 when automobiles became more popular for
this purpose, the Yellow Cars on Stephenson Avenue provided an accessible means of transport
for individuals to visit these cemeteries until LARy dismantled it in 1963.
110
108
Elliott-Scheinberg, “Jewish Ambiance,” 61-66.
109
“Yellow Cars Speed into the Suburbs: Startling Extensions of Five-Cent Fares by the Aggressive Huntington,”
Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1908, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (1886-1922), 1.
110
The Descanso funeral car can be seen on display at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, California
(Sarah Goodyear, “A Funeral Car Named ‘Descanso,’ or, When Death Rode the Rails in America,” City Lab, May
3, 2013, Accessed January 27, 2018, https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2013/05/funeral-car-named-descanso-
or-when-death-rode-rails-america/5478/).
46
Beth Israel Cemetery—Creation and Establishment
In 1906, Congregation Beth Israel purchased approximately five acres of the Masonic
Cemetery Association’s land.
111
Beth Israel is the oldest Orthodox congregation in Los Angeles,
originally founded in 1900 after a merger of the Kahal Israel and Beth El congregations. Its first
synagogue, located on Bunker Hill, was dedicated in 1902 and popularly known as the Olive
Street Shul.
112
Although Home of Peace allowed non-members of B’nai B’rith to purchase plots
in their cemetery, Beth Israel stated that its members took “the same view as Father Abraham—
they came here to reside permanently and desire[d] their own last resting place.”
113
The
congregants also likely wanted to ensure that they would receive an appropriate Orthodox burial,
and Beth Israel established its own Chevra Kadisha to provide proper burials for indigent Jews,
complete with ten men who would perform the mourning rituals, the Kaddish, for the dead
according to Orthodox Jewish custom.
114
Beth Israel Cemetery officially opened in 1907—a
narrow strip of land at the southern end of the Masonic Cemetery Association property and
adjacent to the southwest corner of Home of Peace. The cemetery’s plan was simple, with
111
“Local News,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, January 28, 1907, B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public
Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 3.
112
Ibid.; Abraham Bensky, “History of the Congregation Beth Israel, Los Angeles, California,” 1966, Box 63,
Folder 7, Western States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young
Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 3.
113
“Beth Israel Cemetery,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, November 30, 1906, Box 63, Folder 7, Western States Jewish
History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young Research Library, University of
California, Los Angeles.
114
A Chevra Kadisha is a traditional group of Jewish volunteers who prepare a body for burial (Rabbi Joseph L.
Segal, A Field Guide to Visiting a Jewish Cemetery: A Spiritual Journey to the Past, Present and Future, (Nashua,
NH: Jewish Cemetery Publishing, LLC, 2005), 2); “Local News.”
Figure 3.5: The Descanso Funeral Car. Courtesy of the Pacific Railroad Society Collection.
47
“handsome entrance pillars of white marble” opening onto one long walkway down the center of
the property.
115
Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth—The Jewish Free Burial Society
In 1908, the same year as the Stephenson Avenue railway extension, some members of
the Jewish community created the Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth, translated from Hebrew to
English as the “Jewish Free Burial Society.” Two of the principal founders of the society were
funeral directors who would later be associated with the city’s most prominent Jewish
mortuaries. Louis Glasband, from Russia, served for many years as the society’s superintendent,
and Charles Groman, from Bessarabia (a historical region that is now Moldova and the Ukraine),
was the society’s treasurer.
116
Organized “to visit its sick members, in serious cases to nurse
them, in case of death to perform the orthodox rites,” the Jewish Free Burial Society would also
cover the cost of funerals for those who could not afford them—using donations to cover basic
burial and funeral fees.
117
In 1910, the society had a membership of about 130 people with dues
of 25 cents per month. The society originally handled non-Jewish burials as well, but eventually
only served the Jewish community.
118
It is possible that the society emerged to help relieve the pressure felt by the Hebrew
Benevolent Society at the time. In a 1909 letter published in the city’s Jewish newspaper, the
B’nai B’rith Messenger, by Isaac Norton, president of the Hebrew Benevolent Society, Norton
stated that because donations to the society were not rising to match the rapidly increasing
Jewish population in the city, they were having difficulty providing burials for Jewish indigents.
It was especially difficult for the society since so many poor Jews with ill health, often suffering
from tuberculosis or influenza, came to Los Angeles hoping that the healthy climate would
115
Ibid.
116
Joseph L. Malamut, ed., Southwest Jewry: An Account of Jewish Progress and Achievement in the Southland,
Vol. 1, (Los Angeles: The Sunland Publishing Co., Inc., 1926), 72-73, 81, 157.
117
“Hevra Hesed Shel Emeth,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, October 30, 1908, Box 35, Folder 2, Western States Jewish
History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young Research Library, University of
California, Los Angeles; Louis Glasband Burial Records April 1912 - October 10, 1913, Courtesy of Jill Glasband
private collection.
118
“A Report by Supt. Philip Stein of Chevra Chessed Shell Emeth (Jewish Free Burial Association),” B’nai B’rith
Messenger, December 30, 1910, B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections,
Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 6; “Funeral Practices Seminar,”
April 22, 2010, Courtesy of Jill Glasband personal collection.
48
relieve their symptoms, only to die a few months after arriving.
119
In 1910, the Hebrew
Benevolent Society stated in an update in the B’nai B’rith Messenger: “We are not a free burial
society, and we want to get out of the burial business, as there is a society organized for that
purpose.”
120
The Jewish Free Burial Society may have originated to assist the Hebrew
Benevolent Society with this task, but, ultimately, it would take over as the major provider of
burials for indigent Jews in Los Angeles.
Mount Zion Cemetery—Creation and Establishment
During the Jewish Free Burial Society’s early years, Louis Glasband conducted funeral
preparations for society-funded burials out of Draper & Co., a secular mortuary.
121
Burial records
kept by Louis Glasband indicate that from 1908 to 1916, whenever the Jewish Free Burial
Society paid for a burial, the body would be interred in one of the cemeteries already existing in
East Los Angeles. Many society-funded funerals occurred in Home of Peace and some in the
Beth Israel Cemetery (most likely for congregants of Beth Israel).
Eight years after the society’s founding, however, it made the decision to establish a
cemetery of its own in East Los Angeles. In 1916, The Jewish Free Burial Society invited the
city’s entire Jewish community to attend the dedication of Mount Zion Cemetery.
122
Title records
show that although the burial society managed Mount Zion and Charles Groman was the
president of the cemetery, the Masonic Cemetery Association still owned the six-acre parcel,
which was just north of Beth Israel Cemetery and organized similarly, with the exception of a
curving walkway that ended in a circle near the back of the property.
123
According to an article in
the B’nai B’rith Messenger,
The Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth has been a potent factor in the line of practical charity in
this city the past eight years, and the acquisition of this burial tract will facilitate its aims
119
“An Appeal to the Jewish Community of Los Angeles, From the Hebrew Benevolent Society,” B’nai B’rith
Messenger, September 10, 1909, Los Angeles Public Library: Central Library, 3-4.
120
“Hebrew Benevolent Society and Kaspare Cohn Hospital Association,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, January 14,
1910, Box 58, Folder 2, Western States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E.
Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
121
“The Glasband Family: A Story of Community Service,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, September 17, 1976, B’nai
B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library
of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 13.
122
Philip Stein, “Announcement,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, September 2, 1916, B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977,
New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv
University, 4.
123
Malamut, Southwest Jewry, 81; “Preliminary Report,” First American Title Insurance Company, June 5, 2013, 2,
from the collection of Paul Pitkoff.
49
and objects. The Society has undertaken a tremendous financial obligation, which our
brethren will doubtless assist the discharge of.
124
Although there is no concrete documentation, it appears that the initial intention of the cemetery
may have been to provide a burial place for indigent Jews, especially those of the Orthodox
Jewish faith. However, as years went by, those interred at the cemetery came from a much wider
economic background, as one can see in the range of gravestones in the cemetery—from
unmarked graves to handmade concrete markers to large and extravagant granite headstones.
Although those buried at Mount Zion were all of Jewish background, they ranged in religious
practice from Orthodox Judaism to atheism.
After preparing burials at Draper & Co. for several years, in 1929, Louis Glasband
partnered with his brother, Samuel Glasband, and Charles Groman to start the Jewish mortuary,
Glasband-Groman-Glasband (which became Glasband-Groman when Samuel left the business
soon after). Over the next few years, this became one of the premier Jewish mortuaries in the
city, and the primary mortuary for burials funded by the Jewish Free Burial Society.
125
Agudath Achim Cemetery—Creation and Establishment
Agudath Achim, sometimes referred to as Agudas Achim, or Agudas Achim Anshe
Sfard, was another Orthodox congregation. It began organizing in approximately 1903 and
established itself in 1909 in a synagogue at Central Avenue and Twenty-First Street in the
Central Avenue district south of downtown.
126
The congregation purchased its cemetery from the
Masonic Cemetery Association in 1919—a narrow piece of land north of Mount Zion that
matched Beth Israel in organization, but was about half the size. Agudath Achim also established
a Chevra Kadisha to ensure proper Orthodox burials for deceased members and to observe the
annual yarzeit.
127
124
Philip Stein, “Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, May 19, 1916, B’nai B’rith Messenger
1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-
Aviv University, 5.
125
“The Glasband Family: A Story of Community Service,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, September 17, 1976, B’nai
B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library
of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 13.
126
The congregation is also sometimes identified as Agudas Achim Anshe Sfard due to the fact that Anshe Sfard, a
Romanian congregation, merged with Agudath Achim at some point (Clifton L. Holland, “The Jewish Community
in Los Angeles,” Prolades / Holland International Consultants,
http://www.prolades.com/glama/la5co07/jewish_community.htm).
127
Jacob J. Eltz, ed., Mount Sinai Yearbook – 1946, Los Angeles: Associated Organizations of Los Angeles, 1946),
21.
50
Beth David Cemetery
The final cemetery established among the cluster of Home of Peace, Beth Israel, Mount
Zion, and Agudath Achim, is one that I will only mention briefly due to the lack of information I
was able to find about its history. Beth David Cemetery, a small parcel on the northwest corner
of Home of Peace, was a Sephardic Jewish cemetery established by the Beth David congregation
in approximately 1937, according to earliest burials. Based on the 1924 aerial photo, the land that
Beth David Cemetery occupied was previously the location of the New Masonic Cemetery.
Congregation Beth David, founded in 1918, moved into a synagogue on Cornwell Street in
Boyle Heights in the early 1920s, and became popularly known as the Cornwell Street Shul. The
congregation eventually became known as Beth David Nusach Sfard. Home of Peace absorbed
the Beth David Cemetery shortly after it opened, likely in the 1950s, and the Beth David Nusach
Sfard congregation dissolved in 1970.
128
The Sephardic graves share the style seen in Orthodox
sections—with upright headstones and concrete ledgers.
128
Ted Gostin (Specialist in Southern California Jewish Genealogy), in discussion with the author, November 2017;
Holland, “Jewish Community;” “Boyle Heights Nusach Sfard Era Ends,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, May 29, 1970,
B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National
Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 18.
51
Cemeteries
**No Longer Extant
Type Location Date
Est.
Description
Evergreen Memorial
Park & Crematorium
Non-Denominational Boyle
Heights
1877 Formerly Evergreen Cemetery.
Los Angeles
County Crematorium
Cemetery
Potter’s Field Boyle
Heights
1877 Formerly Los Angeles County
Cemetery. Established as a separate
parcel adjacent to Evergreen
Cemetery in order to bury indigents.
Due to segregation, many Chinese
deceased were buried here as well.
Evergreen purchased much of the
potter’s field in 1964, leaving a small
section still used today for indigent
cremations.
Odd Fellows
Cemetery
Originally for
members of the
Independent Order of
the Odd Fellows; now
open to the public.
Boyle
Heights
1889 Officially established on Fort Moore
Hill in downtown in 1863, but
existed unofficially in that location
before then.
Calvary Cemetery Catholic East Los
Angeles
1896 “Old Calvary” originally established
in what is now Chinatown in 1844.
Home of Peace
Memorial Park &
Mausoleum
Jewish East Los
Angeles
1902 Formerly Home of Peace Cemetery.
Moved from Chavez Ravine in 1902.
Masonic Cemetery** Established for
members of the
Masonic order.
East Los
Angeles
1905 First established on Fort Moore Hill
in downtown. There is no record of
the establishment date, but the first
burial was in 1857.
Beth Israel Cemetery Orthodox Jewish East Los
Angeles
1907 Established on Masonic land.
Serbian Cemetery Serbian East Los
Angeles
1908 Operated by the Serbian United
Benevolent Society.
Mount Zion
Cemetery
Established by Jewish
Free Burial Society.
East Los
Angeles
1916 Established on Masonic land; Jewish
Federation became owner in 1960s.
Agudath Achim
Cemetery
Orthodox Jewish East Los
Angeles
1919 Established on Masonic land.
Chinese Cemetery
of Los Angeles
Chinese East Los
Angeles
1922 Operated by the Chinese
Consolidated Benevolent Association
of Los Angeles.
Beth David
Cemetery**
Sephardic Jewish East Los
Angeles
1937 Likely absorbed by Home of Peace in
the 1950s.
Old Russian
Molokan Cemetery
Russian Molokan East Los
Angeles
Before
1941
Now defunct / New Russian
Molokan Cemetery established in the
City of Commerce in 1941.
Sources: “Gonzales, “Downey Road;” “Odd Fellows;” Berman, “Former Downtown Dead Zone;” Carpenter,
Early Cemeteries, 13- 39; Meares, “Serbian Cemetery; Gust, “The Historic Los Angeles Cemetery,” 24-30;
Holland, “Jewish Community;” Martin, "Laid to Rest.”
Table 3.1: Cemeteries in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles.
52
Figure 3.6: Cemeteries in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. Map courtesy of Google Maps,
notations by author.
53
CHAPTER FOUR: The Continuing History of the Jewish Cemeteries in East Los Angeles
Home of Peace—The Later Years
An aerial photo of Home of Peace from 1924 displays the cemetery’s geometric layout,
which starkly contrasts with the sloping and meandering walkways of the Catholic cemetery
across the street [Figure 4.1]. Home of Peace divided rectangular burial sections with walkways
extending from the main drive. The drive split the cemetery down the middle, ending in a
roundabout in the center. Despite its rejection of the older, more picturesque and park-like style,
the cemetery was green and lush, with numerous trees planted among the graves. Most early
graves appear to be only headstones, without the accompanying concrete ledgers seen in
Orthodox burials.
Figure 4.1: Home of Peace Cemetery aerial view in 1924. Also visible are Calvary Cemetery, Agudath Achim
Cemetery, Mount Zion Cemetery, Beth Israel Cemetery, and the former Masonic Cemetery. Original photo
edited with identifiers by author. Courtesy of the Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public
Library; image 00073989.
54
In 1926, Congregation B’nai B’rith proposed building a mausoleum and columbarium on
the cemetery property to keep up with modern demand for aboveground burial and cremation
[Figure 4.2].
129
The proposed building would be:
Of classic design, of reinforced concrete, and when fully completed, it will cover a
hollow square two hundred feet long on each of its sides surrounding a beautiful court
yard of shrubs and flowers. The interior of the building will be of white marble, with
stained art glass skylight lighting effects. There will be private family vaults, arranged to
suit individual requirements, also family sections, individual crypts and Columbaruims
[sic] for urns containing the ashes of those who have been cremated.
130
Though B’nai B’rith expressed interest in constructing the mausoleum as soon as
possible, the groundbreaking for the mausoleum did not occur until seven years later, following
an agreement between Congregation B’nai B’rith and Nathan Malinow.
Nathan Malinow was one of the first managers of the cemetery. Nathan and his father,
Herman, were very active in Congregation B’nai B’rith. Herman Malinow was the shamas, or
caretaker, of the congregation in the late 1800s, and as a result of this position, helped with
Jewish burials in the years before Jewish mortuaries were officially established in the city. When
a member of the Jewish community died, Herman and his wife would supervise and ensure
129
“Proposed New Mausoleum at Home of Peace,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, June 11, 1926, B’nai B’rith Messenger
1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-
Aviv University, 4.
130
Ibid.
Figure 4.2: Illustration of Proposed Home of Peace mausoleum, B’nai B’rith Messenger, 1926; cropped by
author. Courtesy of New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of
Israel and Tel-Aviv University.
55
completion of Jewish burial rituals at non-Jewish mortuaries.
131
When Nathan became old
enough, he followed in his father’s footsteps, taking on the role of shamas at B’nai B’rith and
then becoming the manager of Home of Peace Cemetery.
132
In 1927, Nathan Malinow and Nathan Simons established the first Jewish mortuary in
Los Angeles, Malinow & Simons. Although the mortuary operated separately from Home of
Peace, Malinow & Simons and Home of Peace would have a close business relationship
throughout the years.
133
Malinow & Simons and other mortuaries run by the Glasband and
Groman families performed services for the majority of the burials in the Jewish cemeteries in
East Los Angeles, as well as many of the Jewish burials in cemeteries that opened throughout the
city in later years.
134
In 1933, Nathan Malinow formed an agreement with Congregation B’nai B’rith to build a
mausoleum with an interior chapel in the center of the cemetery grounds [Figure 4.3]. The
agreement between Malinow and B’nai B’rith dictated that the Home of Peace Mausoleum,
containing more than six hundred crypts, would function as a separate entity from the cemetery,
and be owned and operated by Nathan Malinow and his family.
135
131
At the time, there were only five mortuaries in Los Angeles: Alvarez (mostly used by the local Hispanic
population), Brasee Bros., Samson Dexter, and Draper & Co. (Will Tagress, “The New Malinow & Silverman: 3
Generations of Service to Southland Jewry - A Saga of Growth,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, January 23, 1959,
courtesy of the personal collection of Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman Mortuary); “4 Generations of Service to
Southland Jewry: A Saga of Stability and Reliability,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, December 17, 1976, B’nai B’rith
Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of
Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 17.
132
“Nathan Malinow,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, June 7, 1929, B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public
Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, A24.
133
“Our History,” Malinow and Silverman Mortuary, Accessed October 10, 2017,
http://malinowandsilverman.com/91/Our-History.html.
134
Hadley Meares, “Hillside Memorial Park: A Jewish Modernist Masterpiece in the Midst of the City,” KCET,
March 14, 2014, Accessed January 14, 2018, https://www.kcet.org/history-society/hillside-memorial-park-a-jewish-
modernist-masterpiece-in-the-midst-of-the-city.
135
For clarification, until the 1980s, two entities were involved in Home of Peace’s operations. B’nai B’rith
Congregation, later known as Wilshire Boulevard Temple, owned and operated Home of Peace Cemetery, while the
owners of the Malinow & Simons Mortuary, later the Malinow & Silverman Mortuary—Nathan Malinow, Alvin
Malinow, and Morton Silverman—owned and operated the Home of Peace Mausoleum within the cemetery (Eric
Rothman (Owner of Malinow & Silverman Mortuary) in discussion with the author, October 2017; “Our History,”
Malinow & Silverman Mortuary; “The Home of Peace Mausoleum,” Pamphlet, Pre-1940s, from the collection of
Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman Mortuary).
56
William Allen designed the mausoleum and Harry Friedman was in charge of
construction. Local newspapers and Home of Peace, itself, celebrated it as the first Jewish
mausoleum in the country, and the only Jewish mausoleum in an exclusively Jewish cemetery.
136
Allen designed the mausoleum and its interior chapel in a Moorish Revival style [Figure 4.4],
meant to “carry one back to the land of the East where the Jewish people and religion had their
beginning.”
137
The Home of Peace Mausoleum expanded several times over the years [Figure
4.5]. Nathan Malinow added an additional one thousand crypts in 1937—the same year that
Congregation B’nai B’rith officially changed its name to Wilshire Boulevard Temple. This name
change reflected the congregation’s move ten years prior to a new Byzantine-style temple at the
corner of Wilshire and Hobart boulevards in the upper class Mid-Wilshire area [Figure 4.6].
138
At the time, Wilshire Boulevard, sometimes referred to as the “Fifth Avenue of the West,” had a
136
“Ground Broken for Home of Peace Mausoleum,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, August 25, 1933, B’nai B’rith
Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of
Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 16; “The Home of Peace Mausoleum” Pamphlet, Pre-1940s.
137
“Congregation B’nai B’rith Plans Home of Peace Mausoleum,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, July 21, 1933, B’nai
B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library
of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 9.
138
“Construct New Unit: Home of Peace Mausoleum Enlarges Building,” Jewish Community Press, Published June
18, 1937, Box 58, Folder 2, Western States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections -
Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles; “Our History,” Wilshire Boulevard
Temple, Accessed February 20, 2018, https://www.wbtla.org/pages/the-temple-pages/our-history.
Figure 4.3: Groundbreaking for Home of Peace mausoleum. Left to Right: Harry Friedman, William Allen,
Nathan Malinow, Alvin Malinow (Nathan’s son), S. Tilden Norton, Rabbi Maxwell Dubin from Congregation
B’nai B’rith, George Mosbacher, Rabbi Edgar Magnin from Congregation B’nai B’rith, Joseph Dubin, and
Alfred Kingsbaker. Courtesy of the collection of Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman Mortuary.
57
reputation as a promising commercial strip, and the congregation’s westward move and name
change reflected its desire to be associated with modern Los Angeles, and with successful, more
assimilated Hollywood Jews. Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin, the “Rabbi to the Stars,” even requested
that the new temple be built with features resembling a movie theater.
139
As Wilshire Boulevard
Temple moved even further away from Home of Peace, it signaled the beginning of the
disintegrating relationship between Los Angeles’ oldest Jewish congregation and its oldest extant
Jewish cemetery.
139
Los Angeles Conservancy, “Restoring Wilshire Boulevard Temple,” (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Conservancy,
2014), 2.
Figure 4.5: Mausoleum floor plan depicting “future wings” from 1930s-era Home of Peace pamphlet;
cropped by author. Courtesy of the collection of Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman Mortuary.
Figure 4.4: Mausoleum drawing from 1930s-era Home of Peace pamphlet; cropped by
author. Courtesy of the collection of Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman Mortuary.
58
Home of Peace operated as one of the only large and non-Orthodox Jewish cemeteries in
Los Angeles until the 1940s. Because of this fact and its association with the influential Wilshire
Boulevard Temple, it had been the first choice for many of the city’s Jews during the first half of
the twentieth century. Many congregations and associations established their own sections in
Home of Peace, and many of the city’s most established and celebrated residents chose to be
buried there. Celebrity burials at Home of Peace include the founders of Warner Bros. Pictures,
Jack and Harry Warner; founder of Universal Pictures, Carl Laemmle; founder of Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios, Louis B. Mayer; stage and screen performer, Fanny Brice; and
members of The Three Stooges, Jerome Lester Horwitz (Curly Howard) and Samuel Horwitz
(Shemp Howard).
By the 1940s, though, the Jewish community was moving further and further away from
the Boyle Heights community and Home of Peace. As Jews moved west and to the San Fernando
Valley, new cemeteries emerged to cater to these communities. Hillside Memorial Park (1941;
Culver City), Mount Sinai Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills; 1953), and Eden Memorial Park
(Mission Hills; 1954) became popular alternatives to Home of Peace, not only because they were
closer to the new Jewish neighborhoods, but also because they appealed to those interested in a
more modern cemetery experience [see Table 4.1 and Figure 4.7 for further information about
Figure 4.6: Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 1940. Courtesy of the Security Pacific National Bank
Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00081623.
59
and locations of Jewish cemeteries in Los Angeles].
140
In 1917, Hubert Eaton became the
General Manager of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, and began modernizing
the entire cemetery industry. Eaton hoped to change the cemetery landscape from one evoking
mourning, sadness, and thoughts of death to one that would uplift visitors and inspire them. He
put this into action by instilling strict rules on the appearance of his cemeteries, which he dubbed
“memorial parks” to remove them of their association with death. Forest Lawn allowed no
upright tombstones—instead, all individual monuments had to be bronze markers that were flush
with the ground, to make them less noticeable and easier to mow over when maintaining the
lawn. White marble statuary and artistic community memorials were allowed, but no individual
monuments. As the cemetery industry began to be increasingly outsourced to mortuaries and
funeral parlors, removing the death process from the home and from the responsibility of the
grieving family, Forest Lawn reflected this disassociation with death. Beginning in the 1930s,
many cemeteries, including Hillside, Mount Sinai, and Eden Memorial Park, followed the lead of
Forest Lawn, building well-maintained landscapes of simple, flat markers.
141
Though Home of
Peace maintained a stylistic mix of monuments—from Orthodox concrete ledgers and upright
headstones to flush, bronze markers—it followed Forest Lawn as well by changing its name
from Home of Peace Cemetery to Home of Peace Memorial Park.
140
Two of the founders of Hillside Memorial Park were Robert and Harry Groman of Groman Mortuary; Groman
Mortuary also founded its own mortuary on the grounds of Eden Memorial Park; the Eden-Groman Mortuary still
exists today, though it is now owned by the “death-care” corporation, SCI (“Our History,” Hillside Memorial Park
and Mortuary, Accessed March 1, 2018, https://www.hillsidememorial.org/about-hillside/our-history/); Eric
Rothman (President of Malinow & Silverman Mortuary) in discussion with the author, October 2017; Florie Brizel,
Sinai Temple: A Centennial History, 1906-2006, (Los Angeles: Sinai Temple, 2007), 93.
141
Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 159-181.
60
Cemeteries Location Date Est. Description
Beth Olam Cemetery Hollywood 1920 Established approximately 1920; first burials
date to 1927; located inside of Hollywood
Forever Cemetery, and now operates as a Jewish
section of Hollywood Forever.
Mount Carmel Cemetery Commerce 1931 Established by Glasband & Groman Mortuary;
primarily Orthodox-style burials; now owned by
Chevra Kadisha Mortuary.
Young Israel Cemetery Norwalk 1938 Congregation that owned cemetery formerly
known as the Houston Street Shul; primarily
Orthodox-style burials; now owned by Chevra
Kadisha Mortuary.
Hillside Memorial Park Culver City 1941 Established by Lazare F. Bernard and Robert
and Harry Groman as B’nai B’rith Memorial
Park; in 1942, they changed the name to
Hillside; sold to Temple Israel of Hollywood in
1957.
Mount Olive Memorial Park Commerce 1948 Possibly established by Glasband & Groman as
well; primarily Orthodox-style burials.
Sholom Memorial Park Sylmar 1951 Orthodox, though does not require concrete
covers on graves; connected to Glen Haven
Memorial Park.
Mount Sinai Memorial Park Hollywood
Hills
1953 Formerly the Jewish section of Forest Lawn
Memorial Park – Hollywood Hills; purchased by
Sinai Temple in 1963.
Eden Memorial Park Mission Hills 1954 Groman Mortuary opened own mortuary on
cemetery grounds in 1960s or 1970s; cemetery
and mortuary are now operated by SCI.
Mount Sinai Memorial Park
– Simi Valley
Simi Valley 1997 Owned by Sinai Temple.
Sources: Sonia Hoffman, “Jewish Cemeteries in Los Angeles,” The Early Jewish Presence in Los Angeles: A
Special Project of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, David Hoffman and Nancy Holden, Project
Coordinators, Copyright November 2002, Last Updated July 2003, http://home.earthlink.net/~nholdeneditor/
jewish_cemeteries_in_los_angeles.htm; “New Jewish Cemetery for LA to Be Finest in West: Glasband and
Groman Acquire New Property to Be Called Mt. Carmel Cemetery,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, May 9, 1930, 3,
Box 58, Folder 2, Western States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E.
Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles; “About,” Mount Olive Memorial Cemetery,
accessed March 3, 2018, http://www.mountolivememorial.com/; Eric Rothman (President of Malinow &
Silverman Mortuary) in discussion with the author, October 2017; “Our History,” Hillside Memorial Park and
Mortuary; Brizel, Sinai Temple, 93.
Table 4.1: Jewish Cemeteries in Other Neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
61
In the 1940s, Nathan Malinow decided to transfer both the Malinow & Simons Mortuary
and Home of Peace Mausoleum businesses to his son, Alvin Malinow, and son-in-law, Morton
Silverman. In 1946, they renamed their mortuary, Malinow & Silverman Mortuary.
142
Despite
142
Nathan Simons, the previous business partner of Nathan Malinow, had left Malinow & Simons Mortuary just a
couple of years after it was established, and was no longer connected to the business (“Our History,” Malinow &
Silverman Mortuary; Eric Rothman (Owner of Malinow & Silverman Mortuary) in discussion with the author,
October 2017).
Figure 4.7: Jewish Cemeteries in Los Angeles. Note that other cemeteries exist in Los
Angeles that have Jewish sections, which are also popular with the local Jewish
community. This thesis is focusing on cemeteries that are singularly Jewish. Map
courtesy of Google Maps; notations by author.
62
the emergence of rival cemeteries elsewhere in Los Angeles, the Home of Peace Mausoleum
within Home of Peace Memorial Park continued to expand and advertised itself as “the largest
Jewish mausoleum in the world.”
143
By the 1960s, they had added several wings to the main
mausoleum and sold over six thousand crypts. They also constructed a separate, mid-century
modern style mausoleum called the Courts of King David in the northwest portion of the
cemetery.
144
Alvin Malinow and Morton Silverman continued to own and operate the Home of
Peace Mausoleum [Figure 4.8] until at least the 1980s, but it is unclear when they stopped
managing the cemetery operations. Milton W. Castle, Max Lodge, Gil Thompson, and Carol
Bova counted among the cemetery managers during the years that the cemetery was under
ownership of Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
145
143
“The Home of Peace Mausoleum,” Pamphlet, Pre-1940s.
144
“Home of Peace Memorial Park: New Courts of King David,” Advertising Pamphlet, Box 58, Folder 3, Western
States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles; “The Magnificent Court of Reflection,” Advertisement, from the collection
of Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman Mortuary.
145
“Our History,” Malinow & Silverman Mortuary. “Affiliation Announced,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, September
14, 1973, B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the
National Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 40; “Home of Peace Memorial Names New Manager,” B’nai
B’rith Messenger, September 22, 1967, B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections,
Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 8; Larry Gordon, “Re-Righting
History: Landmark Cemetery Undergoes Quake Damage Repairs,” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1994, Accessed
March 3, 2018, http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-04/local/me-11750_1_quake-damage; “Home of Peace
Memorial Park and Mausoleum,” Pamphlet, 1980s, from the collection of Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman
Mortuary.
Figure 4.8: Home of Peace Mausoleum, 2018. Photo by author.
63
Although Home of Peace continued to market itself as convenient to the Jewish
community [Figure 4.9], with a focus on the many freeways surrounding the cemetery,
alternative cemeteries emerging elsewhere and the transition of the area surrounding Home of
Peace from a hub of Jewish culture to a mostly Latino neighborhood, caused the cemetery to
begin to fade away in the eyes of the Jewish community.
In the early 1980s, Alvin Malinow and Morton Silverman sold the Malinow & Silverman
Mortuary to a Texas-based company called Service Corporation International [SCI]. SCI was the
largest of many growing “death-care” corporations, which, in the later part of the twentieth
century, began buying up many independent funeral homes and cemeteries throughout the
country.
146
As they exited the mortuary industry, Alvin Malinow and Morton Silverman
transferred the Home of Peace Mausoleum to the care of Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
147
One of the other well-known Jewish mortuaries, Glasband Mortuary, sold their business
to the Loewen Group, a large Vancouver-based competitor to SCI that also purchased Rose Hills
Memorial Park in nearby Whittier. Robert Malinow, a former employee of Malinow &
Silverman, began working at the new mortuary, which Loewen then renamed R. Malinow-
Glasband-Weinstein to maintain its familiarity with the local Jewish community.
148
In 1998, Wilshire Boulevard Temple announced that it had received an inquiry about
purchasing Home of Peace Memorial Park. Mark S. Siegel, then president of Wilshire Boulevard
Temple, declared in a letter to the community, “We are pleased to announce the sale of Home of
Peace to the R. Malinow-Glasband-Weinstein Mortuaries…an affiliate of the Rose Hills
146
“Our History,” Malinow & Silverman Mortuary; “Our Business/History,” Service Corporation International,
Accessed February 28, 2018, http://www.sci-corp.com/en-us/about-sci/our-business-history.page.
147
In 2004, SCI sold Malinow & Silverman to Randy Ziegler, a longtime mortuary manager. In 2016, Ziegler sold
the mortuary to Eric and Susan Rothman, the current owners (Eric Rothman (Owner of Malinow & Silverman
Mortuary) in discussion with the author, October 2017).
148
Ibid., Allen R. Myerson, “Hardball on Hallowed Grounds: Funeral Industry Leaders Square Off Over Takeover
Bid,” New York Times, September 27, 1996, C1, from the personal collection of Jill Glasband.
Figure 4.9: Location of Home of Peace among freeways of East L.A. in undated pamphlet; cropped
by author. Courtesy of the collection of Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman Mortuary.
64
Company, owners of the largest cemetery in North America.”
149
He stated that Robert Malinow,
who would become president of the Memorial Park, was thrilled to continue his family’s
“historic relationship with Home of Peace,” though Siegel did not mention that the true owner of
the cemetery would now be a non-Jewish conglomerate.
150
Although there is no reason on record why Wilshire Boulevard Temple decided to
discontinue its ownership of the cemetery, it is likely that it had, over the years, begun to
consider the cemetery to be a financial burden on the temple. By the end of the twentieth
century, Home of Peace was no longer the first choice for Jewish burials in Los Angeles, and, as
a result, burial requests and resulting income slowed.
151
At the same time, Wilshire Boulevard
Temple found itself embedded in an increasing number of scandals and financial emergencies
surrounding the cemetery. Wilshire Boulevard Temple was itself facing financial challenges. By
the 1990s, many of Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s congregants had moved even further west, and
the synagogue was deteriorating badly and in need of restoration.
152
In 1987, the Whittier-Narrows earthquake struck near Home of Peace, loosening and
knocking over gravestones, and likely cracking many of the concrete ledgers in the Orthodox
sections.
153
In 1991, cemetery staff found more than two-dozen overturned gravestones and
several walls and tombs graffitied with anti-Semitic symbols and language referencing the Ku
Klux Klan and devil worship. Initially investigated as a hate crime, it turned out that a small
team of security guards committed the vandalism in an attempt to discredit the security company
working at Home of Peace. One of the Home of Peace security guards working the night of the
vandalism was charged with cooperating with the trespassers—a source of embarrassment for the
cemetery.
154
In 1994, the Northridge earthquake caused $300,000 worth of damage when it
knocked over four hundred and thirty-eight headstones dating from the 1920s to the 1950s,
damaged approximately three hundred monuments and gravestones dating back to the nineteenth
149
Mark S. Siegel, Mark S. Siegel to Wilshire Boulevard Temple Community, December 22, 1998, Letter, from the
personal collection of Jill Glasband.
150
Ibid.
151
Douglas Keister, Forever L.A.: A Field Guide to Los Angeles Area Cemeteries & Their Residents, (Layton, UT:
Gibbs Smith, 2010), 117.
152
Los Angeles Conservancy, “Restoring Wilshire Boulevard Temple,” 3.
153
Jeff Kruger, “Grave Situation in L.A.,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, January 22, 1988, Box 58, Folder 2, Western
States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles.
154
George Ramos, “Security Firm Owner Arrested in Vandalism,” Metro News, June 8, 1991, B3, Box 58, Folder 2,
Western States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young Research
Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
65
century, and cracked many of the eighty stained-glass skylight panels in the mausoleum [Figure
4.10]. According to industry experts, Home of Peace suffered much more damage than other
cemeteries in the region because of its greater number of upright headstones and its location on
the lowlands of East Los Angeles. Home of Peace had to pay for repairs with its own operating
budget, emergency funds, and donations from the temple and individuals.
155
Finally, in 1997, a
year before R. Malinow-Glasband-Weinstein acquired the cemetery, a distraught family sued
Home of Peace and Wilshire Boulevard Temple for $5.25 million after finding out that their
recently buried father had been moved to another plot in the cemetery without their knowledge,
violating both state and Orthodox Jewish law.
156
Interestingly, soon after Wilshire Boulevard Temple sold Home of Peace, it decided to
embark on a costly temple restoration project to which the Jewish community donated
generously. The majority of the restoration work occurred between 2011 and 2013, and cost
$47.5 million. The Temple also fundraised to build new structures on the Wilshire Boulevard
Temple campus, with the cost of the restoration and campus expansion totaling $150 million
157
At this time, the Temple proved its proclivity and talent for fundraising, but also illuminated
where the priorities of Temple leadership resided.
After Wilshire Boulevard Temple sold Home of Peace, the cemetery did not remain in
the same hands for long. During the late 1990s, SCI and the Loewen Group battled to dominate
and consolidate the death-care industry, buying up independent funeral homes and cemeteries at
155
Gordon, “Re-Righting History.”
156
Gold, “Lawsuit Charges Cemetery.”
157
Los Angeles Conservancy, “Restoring Wilshire Boulevard Temple,” 3.
Figure 4.10: Damaged gravestones in the Benevolent section of Home of Peace.
Photo by author.
66
a rapid pace across the country and then raising prices at these locations.
158
In 2002, the Loewen
Group lost its fight against SCI and declared bankruptcy. Another death-care corporation, the
Alderwoods Group, acquired the company and became the owner of Home of Peace Memorial
Park. Two years later, in 2004, a former employee of Glasband Mortuary, Richard George,
purchased the cemetery from Alderwoods, turning Home of Peace Memorial Park into an
independent private cemetery.
159
Richard George remains the current owner of Home of Peace,
overseeing it with a board of directors comprised of other funeral care professionals.
As of 2018, Richard George believes that, with its mausoleums, columbaria, and the open
land it has left, Home of Peace still has at least 3,500 more burial spaces available, though he
points out that the cemetery is always finding ways to add more and more burial options. George
has steadily worked to increase the endowment fund at Home of Peace since his arrival in 2004,
and his hope is to keep the cemetery maintained as long as possible.
160
Many of the available
graves at Home of Peace were purchased beforehand through pre-need contracts, which plan and
pay for burials and funerals in advance of death. According to Eric Rothman, current owner of
Malinow & Silverman, the majority of the burials that they do at Home of Peace are for the
Sephardic temple in Westwood, Tifereth Israel, which owns its own section at the cemetery.
However, many burials are also for members of the Russian Jewish community, for those who
have family already buried at Home of Peace, or for those who prefer traditional monuments to
the flush markers seen in most other Jewish cemeteries in Los Angeles.
161
The cemetery office
provides maps of the different sections of the cemetery, which date to the period before Wilshire
Boulevard Temple sold Home of Peace [Figure 4.11]. However, it does not appear that much has
changed in the cemetery layout since the maps were produced, with the exception of an on-site
158
Erik Larson, “Fight to the Death,” Time, June 24, 2001, Accessed March 1, 2018,
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,135163,00.html.
159
Two years after Richard George purchased Home of Peace, SCI absorbed the Alderwoods Group, so it is possible
that their unstable financial situation contributed to the decision to sell the cemetery to Richard George so soon after
acquiring it (“Archived — Amalgamation of Alderwoods Group, Inc. with a Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of Service
Corporation International,” Government of Canada Competition Bureau, November 10, 2006, Last modified
November 5, 2015, Accessed February 10, 2018, http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-
bc.nsf/eng/02235.html).
160
Richard George (Owner of Home of Peace) in discussion with the author, April 2018.
161
Eric Rothman (Owner of Malinow & Silverman Mortuary) in discussion with the author, October 2017; Richard
George (Owner of Home of Peace) in discussion with the author, April 2018.
67
mortuary at the back of the property that Home of Peace established under Loewen ownership
sometime between 1998 and 2002 [Figure 4.12].
162
162
Richard George (Owner of Home of Peace Memorial Park) in discussion with the author, April 2018.
Figure 4.11: Map of Home of Peace Memorial Park indicating buildings, roadways, and burial sections.
Courtesy of Home of Peace Memorial Park.
68
After all of the burial plots in Home of Peace are filled, the cemetery’s endowment funds
will be used to care for the cemetery as long as possible. The non-profit Cemetery and Mortuary
Association of California [CMAC] sponsored the California Cemetery Act in 1931 with the
intention of implementing regulations that would protect cemetery customers and help prevent
cemetery damage and abandonment. As a result of this legislation, the state of California
mandated that all newly established private and fraternal cemeteries were required to create an
endowment fund or “perpetual care” fund, as they were sometimes referred to in the past.
163
Home of Peace, as a cemetery owned by a religious organization, did not have to follow this law,
but it did eventually establish an endowment fund, likely in response to increased dialogue about
163
Cemetery and Mortuary Association of California, Accessed March 1, 2018, http://www.cmaccalifornia.org/;
Llewellyn, A Cemetery Should Be Forever: The Challenge to Managers and Directors, 35; “FAQs” Department of
Consumer Affairs Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, Accessed March 6, 2018,
http://www.cfb.ca.gov/about_us/faqs.shtml; Lauren Osborne, “Licensed Cemetery Owners: 5 Reporting Facts the
Cemetery & Funeral Bureau Wants You to Know,” Onisko & Scholz, LLP, Accessed March 6, 2018,
http://oniskoscholz.com/licensed-cemetery-owners/.
Figure 4.12: Home of Peace Memorial Park from 2018 Google Satellite Map; notations by author. Map
indicates buildings and roadways. Map courtesy of Google Maps.
69
the importance of endowment funds to a cemetery’s future. Though the exact date that the
endowment fund was established could not be found, a Home of Peace pamphlet dated to
sometime in the late 1960s identified the cemetery as having an “Endowment Care Trust Fund”
at the time, and Richard George believes that he has seen mentions of individual endowment
payments from families as far back as the 1910s and 1920s.
164
When the Wilshire Boulevard
Temple sold the cemetery to the Loewen-owned mortuary in 1998, Home of Peace became a
private cemetery, and therefore became subject to state regulations including annual audits of its
endowment fund by the California Cemetery and Funeral Bureau.
165
These audits confirm that
Home of Peace manages and invests its endowment funds properly, ensuring that Home of Peace
will be well-cared for as long as possible in the future [Figure 4.13, Figure 4.14].
164
“Home of Peace Memorial Park,” Pamphlet, 1960s, from the collection of Eric Rothman, Malinow & Silverman
Mortuary; Robert S. Diamond, “State Moves Ahead on Pomona Freeway,” Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1964,
Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File), ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times, Z1; Richard George
(Owner of Home of Peace) in discussion with the author, April 2018.
165
Osborne, “Licensed Cemetery Owners.”
Figure 4.13: Gravestones in Home of Peace. Photo by author.
Figure 4.14: Orthodox graves in Home of Peace. Photo by author.
70
Beth Israel—The Later Years
During the next ten years after Beth Israel Cemetery opened in 1907, the Beth Israel
congregation purchased its own hearse, constructed a small chapel in the southwest corner of the
cemetery, and dedicated its cemetery gates [Figure 4.15, Figure 4.16].
166
Announcing the
dedication of the chapel in 1913, a local newspaper stated, “The congregation has engaged a
secton who will care for the chapel and the graves. The congregation will attend especialy [sic.]
to charity cases and give them an orthodox Jewish funeral.”
167
Following Orthodox traditions, the majority of the graves in Beth Israel (with the
exception of a couple of small family mausoleums) adhere to the particular style preferred by
Eastern European Orthodox Jews: grave markers are large, upright headstones, which sit atop a
concrete ledger that covers the length of the grave.
166
Gonzales, “Downey Road;” “Beth Israel Announcement,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, April 16, 1909, 3, Box 63,
Folder 7, Western States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young
Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
167
Gonzales, “Downey Road.”
Figure 4.15: Chapel in Beth Israel Cemetery from 1928 Sanborn Map. Original map cropped by
author to show detail. Use of Sanborn Map – Los Angeles 1928 & 1950: Volume 34, Sheet 3458 used
with permission from The Sanborn Library, LLC.
Figure 4.16: Beth Israel Cemetery gates. Photo by author.
71
Congregation Beth Israel remained at the Olive Street Shul in downtown until the early
1940s, when it moved to another building on Temple Street. About ten years later, in 1953, the
congregation moved once again to its current location on Beverly Boulevard in the Fairfax
district.
168
A 1966 newspaper article indicated that expanding freeways and civic center
developments were the reasons behind the move, though the general westward migration of the
Jewish community certainly influenced the decision.
169
At a certain point, later in the twentieth century, Beth Israel decided to sell their cemetery
to Chevra Kadisha Mortuary, an Orthodox Jewish for-profit mortuary founded in 1977, which
took its name from the traditional moniker for a Jewish volunteer burial society.
170
According to
a 1979 letter from Robert A. Rub, the president of Congregation Beth Israel, Chevra Kadisha
Mortuary purchased the cemetery on February 1, 1979.
171
Despite the language in this letter, a
title search indicated that cemetery ownership is still technically in the name of Congregation
Beth Israel, which indicates that the transfer of ownership may have occurred informally.
172
However, for all intents and purposes, Chevra Kadisha Mortuary controls the operations of the
cemetery, and Beth Israel has ceased its involvement.
Beth Israel’s decision to relinquish ownership of the cemetery was probably both
influenced by distance and finances. After attending their synagogue in the Fairfax district for
approximately thirty years, Beth Israel congregants were likely losing interest in burying their
family members in a cemetery that was across town in a neighborhood that no longer had much
connection to the Jewish community. Like Wilshire Boulevard Temple and Home of Peace, the
cemetery also likely became a financial burden on the congregation. Beth Israel was a much
smaller congregation than Wilshire Boulevard Temple, and over the years, it continued to
significantly decrease in membership. In 1995, there were approximately three hundred families
168
Ibid.
169
“Beth Israel Marks 75
th
Anniversary,” Heritage, February 24, 1966, Box 63, Folder 7, Western States Jewish
History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young Research Library, University of
California, Los Angeles, 13.
170
Although the mortuary is called Chevra Kadisha, it is not a traditional Chevra Kadisha (a traditional volunteer
burial society), but is rather a for-profit mortuary business; Yossi Manela (Operator of Chevra Kadisha Mortuary) in
discussion with the author, November 2017.
171
Robert A. Rub, Robert A. Rub, President of Congregation Beth Israel to Whom It May Concern, July 19, 1979,
Letter, from the personal collection of Jill Glasband.
172
First American Title Insurance Company, Preliminary Report – SCAL, June 5, 2013, 3, from the personal
collection of Paul Pitkoff.
72
in attendance at Beth Israel.
173
Currently, according to Yossi Manela, the son of Chevra Kadisha
Mortuary’s founder, Zalman Manela, only approximately ten to thirty members are still in
attendance.
Beth Israel Cemetery now consists of approximately 4,500 burials. According to Manela,
in the 1980s, the cemetery became very popular with the recently immigrated Russian Jewish
community, who were of limited means and, therefore, appreciative of the low costs offered by
Chevra Kadisha Mortuary. As the Russian community established itself, though, it began to
prefer larger cemeteries like Mount Sinai or Forest Lawn. The mortuary now conducts burials in
the cemetery approximately two or three times a month, and people who are buried there are
usually descendants of those already buried in the cemetery or are of a very strict Orthodox faith.
Today the cemetery is almost completely full and the chapel appears to have been replaced with
a service building [Figure 4.17, Figure 4.18, Figure 4.19].
174
173
Gonzales, “Downey Road.”
174
Yossi Manela (Operator of Chevra Kadisha Mortuary) in discussion with the author, November 2017.
Figure 4.17: Beth Israel Cemetery. Photo by author.
Figure 4.18: Beth Israel Cemetery from 2018 Google Satellite Map. Map indicates service building and
roadway. Map courtesy of Google Maps; notations by author.
73
Mount Zion—The Later Years
Although the Jewish Free Burial Society funded burials for poor Jews and promised to
provide funeral services according to Orthodox custom, many of those interred at Mount Zion
were not impoverished, nor were they all Orthodox. What most, if not all, of these people had in
common was a lack of affiliation with those congregations that had their own cemeteries, like
B’nai B’rith or Beth Israel. Some were members of the nearby Congregation Talmud Torah,
some were members of Sephardic congregations like Avat Shalom, and some, like notable
American Yiddish writer, Levi-Yehoyshue “Lamed” Shapiro, were not religious at all. Early
prejudices within the Jewish community also potentially contributed to the creation of Mount
Zion. The established Jews who attended B’nai B’rith Congregation at times expressed concern
over the increasing population of Eastern European Jews immigrating to Los Angeles. They
feared that this growing community would tax resources for the city’s Jews, increase local anti-
Semitism with their more ostensibly foreign way of dressing and communicating, or introduce
Socialist and Bolshevik ideas into society. This prejudice may have contributed to the decision to
create a separate cemetery not associated with B’nai B’rith.
175
Home of Peace offered other congregations the opportunity to purchase sections in its
cemetery, but it is possible that Jews from other congregations chose Mount Zion because they
offered plots at a lower cost than Home of Peace, enabling families to either save money or
spend more money on an elaborate headstone.
176
The majority of the burials without
175
Paul Pitkoff, “Notable Burials at Mount Zion East Los Angeles,” from Facebook Post, Mount Zion Cemetery
East Los Angeles Facebook Page, Posted October 30, 2013, Accessed March 16, 2018,
https://www.facebook.com/historicLA/.
176
Rob Adler Peckerar (Executive Director of Yiddishkayt) in discussion with the author, March 2017; Home of
Peace does have sections for Talmud Torah and the Sephardic community, but Mount Zion may have preceded their
establishment—I was unable to confirm the dates of establishment for individual sections in the cemetery.
Figure 4.19: Current Beth Israel Service Building. Photo by author.
74
headstones—the most extreme charitable cases that likely had no known family nearby—
occurred from 1916 to 1922, and were performed for those who died in local institutions like
hospitals, sanitaria, and prisons. After 1922, most of the graves, with the exception of graves for
very young and stillborn children, have corresponding headstones, and some even have very
elaborate headstones that, according to some estimates, would cost several thousands of dollars
today.
177
Most of the graves were constructed according to the Orthodox style of the times,
though a couple of later graves display modern flat markers with no concrete ledgers. It appears
that Mount Zion at one time had a chapel on the property as well, though by 1950, it had been
demolished and replaced with a small office [Figure 4.20]. In later years, this office was
demolished as well, since there are now no buildings on the property [Figure 4.21].
178
177
Pitkoff, Paul, “History of Mount Zion Cemetery;” “The Recovery of Mount Zion Cemetery,” Cemetery Guide,
Accessed November 10, 2017, http://cemeteryguide.com/MtZion.html.
178
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps: Volume 34, Sheet 3458, 1928 and 1950, Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970,
University of Southern California, ProQuest, LLC, Environmental Data Resources, Inc.
Figure 4.20: Chapel in Mount Zion from 1928 Sanborn Map (left). Replacement office in 1950
(right). Original map cropped by author to show detail. Use of Sanborn Map – Los Angeles 1928
& 1950: Volume 34, Sheet 3458 used with permission from The Sanborn Library, LLC.
Figure 4.21: Mount Zion Cemetery from 2018 Google Satellite Map showing roadway.
Map courtesy of Google Maps; notations by author.
75
In addition to running their own mortuary, founding the Jewish Free Burial Society, and
founding Mount Zion Cemetery, Glasband and Groman established Mount Carmel Cemetery in
1931 in the more inland city of Commerce. They stated that they intended to “provide Los
Angeles Jewry with a spacious and dignified burial grounds,” and established a fund to assure
perpetual maintenance of the grounds.
179
Mount Carmel is an Orthodox cemetery and now
owned by Chevra Kadisha Mortuary, the same Orthodox mortuary that purchased Beth Israel.
180
Charles Groman and Louis Glasband also helped to establish the Bikor Cholim Hospital for
those suffering terminal illnesses. This was a precursor of Mount Sinai Hospital, which
eventually merged into Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
181
After Charles Groman passed away in 1932, the
Glasband-Groman Mortuary split into two separate mortuaries: Glasband Mortuary and Groman
Mortuary, the former run by Irving Glasband, and the latter run by Charles’ sons, Harry and
Robert Groman.
182
The Masonic Cemetery Association, which still owned the land occupied by Mount Zion,
legally dissolved in 1959, in keeping with the terms of its original charter that it would dissolve
approximately fifty years after incorporation. The Jewish Federation became the successor in
interest to the Masonic Cemetery Association, and, therefore, became the new owner of the
property that Mount Zion Cemetery occupied.
183
In 1969, the Jewish Free Burial Society
informed the Jewish Family Service agency of the Jewish Federation that they had run out of
funds and free burial plots, and would no longer be able to bury Los Angeles’ indigent Jews.
184
The representative of the burial society, at the time, was Sol Feldstein, the brother-in-law of
179
“New Jewish Cemetery for L.A. to Be Finest in West: Glasband and Groman Acquire New Property to Be Called
Mt. Carmel Cemetery,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, May 9, 1930, B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public
Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 3.
180
“Directions to Cemeteries (from Los Angeles),” Chevra Kadisha Mortuary, Accessed March 10, 2018,
https://chevrakadisha.com/directions/.
181
Caroline Luce, “Influenza and the Bikur Cholim Society, 1920-1929” The White Plague in the City of Angels,
updated November 7, 2013, Accessed February 28, 2018, http://scalar.usc.edu/hc/tuberculosis-exhibit/influenza-
and-the-bikur-cholim-society-1920-1929.
182
As stated earlier, Glasband Mortuary eventually sold to the Loewen Group. Groman Mortuary still exists today
under the ownership of Robert Groman, though it no longer does Jewish burials, and instead mostly services the
local Hispanic community (Eric Rothman (President of Malinow & Silverman Mortuary) in discussion with the
author, October 2017.); Meares, “Hillside Memorial Park;” “The Glasband Family,” B’nai B’rith Messenger.
183
Pitkoff, “History of Mount Zion Cemetery.”
184
David Rabinovitz, David Rabinovitz, Associate Executive Director of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater
Los Angeles to Mr. Theodore Isenstadt, Mrs. Jeanne Young, Mr. Ben Dwoskin, Mr. Irving Glasband, Mr. Harry
Groman, Mr. Morton Silverman, May 22, 1969, Memorandum, from the personal collection of Jill Glasband, 1.
76
Harry Groman.
185
In a May, 1969 letter, David Rabinovitz, the Associate Executive Director of
the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, stated that, “The provision of free burials for
needy Jews is one of the oldest and traditional community services…it is therefore unfortunate
that in Los Angeles, the second largest Jewish community in America, the Free Burial Society
should go out of existence.”
186
Jewish mortuaries, including those run by Irving Glasband, Harry
Groman, and Morton Silverman, all agreed to temporarily accept referrals for burials from
families who could not afford to pay for services, and in 1971, Jewish Family Services
established a Jewish Community Burial Program, funded by the Jewish Federation, to take over
where the Jewish Free Burial Society left off. According to meeting minutes for the Jewish
Community Burial Program in 1984, many of the clients applying for subsidized burial services
at the time were recent Russian immigrants [Figure 4.22].
187
While the Jewish Community Burial Program continued in strength with the supervision
of Jewish Family Services and continuous involvement of local mortuaries and cemeteries, it was
no longer associated with Mount Zion. The Jewish Federation was now the de facto owner of
Mount Zion, but it did not continue to operate Mount Zion as an active cemetery, instead limiting
its involvement to paying property taxes and providing Home of Peace with a small allowance to
maintain the property. By 1970, the Jewish community was already calling for the restoration of
the “abandoned” Mount Zion. An article in the B’nai B’rith Messenger stated that a few years
before the Jewish Free Burial Society officially dissolved and left care to the Jewish Federation,
185
“Evelyn Groman Memorial Page,” Palmer Funeral Homes, March 22, 2013, Accessed March 15, 2018,
http://www.palmerfuneralhomes.com/notices/Evelyn-Groman.
186
Rabinovitz, Memorandum, 1.
187
Ibid.; Leaf, Karen W., Karen W. Leaf LCSW, Director Valley Storefront to All Units and Programs Working with
the Jewish Community Burial Program Re: Explanation and Guidelines of the Jewish Community Burial Program
April 30, 2001, Memorandum, from the personal collection of Jill Glasband; “Funeral Practices Seminar, April 22,
2010.”
Figure 4.22: Handmade gravestone from 1988; likely an indigent burial. Photo by author.
77
it halted maintenance at the cemetery, likely in anticipation that it would soon cease its
ownership of the property. The Jewish Federation began receiving complaints that the cemetery
was now overgrown with weeds, covered in trash, and experiencing vandalism. A committee of
volunteers, with the cooperation of the Jewish Federation, raised money to reset tombstones,
clean the cemetery, and engage a regular caretaker, allowing the cemetery to open itself to the
public on most days. The newspaper declared that Mount Zion was “once again a dignified last
resting place,” but in reality, this was only the beginning of decades of cyclical neglect and
restoration.
188
One year later, in 1971, Mount Zion was once again in danger of falling into disrepair.
The chairman of the Mount Zion Cemetery Fund, Harry Abelson, who organized the initial
restoration the year before, stated that their fund was rapidly depleting, and it could not cover the
$300 a month required for basic property maintenance. He pleaded with the public for urgent
help to ensure the cemetery did not once again become neglected.
189
In 1985, the Jewish Federation’s Bruce Hochman wrote a letter to Jill Glasband at
Glasband-Willen Mortuary (which would soon sell to Loewen and become R. Malinow-
Glasband-Weinstein), requesting that she attend a meeting to help develop a plan to take care of
Mount Zion Cemetery, which had no perpetual care program and was being maintained by a
small, shrinking group of aging contributors.
190
Unfortunately, in 1987, the nearby Whittier-
Narrows earthquake set back whatever progress Mount Zion made after that meeting. The
earthquake and its aftershocks caused tombstones to fall over, and the Jewish community
expressed displeasure at the slow rate with which the Jewish Federation performed repairs.
Despite the Jewish Federation declaring that repairs were complete, the B’nai B’rith Messenger
noted that while Beth Israel, Agudath Achim, and Home of Peace had restored their damage,
tombstones were still overturned and broken in almost every row of Mount Zion months after the
earthquake. The newspaper also noted that swastika paintings and other signs of vandalism
188
“Abandoned Jewish Cemetery in East L.A. Now Restored,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, September 25, 1970, B’nai
B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library
of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 40.
189
“Seek New Funds for Restoration of Mt. Zion,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, September 3, 1971, B’nai B’rith
Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of
Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 5.
190
Bruce I. Hochman, Bruce I. Hochman, President of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles to Ms.
Jill Glasband of Glasband-Willen Mortuary, September 4, 1985, Letter, from the personal collection of Jill
Glasband.
78
plagued the cemetery. This, in addition to earthquake damage and high cost of upkeep, caused
the Jewish Federation to lock the cemetery gates except for the traditional visiting days—
Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur.
191
The cemetery received few
visitors, and Eileen Silverstrom, the Jewish Federation administrator for the cemetery, stated that
the cemetery was in the wrong place: “The area is unfortunate and there’s nothing you can do
about that.”
192
In 1988, a Friends of Mt. Zion Cemetery group provided approximately $7,000 per year
of the needed $20,000 for operation expenses, and the cost to repair cracked walkways and
purchase ample amounts of weed killer consumed much of the donations. In 1991, the Jewish
Federation sent a letter to relatives of those buried at Mount Zion, and found that many were
deceased, and the rest were elderly with little income. In 1995, the Jewish Federation, the Jewish
Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, and the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California
joined together in another restoration attempt, organizing volunteers to clean the cemetery and
record the epitaphs on the headstones. At this point, although most burials ceased in the 1980s,
the cemetery still received up to one or two burials a year. The last burial occurred in 1998, with
the final count of burials at Mount Zion hovering at approximately 6,700.
193
The most recent Mount Zion restoration effort occurred in 2013, when the Los Angeles
Times published an article lamenting the conditions of the cemetery, which appeared to be worse
than ever. Earthquakes and trespassers toppled over many of the gravestones. Some of the
stones, weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, broke into pieces upon impact. Some smashed into
the concrete ledgers below, causing the concrete to cave in [Figure 4.23]. Graffiti, trash, and
weeds covered the property [Figure 4.23]. Bullet holes in headstones’ ceramic portraits showed
where gang members used portraits of the deceased for target practice [Figure 4.24], and vandals
191
Kruger, “Grave Situation in L.A.”
192
Ibid.
193
Ibid; “The Recovery of Mount Zion Cemetery;” David Margolick, “At Overgrown Cemetery, Some Jews Find
Ancestors, Others Themselves,” New York Times, February 26, 1995, Accessed January 13, 2018,
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/26/us/at-overgrown-cemetery-some-jews-find-ancestors-others-themselves.html;
“Volunteers Sought for Clean-up At Cemetery,” Heritage Southwest Jewish Press, March 31, 1995, Box 58, Folder
2, Western States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young Research
Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 13; Hector Becerra, “Jewish Dead Lie in Forgotten East L.A.
Graves,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2013, Accessed May 5, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/la-me-jewish-
cemetery-html-20130328-dto-htmlstory.html; Lori Samlin Miller, “Saving the Face of Mount Zion Cemetery,”
Chabad.org, August 5, 2013, Accessed January 13, 2018,
http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/2288423/jewish/Saving-the-Face-of-Mount-Zion-Cemetery.htm.
79
pried off many of the remaining portraits with screwdrivers or rocks.
194
There was also evidence
of the cemetery’s longtime use as a ritual location for local practitioners of Santería and Palo,
religions that developed in Latin America as a mix of influences from Spanish Roman
Catholicism, African beliefs from the Yoruba and Kongo people, and indigenous spiritual
practices.
195
Practitioners of Santería and Palo sometimes perform religious rituals in cemeteries
at night, occasionally sacrificing animals and leaving them on the graves, or sometimes, though
rarely, breaking into the graves and removing human bones for spiritual purposes [Figure 4.24].
Mount Zion became popular for rituals like these because of its location just down the street
from botanicas (shops that sell ritual paraphernalia and supplies for Santería) and live animal
stores on Olympic Boulevard. In addition, the cemetery’s hidden location between Beth Israel
and Agudath Achim and its unsecured fence made the cemetery a prime choice for rituals of
these sorts under the cover of darkness.
196
The Los Angeles Times article, and other articles in the
Jewish Journal about the “abandonment of Mount Zion” caused some members of the Jewish
community to question how the cemetery ended up in this condition, what level of care the
Jewish Federation was providing, and how they could raise enough money and awareness to
rectify years of neglect. Articles painted the cemetery as owner-less, since the articles claimed no
one, not even the Jewish Federation, really knew who owned the property. However, a road deed
dating back to 1982 indicated that the owner of the property was the “Jewish Federation Council
of Greater Los Angeles, a non-profit corporation successor in interest to Masonic Cemetery
Association, a dissolved corporation.”
197
A title search corroborated this finding. At the time, the
Jewish Federation provided Home of Peace with $1,000 per month for their staff to accomplish
basic maintenance, and then spent an additional approximately $13,000 each year on special
repairs at the cemetery.
198
Rabbi Moshe Greenwald, director of the Chabad of Downtown Los
Angeles, led restoration efforts and brought together members of the Jewish Federation, rabbis,
local Jewish media, and other key community leaders to determine the next steps.
194
Becerra, “Jewish Dead.”
195
Gonzales, “Downey Road;” “The Growth of Santeria,” BBC: Religions, Last Updated September 15, 2009,
Accessed March 15, 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/santeria/history/growth.shtml.
196
Gonzales, “Downey Road.”
197
Los Angeles County Road Deed, Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, (1981), from the collection
of Paul Pitkoff.
198
“The Recovery of Mount Zion Cemetery.”
80
Jay Sanderson and Ivan Wolkind of the Jewish Federation expressed concern about
jumping into restoration efforts before raising the entire sum needed. They attributed their
hesitation to the failed restoration efforts in the 1990s, where contractors began the project
before allocating all necessary funds, and, as a result, worked in a substandard manner and never
completed the restoration. However, Rabbi Greenwald was anxious to get started as soon as
possible, based on recommendations from contractors, and his and other community members’
view that the continued state of neglect was a shanda, a deep shame that reflected poorly on the
community, and that delaying the work could mean it would be delayed perpetually. Greenwald
established a new Friends of Mount Zion Cemetery fund and received substantial donations from
local Jewish businessmen and real estate developers. After visiting the cemetery and expressing
Figures 4.23: Mount Zion conditions in early 2013. Courtesy of Paul Pitkoff and the Mount
Zion Cemetery East Los Angeles Facebook Group.
Figure 4.24: Ceramic portrait with bullet hole (left) and what appears to be evidence
of ritual animal sacrifice (right). Photos by author.
81
grief over its condition, Shlomo Rechnitz, a local businessman and philanthropist, donated
$250,000 under the condition that the restoration efforts begin immediately. Rechnitz stated: "In
Jewish law, honoring the dead precedes other commandments. It is the most important
commandment. The thought of having to wait here just doesn't work."
199
Following this
donation, the Jewish Federation and the Friends of Mount Zion Cemetery began work securing
the perimeter of the cemetery, increasing the height of the fence, adding barbed wire, and
repairing holes, at a cost of approximately $50,000. Before the work began, Greenwald estimated
that the restoration of the cemetery would involve five different phases and require
approximately $675,000. He also stated that yearly maintenance would likely cost approximately
$30,000 to $40,000 per year, an increase from the Jewish Federation’s current $25,000.
200
As work progressed, the five-phase plan became a three-phase plan. The first phase
involved addressing vandalism, removing invasive tree roots, restoring the most heavily
damaged graves, and repairing the fence. The second phase involved repairing graves most
vulnerable to future earthquake damage. The third phase involved setting up an endowment fund
for the cemetery that would start at approximately $1.6 million.
201
Work continued into the next
year. The Jewish Federation hired an engineering firm to create a schematic of the grounds and
map out which individual graves required the most work [Figure 4.25]. By April of 2014, crews
had reset four hundred headstones with the addition of rebar and a seismic-resistant sealant, with
the goal of resetting approximately two hundred more. They also had redone many concrete
ledgers with new concrete [Figure 4.26].
202
At that time, Jay Sanderson of the Jewish Federation
stated, “There’s still much more work to be done, and we need our community to step up in
providing the additional funds required to continue the pace of the significant progress we have
made to date.”
203
199
Ibid.
200
Jared Sichel, “Philanthropist Donates $250,000 to Mount Zion Cemetery Repair,” Jewish Journal, May 31, 2013,
Accessed January 13, 2018, http://jewishjournal.com/news/los_angeles/117262/; Ivan Wolkind (Chief Operating
and Financial Officer of the Jewish Federation) in discussion with the author, May 2017.
201
Funeral Practices Committee Minutes,” Meeting Minutes, The Board of Rabbis of Southern California,
October 15, 2013, from the personal collection of Jill Glasband.
202
Ivan Wolkind (Chief Operating and Financial Officer of the Jewish Federation) in discussion with the author,
May 2017; Alana Weiner, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles Takes Leading Role in Repairing 600
Gravesites, Press Release, April 10, 2014, Accessed January 13, 2018, https://www.jewishla.org/press-releases/the-
jewish-federation-of-greater-los-angeles-takes-leading-role-in/.
203
Weiner, Jewish Federation.
82
The restoration successfully completed phases one and two, but it never accomplished
phase three—the creation of a cemetery endowment. After the depletion of the initial $300,000
fund, the Friends of Mount Zion and the Jewish Federation were unable to gather the sustained
interest and flow of donations necessary to even consider collecting towards an endowment. In
April 2013, while local media attention and community concern was at its height, Jan Perry and
Bernard C. Parks, Los Angeles City Council members for the eighth and ninth districts,
respectively, drafted a resolution that recognized the historic significance of Mount Zion
Cemetery and encouraged that it be designated a historic landmark by Los Angeles County, the
governing authority in unincorporated East Los Angeles. By adopting the resolution, the City of
Figure 4.26: Mount Zion restoration in 2014. Courtesy of Paul Pitkoff and the Mount Zion Cemetery East Los
Angeles Facebook Group.
Figure 4.25: 2013 site plan. The legend on the site plan states the following: dark grey indicates an
extremely damaged burial plot, light grey indicates an empty burial plot, white indicates an occupied burial
plot, a tombstone-shaped symbol indicates a plot containing a toppled headstone with obscured information,
and a dot indicates the location of a tree. Courtesy of Paul Pitkoff and the Mount Zion Cemetery East Los
Angeles Facebook Group.
83
Los Angeles would include in the 2013-2014 State Legislative Program its support for the Los
Angeles County Board of Supervisors to designate the cemetery a historic resource. In June
2013, City Council approved the resolution and forwarded it to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for
concurrence, who returned it without signature. Although the Mayor agreed with the resolution,
he did not approve it because technically the only one who has authority to make
recommendations to other governments is the Mayor himself, which meant that City Council
could not move forward to make this recommendation.
204
With this decision, the issue came to a
standstill. At the time, Los Angeles County did not have its own Historic Preservation Program
to designate historic landmarks. In 2015, however, the County established its own Historic
Preservation Program within the Department of Regional Planning and adopted a Historic
Preservation Ordinance. Since the adoption of this program, it does not appear that anyone has
applied for historic designation of Mount Zion Cemetery. Interestingly, one of the six chairmen
on the Los Angeles County Historical Landmarks and Records Commission, which makes
recommendations concerning designations to the Board of Supervisors, is an established Jewish
historian who has advocated for the protection of Jewish heritage in the Los Angeles area.
205
It is
clear, though, that after 2013, community concern and advocacy for Mount Zion dwindled
significantly.
Today the gate to Mount Zion Cemetery remains locked (visitors must request that
someone from Home of Peace unlocks it if they wish to go inside) [Figure 4.27], and although it
is in better condition than before, the passage of time will return Mount Zion back to its previous
condition. According to the Jewish Federation, this series of events echoed many previous
restoration attempts, where community interest would fizzle as quickly as it emerged.
206
According to Ivan Wolkind, Chief Operating and Financial Officer of the Jewish Federation,
“There was an absolute consensus in the community that this [was] a really, really important
thing for which someone else should be paying.”
207
204
Council File: 13-0002-S57, Historic Cultural Designation / Mount Zion Jewish Cemetery, Resolution and
Memoranda, Los Angeles City Council, (2013).
205
“Historic Preservation Ordinance,” Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning, Accessed April 11,
2018, http://planning.lacounty.gov/preservation/ordinance; “Message from the Chair,” Historical Landmarks &
Records Commission, Accessed April 11, 2018, http://hlrc.lacounty.gov/About-Us.
206
Sichel, “Philanthropist.”
207
Ivan Wolkind (Chief Operating and Financial Officer of the Jewish Federation) in discussion with the author,
May 2017.
84
Agudath Achim—The Later Years
The Agudath Achim Congregation did not add much to the cemetery in the years
following its establishment. According to a 1928 Sanborn Map, a small chapel existed in the
southwest corner of the cemetery for a time, though it was since demolished [Figure 4.28]. The
only visible addition to the cemetery is a genizah towards the back of the parcel [Figure 4.29,
Figure 4.30]. This is a storage area that is meant to temporarily hold religious writings prior to
being given a proper burial in the cemetery, since it is forbidden to throw away writings that
contain references to G-d.
208
208
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Volume 34, Sheet 3458, 1928; Shmuel Gonzales in discussion with the author,
November 2017.
Figure 4.28: Chapel in Agudath Achim Cemetery from 1950 Sanborn Map. Original map cropped by author to
show detail. Use of Sanborn Map – Los Angeles 1928 & 1950: Volume 34, Sheet 3458 used with permission
from The Sanborn Library, LLC.
Figure 4.27: Mount Zion gates. Photo by author.
Figure 4.29: Agudath Achim Cemetery from 2018 Google Satellite Map showing roadway and genizah.
Map courtesy of Google Maps; notations by author.
85
While the cemetery stayed the same, the congregation itself went through many changes
throughout the years. In 1936, the congregation moved from its location in the Central Avenue
district to a new temple on West View Street in the neighborhood of West Adams.
209
The
congregation then eventually moved to another temple nearby on West Adams Boulevard, before
merging with another Orthodox congregation, Rodef Sholom-Etz Chaim, in 1957. The new
congregation, with four hundred and thirty-five congregants, was temporarily named Agudath
Achim-Rodef-Sholom-Etz Chayim Congregation. According to a B’nai B’rith Messenger article
at the time, “One of the major reasons for the merger was the decrease of the Jewish population
in the territory served by Agudath Achim, and while the membership of Agudath Achim will
now use the Fairfax Ave. buildings, facilities will be maintained in the West Adams section to
keep serving the remaining Jewish residents.”
210
A year later, the congregation simplified its
name and changed it to Judea Congregation.
211
By 1968, eleven years after the merger, the Agudath Achim Cemetery was showing signs
of blight. The Judea Congregation formed an association to attempt to restore the cemetery,
which had been used as a refuse dump and “been the victim of various acts of vandalism, the
shooting out of pictures, the toppling of headstones, not to mention children of the neighborhood
209
Gonzales, “Downey Road.”
210
“Rodef Sholom & Agudath Achim Congs. Merged,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, May 17, 1957, B’nai B’rith
Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of
Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 9.
211
“Cong. Agudath Achim Now to Be Known as Judea Congregation,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, June 13, 1958,
B’nai B’rith Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National
Library of Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 18.
Figure 4.30: Genizah in Agudath Achim. Photo by author.
86
skating and jumping from grave to grave.”
212
The association raised funds to build a new fence
around the cemetery to secure it, and “pledged to keep a high standard of maintenance,”
imploring for those who had loved ones buried at the cemetery to assist them with donations.
213
Unfortunately, the group’s location in Sherman Oaks meant that their supervision and care of the
cemetery was headquartered up to an hour’s commute across the city and, nine years later, the
cemetery found itself in a similar position.
In 1976, the Judea Congregation merged with yet another congregation, B’nai David
Congregation, creating the Modern Orthodox congregation, B’nai David-Judea, which still exists
today in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood.
214
Whether prompted by of a lack of action from the
newly merged congregation or due to increased interest from the more traditional Orthodox and
Hassidic communities, rabbis from two other congregations established the Agudath Ner Chaim
organization in 1977. Their goal was to “preserve the cemetery in the spirit of its founders, as a
truly traditional Orthodox cemetery preserving the sacred tradition and ground which contains
the earthly remains of Los Angeles’ earliest Orthodox and its first Hassidic rabbis.”
215
Agudath
Achim retained the Orthodox style with upright headstones and concrete ledgers. This traditional
style, combined with Agudath Ner Chaim’s claim that it was the only local cemetery chosen by
early Hassidic rabbis and their families, imbued the cemetery with great significance for the
contemporary Orthodox community.
216
Although various associations attempted to manage the cemetery with donations from the
community, ultimately the Chevra Kadisha Mortuary took ownership of Agudath Achim
Cemetery, likely in the late 1970s or early 1980s at approximately the same time that Chevra
Kadisha purchased Beth Israel, and potentially also Mount Carmel Cemetery. Agudath Achim,
which now contains approximately 2,500 burials, began serving the same community as Beth
Israel—attracting the Russian community and later those of strict Orthodox faith. Like Beth
212
“Seek to Sanctify Cemetery, Victim of Time and Vandals,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, June 14, 1968, B’nai B’rith
Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of
Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 11.
213
Ibid.
214
Ibid.; “David-Judea to Celebrate ‘Double Chai,’” B’nai B’rith Messenger, June 1, 1984, Box 63, Folder 4,
Western States Jewish History Archive 1800-2004, Library Special Collections - Charles E. Young Research
Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 21.
215
“Agudath Achim, Pioneer Cemetery, To Be Renovated,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, July 15, 1977, B’nai B’rith
Messenger 1898-1977, New York Public Library Collections, Historical Jewish Press of the National Library of
Israel and Tel-Aviv University, 26.
216
“Agudath Achim, Pioneer Cemetery.”
87
Israel, Agudath Achim is now almost full.
217
However, unlike Beth Israel, which is usually still
open to visit during the day, Agudath Achim’s gates remain perpetually locked, opened only by
calling Chevra Kadisha Mortuary and requesting the padlock code [Figure 4.31].
217
Gonzales, “Downey Road;” Yossi Manela (Operator of Chevra Kadisha Mortuary) in discussion with the author,
November 2017.
Figure 4.31: Agudath Achim Cemetery gates. Photo by author.
88
CHAPTER FIVE: Issues of Cemetery Neglect and Suggestions for Programming Initiatives
An Uncertain Future
Cemeteries are filled with history and memory, yet they are incredibly difficult to restore
since the main beneficiaries of any restoration work are deceased. Financial investments into an
abandoned cemetery will very rarely provide economic return, and the financial investments
needed are often substantial. If a cemetery does not have a well-developed and well-invested
endowment fund to take care of its maintenance costs after all the burial plots have been sold and
there is no more money to be made, then it is not a question of if, but when, the cemetery will
become derelict. Even then, there is a question of how long these endowment funds will actually
last, since a cemetery will, theoretically, be in existence forever. The cemetery industry once
referred to endowment funds as “perpetual care” funds, but this practice largely ceased when the
industry began to acknowledge that there is no way to guarantee care in perpetuity.
218
As John F.
Llewellyn, CEO of Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries states, “A cemetery is the only
business that sells something once and takes care of it forever.”
219
Home of Peace Memorial
Park, with its regular maintenance, secured grounds, and healthy endowment, is not currently a
cause for concern, but the other three cemeteries discussed in this thesis—Beth Israel, Mount
Zion, and Agudath Achim—face an uncertain future.
Mount Zion Cemetery, five years out from a flurry of media attention and a substantial
restoration effort, still receives insufficient maintenance funds from its owner, the Jewish
Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, and still has no endowment fund to care for it in the
future. If the history of Mount Zion from the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that the
cemetery is destined to eventually return to dilapidation if its care remains the same.
Beth Israel and Agudath Achim are still technically active cemeteries with an involved
owner—Chevra Kadisha Mortuary. Both cemeteries have cracks in the concrete, vandalized
ceramic portraits, and occasional litter along the fence, but they still receive regular maintenance,
and seem to be in fair condition now [Figure 5.1]. A conversation with Chevra Kadisha
Mortuary, though, revealed that the mortuary has no discernible plan for the future of these
cemeteries. According to Yossi Manela, the mortuary manager, the mortuary plans to continue
218
Llewellyn, A Cemetery Should Be Forever, 35.
219
Ibid., 61.
89
ownership of the cemeteries once they are completely full, and take care of them for as long as it
can. Manela stated that the mortuary is a religious organization, and as such they have an
obligation to care for these cemeteries. He also added his opinion that these cemeteries are more
manageable than other cemeteries because they lack grass, which keeps their water bills low.
When asked if the mortuary had insurance, Manela answered that it did, but he was unsure if the
insurance would cover earthquakes or vandalism.
220
Chevra Kadisha Mortuary’s sense of responsibility for these cemeteries is admirable, but
without a plan or established funds for the future, the mortuary will not be able to follow through
with whatever good intentions it has. Judaism considers care of the dead to be an extremely
important act of kindness. The early congregations of Los Angeles believed this when
establishing their own cemeteries, but one by one, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Beth Israel, and
B’nai David-Judea discontinued their relationships with their cemeteries, likely due to primarily
financial considerations. Ultimately, these congregations concluded that their relationships to the
deceased were too thin and the financial burden too great to hold onto the responsibility.
220
Yossi Manela (Operator of Chevra Kadisha Mortuary) in discussion with the author, November 2017.
Figure 5.1: Cracked Concrete in Agudath Achim. Photo by author.
90
Neglected Jewish Cemeteries: An International and Domestic Problem
Cemeteries are extremely delicate and vulnerable historic resources because although
there are countless reasons why care might cease at a cemetery, there are not many incentives for
people to take over that care. All cemeteries are susceptible to neglect and damage—not just
Jewish cemeteries—and one can see this in the high number of abandoned cemeteries throughout
the country. However, Jewish cemeteries can be more vulnerable to neglect and eventual
abandonment because many of them were previously owned and supported by congregations that
dissolved over the years due to lack of attendance, involvement, and funding. In addition, over
the years, as many Jews further assimilated in Anglo-American culture, they began to transition
away from traditional volunteer burial societies in favor of for-profit mortuaries, and as a result
burial societies increasingly dissolved as well, leaving little funding or advocacy for their burial
grounds.
221
The traditional Jewish methods of forming a cemetery in the past have unfortunately
not translated well for the future, and this is true both in America and worldwide. In Europe, of
course, there is the additional insurmountable damage resulting from the Holocaust.
The Holocaust devastated the European Jewish population, completely erasing
communities and relocating much of what little population survived. In 2000, Samuel Gruber,
the director of the Jewish Heritage Research Center at the time, stated that there were between
5,000 and 10,000 identified Jewish cemeteries and mass burial sites in Europe, not counting the
many more that had likely been destroyed due to anti-Semitic acts, during war, or due to
development over what were, at the time, unidentified burial sites.
222
Several European and
American groups, like the Warsaw, Poland-based Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish
Heritage in Poland, which hosts an Adopt-a-Cemetery program, and the Brooklyn, New York-
based Heritage Foundation for Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries, have organized over the years
to identify and restore cemeteries in Eastern Europe.
223
The problem of neglected Jewish cemeteries has also become an American issue,
especially within the past fifty years, since congregations and burial societies have dissolved,
many Jewish communities have relocated to neighborhoods and cities far away from their
221
Vivian Wang, “Struggling to Survive, Congregations Look to Sell Houses of Worship,” New York Times, August
6, 2017, Accessed April 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/nyregion/congregations-look-to-sell-
houses-of-worship.html.
222
Henry, “All of Europe: A Graveyard.”
223
“About Us,” Heritage Foundation for Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries, Accessed April 10, 2018,
http://hfpjc.com/about-us/; “Projects: Adopt a Jewish Cemetery in Poland,” Foundation for the Preservation of
Jewish Heritage in Poland, Accessed April 10, 2018, http://fodz.pl/?d=5&id=101&l=en.
91
cemeteries, and Jews have begun to increasingly opt for cremation, a practice long-forbidden in
Judaism. All too often, the younger generations are disinclined to pay for care of their ancestors’
graves because they lack any sense of connection to the generations preceding their
grandparents.
224
Meanwhile, businesses and politicians are reluctant to donate money or
advocate for these cemeteries because as a woman associated with the Baron Hirsch cemetery in
Staten Island stated, “Dead people don’t vote.”
225
This lack of knowledge, connection, and respect also contributes to the Jewish
community’s ability to neglect these cemeteries for years. Anti-Semitic vandalism has, itself,
caused substantial damage in American Jewish cemeteries over the years, but there is a striking
difference between how the Jewish community reacts when faced with cemetery damage caused
by anti-Semitic vandalism versus damage caused by years of neglect. In early 2017, reports
emerged that headstones were knocked over in an anti-Semitic attack at Washington Cemetery in
Brooklyn. The damage made the news as it occurred soon after a well-publicized incident of
vandalism at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, which spurred conversations about hate crimes
in the wake of the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. In the case of Washington
Cemetery, it eventually turned out that it was neglect, not vandalism, which caused the
damage.
226
In an opinion piece on the subject, Bethany Mandel, an author and commentator
stated, “A funny thing happened when news broke that the damage in Washington Cemetery
wasn’t caused by vandalism: there was a collective sigh of relief, a shrug and the news cycle
moved on.”
227
The public often washes its hands of the problem of cemetery damage once
vandalism is ruled out, despite both vandalism and neglect indicating a lack of respect for the
deceased.
224
Wang, “Struggling to Survive;” Maura Grunlund, “Apathy, Neglect, and Vines Overtake Staten Island
Cemetery,” Staten Island Advance, Last Updated August 18, 2012, Accessed April 10, 2018,
http://www.silive.com/news/2012/08/apathy_neglect_and_vines_overt.html.
225
Grunlund, “Apathy, Neglect.”
226
Bethany Mandel, “The Jewish Community Must Tend to Its Neglected Graves –and Anti-Semitic Attacks Prove
It,” Forward, March 14, 2017, Accessed April 9, 2018, https://forward.com/opinion/365921/the-jewish-community-
must-tend-its-neglected-graves-and-anti-semitic-attack/; Ralph Ellis, and Eric Levenson, “Jewish Cemetery in
Philadelphia Vandalized; 2
nd
Incident in a Week,” CNN, Last Updated February 27, 2017, Accessed April 12, 2018,
https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/26/us/jewish-cemetery-vandalism-philadelphia/index.html.
227
Mandel, “Neglected Graves.”
92
“The Area is Unfortunate”
One of the reasons that the Los Angeles Jewish community has found it easier to forget
these cemeteries is their location in what was for a long time deemed a “bad area.” In a case that
is very similar to the Los Angeles cemeteries discussed in this thesis, the Detroit congregation
Beth David (later, B’nai David) established its local cemetery in the late nineteenth century. By
the mid-twentieth century, the synagogue had relocated to another county and Detroit Jews were
moving to the suburbs. By the later twentieth century, burials were ceasing and the congregation
had dissolved completely. One man stated that one of the reasons why the cemetery eventually
became neglected was that it was located in what eventually became known as a “dangerous”
area, which caused descendants of those buried in the cemetery to avoid visiting it.
228
Concerns about the safety of the surrounding area are certainly a factor in the neglect of
Los Angeles’ Orthodox cemeteries as well. In the 1980s and 1990s, Boyle Heights and East Los
Angeles became famous on the nightly news for being a center of Latino gang culture and having
extremely high rates of homicide due to gang activity [Figure 5.2]. These and other adjacent
neighborhoods became synonymous with violence, the drug trade, and drive-by shootings, and
nonstop media coverage deepened Angelenos’ fear of these areas.
229
Consequently, the
cemeteries here would have received fewer and fewer visitors at this time, as Westside Jews
stayed away from East Los Angeles. In the late 1980s, when Mount Zion received attention for
being neglected after the Whittier-Narrows earthquake, Eileen Silverstrom, the Jewish
Federation administrator for the cemetery, partially blamed its conditions on East Los Angeles,
stating, “The area is unfortunate and there’s nothing you can do about that.”
230
228
Sarah Hulett, “New Life for Neglected Jewish Cemetery in Detroit,” Michigan Radio, September 30, 2016,
Accessed April 8, 2018, http://michiganradio.org/post/new-life-neglected-jewish-cemetery-detroit.
229
Hector Becerra, “When Childhood Innocence and Gang Violence Lived Side by Side in Boyle Heights,” Los
Angeles Times, May 12, 2016, Accessed April 9, 2018, http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-gang-history-
20160512-story.html.
230
Kruger, “Grave Situation in L.A.”
93
Since the late 1990s, gang violence in Los Angeles steadily decreased due to factors
including different policing strategies, a gang injunction making it a misdemeanor for gang
members to congregate in public, and intervention programs.
231
Boyle Heights and East Los
Angeles are much safer places now, but some people still associate the neighborhoods with gang
culture, due to stereotypical depictions in film and television and latent racism against the Latino
residents of these neighborhoods.
Other Potential Reasons for Decreased Visitation
Other factors have contributed to a lack of visitation and attention at the East Los
Angeles cemeteries. The Jewish community, now primarily centered in the Westside and the San
Fernando Valley, has physically distanced itself from these cemeteries, but it has also mentally
and emotionally disengaged from them. As years go by, there are fewer and fewer Jews who
have memories of Boyle Heights as a Jewish neighborhood, and many are unaware that Jewish
cemeteries even exist on the Eastside. If they have family buried in the smaller Orthodox
231
Ann Brenoff, “Behind LA’s Dramatic Decline in Gang Violence,” Huffington Post, February 24, 2015, Accessed
April 9, 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/24/gang-violence-decline_n_6656840.html.
Figure 5.2: Man Flashing Gang Sign in front of Breed Street Shul. Photographed by Gary Leonard.
Courtesy of Gary Leonard Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; image 00029746.
94
cemeteries, many Jews are not old enough to have ever known these family members. They
might not know they are buried there, or might feel little obligation to visit the grave of a family
member who died before they were born. There are certainly Jews who do know that they have
family members buried here and would wish to visit them, but concern about the safety of the
neighborhood might stop them from driving to East Los Angeles.
These cemeteries may also experience much lower rates of visitation because many of
those buried in them were Orthodox Jews, meaning that many of their descendants are Orthodox
Jews who follow the prescribed mourning rituals discussed in Chapter Two. Descendants might
feel that they should restrict their visits to only certain holidays, and should limit their time spent
in the cemetery. Descendants of the priestly Cohanim line may still adhere to restrictions
forbidding them to enter cemeteries. Some Jewish cemeteries will bury Cohanim as close as
possible to the edge of the cemetery, so that their descendants are able to see and visit the graves
without stepping inside.
232
Yet at Beth Israel, Mount Zion, and Agudath Achim, the high fences
covered with bougainvillea and the often-locked iron gates greatly limit the visibility into these
cemeteries. Visitors are few and far between, though pebbles laid on some of the graves provide
physical evidence that family members and friends do make the trip to these cemeteries at times.
Although there are specific factors that might affect the rate of visitation in these
cemeteries, there are statistics that indicate that worldwide visitation of family graves tends to
reduce after a certain number of years or generations, regardless of circumstances. In a study of
cemetery visitation in London, the researchers found that visitation tended to continue for a span
of four generations.
233
However, this statistic is certainly cut down when communities and
individuals move away from their families and family burial sites. Living in Los Angeles, I
almost never have the opportunity to visit my grandparents’ graves on the East Coast, and I do
not even know where most of the older generations are buried in the United States and in Europe.
The itinerant nature of the most recent generations drastically reduces the rate of visitation to the
graves of grandparents, great-grandparents, and earlier ancestors.
232
“Mourners – Cohanim,” Jewish Funeral Guide, Accessed April 15, 2018, http://www.jewish-funeral-
guide.com/tradition/mourners-cohanim.htm.
233
Doris Francis, Leonie Kellaher, and Georgina Neophytou, “Sustaining Cemeteries: The User Perspective,”
Mortality, Vol. 5, No. 1, (March 2000), 37-38, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-
com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/208753111?accountid=14749.
95
Technical Publications for Cemetery Conservation
These cemeteries are already showing the effect of years of diminishing attention from
Los Angeles’ Jewish community. They are currently in fair condition, but as discussed, all three
cemeteries will certainly hit a crisis point in the not-too-distant future. There is a wealth of
information available from trusted sources regarding the preservation and restoration (alternately
termed, conservation) of cemeteries in need. Preservation Brief 48: Preserving Grave Markers
in Historic Cemeteries, issued by the National Park Service, is dedicated to conservation
treatments available for grave markers. The brief provides recommendations for condition
assessments, maintenance, and repair that are acceptable within the guidelines of the Secretary of
the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. It would be a valuable resource
for the Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles, providing best practices for cleaning markers,
repairing hairline cracks in stone and concrete, resetting fallen headstones, and dealing with the
effects of air pollution and acid rain.
234
The Natchitoches, Louisiana-based National Center for
Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT) provides numerous articles and research about
cemetery conservation, and also provides webinars and hands-on training sessions to assist
cemetery workers and interested members of the public in caring for historic cemeteries.
235
The
Association for Gravestone Studies, based in Greenfield, Massachusetts and founded in 1977 to
further the study and preservation of gravestones, also publishes a quarterly bulletin containing
studies and articles on gravestone and cemetery research and conservation, as well as a yearly
conference to share research and participate in workshops.
236
Many State Historic Preservation Offices, non-profits, and planning commissions also
publish their own guidelines and recommendations for cemetery conservation, and there is a
wealth of information published online by specialist cemetery conservationists. The Jewish
cemeteries in East Los Angeles, due to their location and age, are more susceptible to certain
threats than others. Located in Southern California, there is no threat to the headstones and
concrete covers from the freeze/thaw cycle that often plagues stone structures in colder climates.
However, the primarily stone and concrete cemeteries are particularly vulnerable to damage from
234
Mary F. Striegel, Frances Gale, Jason Church, and Debbie Deitrich-Smith, Preservation Brief 48: Preserving
Grave Markers in Historic Cemeteries, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
Technical Preservation Services, 2016).
235
“Cemetery Conservation,” National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, Accessed April 12, 2018,
https://www.ncptt.nps.gov/articles/cemetery-conservation/.
236
“About AGS,” Association for Gravestone Studies, Accessed May 6, 2018,
https://www.gravestonestudies.org/welcome/about.
96
seismic disturbances, which are not a threat for many cemeteries in the United States—to the
extent that seismic activity is not even mentioned in the National Park Service preservation brief.
The headstones in these cemeteries, though cracked from vandalism, seismic activity, and
ground resettling, are not quite old enough to have substantial deterioration from weathering, and
the granite material of the headstones has resisted pollution from the several freeways nearby.
237
Currently, these cemeteries are in fair condition, and the technical conservation
documents and sources mentioned should be referenced for maintenance, and in the future, for
restoration. The prime concern now, though, should be preventing these cemeteries from getting
to the point of crisis, and building an interested and invested community that will step up when
the cemeteries are in need. At the time of writing this thesis, the support is not there, due to a
physical and emotional disconnect between Angelenos and these cemeteries.
Small Solutions
There are some basic solutions that should be considered to prevent vandalism. Those
consulted on this thesis agreed that they did not believe that most of the vandalism experienced
by these cemeteries is explicitly anti-Semitic in nature. Rather, they believe that the high rate of
trespassing and vandalism is instead due to the dark and hidden natures of these cemeteries,
which are located on a side street off of Whittier Boulevard, just north of the 5 Freeway.
238
Increased lighting and security cameras would help to deter trespassing from vandals and
practitioners of Santería and Palo. In 2013, when the Los Angeles Times article emerged about
the poor conditions at Mount Zion Cemetery, Rabbi Moshe Greenwald stated that they were
looking into the use of security cameras and motion detectors, though it is unclear if they were
ever installed. He also mentioned that police on the ground and in helicopters were increasingly
patrolling the area at night.
239
Although this is a fine temporary solution, it is best to not rely on
police presence to watch the cemeteries, since it is unclear how long they would continue these
patrols or when it would ultimately become necessary to divert their presence elsewhere. Even
the sight of a security camera or a sign informing people that the cemeteries are monitored with
cameras could prevent potential trespassers from entering. These immediate solutions will still
not solve the neglect and damage that these cemeteries experience unless the community deals
237
David Charles Sloane Note to Author, May 6, 2018.
238
Ted Gostin (Specialist in Southern California Jewish Genealogy) in discussion with the author, November 2017.
239
Miller, “Saving the Face.”
97
with the real root of the problem, which is a lack of funding and a disconnect that exists between
the Jewish community, these cemeteries, and the Eastside community.
The Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles
Once Chevra Kadisha Mortuary runs out of funds and/or dissolves its company, Beth
Israel and Agudath Achim will be completely reliant on the community for funding,
maintenance, and repairs since they have no endowment funds. The future of Beth Israel and
Agudath Achim can be seen in action at Mount Zion, which has been largely reliant on the
community for its advocacy and for major restorations. However, this is not how it should be at
Mount Zion, because Mount Zion does indeed have an owner that could afford to establish an
endowment for the cemetery. The Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles has been
the successor in interest to the Masonic Cemetery Association, and de facto owner of the Mount
Zion Cemetery since the Masonic Cemetery Association dissolved in 1959.
As stated, neglected and abandoned Jewish cemeteries are a nationwide problem, but
throughout the United States, local Jewish Federations have gotten involved in trying to create
solutions and revitalize local neglected cemeteries. Some Federations created organizations to
help with restorations and some partially or completely took on the responsibility as caretakers of
their local Jewish cemeteries. The UJA-Federation of New York founded and provides many of
the funds for the Community Association for Jewish-Affiliated Cemeteries, and the Jewish
Federation in New Haven, Connecticut founded the Jewish Cemetery Association of Greater
New Haven in 2004, which now cares for almost forty local Jewish cemeteries. In 2004, the
Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati formed, pooling together the endowments of many
struggling cemeteries and raising $6 million to eventually take over most of the area’s Jewish
cemeteries.
240
The executive director of the organization, David Hoguet, stated at the time, “We
were very fortunate to have the Jewish foundation willing to put up a lot of money…If money
were available in other cities, you’d see more of this happening.”
241
Currently, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles spends approximately $25,000
240
“Jewish Cemetery Association,” Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, Accessed April 15, 2018,
https://jewishnewhaven.org/jewish-cemetery-association; Julie Wiener, “Lacking Long-term Plans, Many U.S.
Jewish Cemeteries in Neglect,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 19, 2013, Accessed April 15, 2018,
https://www.jta.org/2013/12/19/news-opinion/united-states/lacking-long-term-plans-many-u-s-jewish-cemeteries-in-
neglect.
241
Wiener, “Many U.S. Jewish Cemeteries in Neglect.”
98
per year on maintenance and repairs in Mount Zion Cemetery. In 2013, it was involved in the
$300,000 restoration, but did not contribute substantial funds. When speaking of the problems at
Mount Zion and the community’s lack of interest, the Jewish Federation expressed frustration at
the community’s unwillingness to donate, and when pressed on the subject of spending more
money on the cemetery, it responded that when forced to choose between spending money on the
living and spending money on the dead, they must choose to spend it on the current and future
generations.
242
But as David Zinner, executive director of the organization, Kavod v’Nichum,
which supports American Chevra Kadisha groups, states, “People say that's not where the Jewish
community should spend its money, we need to focus on young people. But focusing on young
people should include helping them take care of their parents and grandparents.”
243
A bigger issue here is that it is unclear why the Jewish Federation feels forced to choose
between the living and the dead, when in reality the Federation has enough funding to choose
both. According to public financial statements, in the year 2016, the Jewish Federation Council
of Greater Los Angeles had total assets of over $147 million, net assets of over $87 million, and
expensed over $50 million.
244
Considering that in 2013, the necessary funds for a proposed
Mount Zion endowment were estimated to be a very comparatively small $1.6 million, it is
unclear why the Jewish Federation Council was unwilling to donate anything to an endowment
fund, since the nonprofit’s mission is to: “Identify our community’s most pressing challenges
and greatest opportunities in order to help Jews in need and ensure the Jewish future.”
245
With the Jewish Federation, it is not a question of them having enough funding to take
care of these cemeteries, especially since Los Angeles has the second-largest Jewish population
in the United States and, therefore, a huge community to draw on for support and donations.
Rather, the issue is getting the Jewish Federation to choose Mount Zion Cemetery and Jewish
cemeteries in general as a worthy priority. It would be wonderful to see the Federation, in the
future, take a stronger hand in caring for and creating community support for its endangered
242
Ivan Wolkind (Chief Operating and Financial Officer of the Jewish Federation), in discussion with the author,
May 2017.
243
Sue Fishkoff, “Shouldering the Burden of Forgotten Cemeteries,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 20,
2010, Accessed April 15, 2018, https://www.jta.org/2010/09/20/life-religion/shouldering-the-burden-of-forgotten-
cemeteries.
244
“Financial Statements for the Year Ended December 31, 2016 with Summarized Financial Information for the
Year Ended December 31, 2015” Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, 2-4, Accessed April 15, 2018.
https://www.jewishla.org/who-we-are/annual-financial-reports/.
245
“Our Work,” The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Accessed April 15, 2018,
https://www.jewishla.org/what-we-do/.
99
cemeteries. The Federation could follow the lead of New Haven and Cincinnati and create a Los
Angeles Jewish Cemetery Association to provide care for not just Mount Zion, but for Beth
Israel and Agudath Achim as well. This association could help to raise funds for healthy
endowments for the cemeteries, and could help these cemeteries become a point of pride for the
Jewish community rather than a source of concern.
Historic Designation
For the Jewish Federation and the community at large to consider these cemeteries
worthy of their attention and affection—worthy of preservation, and if necessary, restoration—it
helps to find a way to recognize the important historic significance of these cemeteries and
connect people to that history. Historic designation is one way to create recognition for
endangered historic sites, though historic designation at the national level can be especially
difficult for cemeteries. Cemeteries are included in a list of property types that are not usually
considered eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places unless they meet
additional considerations. The National Park Service’s National Register Bulletin 41: Guidelines
for Evaluating and Registering Cemeteries and Burial Places details these additional
considerations. Since most people have family members buried in cemeteries around the United
States, the concern is that without additional requirements, a large number of cemeteries would
be nominated due to personal sentiment from descendants. Due to this stipulation, in order to be
considered eligible for designation, the cemetery must either: contain graves of a number of
exceptionally significant people; have a relative great age in its particular geographic context;
have exceptional achievement in planning, design, or engineering; be specifically associated with
important events; or have the potential to yield important information.
246
246
Elizabeth Walton Potter and Beth M. Boland, National Register Bulletin 41: Guidelines for Evaluating and
Registering Cemeteries and Burial Places, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park
Service, Cultural Resources, Interagency Resources Division, National Register of Historic Places, 1992), 9-18.
100
The California State Register of Historic Places and Los Angeles County’s Historic Landmark
listings do not subject cemeteries to additional requirements, so it is a simpler affair to designate
cemeteries at these levels.
247
These cemeteries are certainly eligible for designation at the local level, and likely at the
state level as well. Beth Israel, Mount Zion, Agudath Achim, and Home of Peace, as the oldest
extant Jewish cemeteries in Los Angeles, are all significant for their association with the early
history of the local Jewish community, and since the four cemeteries adjoin each other it would
be wise to nominate them as a historic cemetery district. One of the most unique and fascinating
aspects of all four of these cemeteries, especially Beth Israel, Mount Zion, and Agudath Achim,
is the distinct style of the Orthodox graves. These tight, orderly lines of concrete-covered graves
with upright headstones are not often seen throughout the United States.
Throughout my own research, I found very few online examples of American Jewish
cemeteries with concrete or stone ledgers. Examples are scattered throughout New York, New
Jersey, and Florida, though one example does exist of a Jewish cemetery with grave ledgers in
the Ashley Jewish Homesteaders Cemetery, active from 1913 to 1932 in rural North Dakota
[Figure 5.3].
248
Some Jewish cemeteries in Charleston and New Orleans also feature graves with
stone or concrete copings in addition to their upright headstones [Figure 5.4]. These are meant to
adhere to Jewish law, which states that Jews must be buried in the ground and cannot be buried
above ground in mausoleums, while also combating the high water table in these cities. In a
coping grave, the coffin is buried in the ground and surrounded by four walls, which rise above
the ground level. The area above the coffin within the four walls is filled with gravel or dirt, and
sometimes planted with grass.
249
Most examples of Jewish cemeteries with ledgers or copings
covering the graves were grassy and relatively spacious. Interestingly, the cemetery found to be
247
California Office of Historic Preservation Technical Assistance Series #7: How to Nominate a Resource to the
California Register of Historical Resources, (Sacramento, CA: Department of Parks and Recreation, Office of
Historic Preservation, 2001); County of Los Angeles, California, Code of Ordinances, “Historic Preservation
Ordinance: Criteria for Designation of Landmarks and Historic Districts,” Ord. 2015-0033 § 3, 2015,
https://library.municode.com/ca/los_angeles_county/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TIT22PLZO_DIV1PLZO_
CH22.52GERE_PT28HIPROR_22.52.3060CRDELAHIDI.
248
Rebecca Bender, “Ashley Jewish Homesteaders Cemetery: Ref No. 15000807” National Register of Historic
Places Registration Form, Prepared June 17, 2015, Accessed April 12, 2018, 13, 19,
https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/pdfs/15000807.pdf.
249
“Jewish Cemetery,” Jewish Funeral Guide, Accessed April 15, 2018, http://www.jewish-funeral-
guide.com/tradition/jewish-cemetery.htm; “New Orleans Cemeteries and Graves: Where the Past Sleeps (or
Doesn’t) in New Orleans,” Livery Tours, October 16, 2014, Accessed April 15, 2018,
http://liverytours.com/2014/10/new-orleans-cemeteries-and-graves/.
101
closest in style to the mostly concrete and dirt Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles is the
Home of Peace Cemetery, located in the California city of Lake Elsinore, less than one hundred
miles away from East Los Angeles. The Lake Elsinore Home of Peace Cemetery opened in
1954, and the Elsinore Valley Cemetery District absorbed it and made it a Jewish section of the
Elsinore Valley Cemetery in 1995.
250
It is very possible that the Jewish cemeteries in East Los
Angeles and other cemeteries further inland like Mount Carmel Cemetery influenced the design
of the Jewish cemetery in Lake Elsinore.
Based on their unique and traditional grave markers and their association with the early
Los Angeles Jewish community, the Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles are eligible for
250
Michael Williams, “Once-Busy Jewish Cemetery in Lake Elsinore Rarely Used,” Press-Enterprise, August 28,
2016, Accessed April 11, 2018, https://www.pe.com/2016/08/28/once-busy-jewish-cemetery-in-lake-elsinore-rarely-
used/; “History of Elsinore Valley Cemetery,” Elsinore Valley Cemetery District, Accessed April 12, 2018,
http://www.elsinorevalleycemetery.com/history.asp.
Figure 5.3: Ashley Jewish Homesteaders Cemetery, North Dakota, images cropped by author. Courtesy of
Bender, Rebecca, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Section 7, Page 13, 19, Reference
Number 15000807, National Register of Historic Places Program, National Park Service, Accessed April 30,
2018, https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/15000807.htm.
Figure 5.4: Coping Grave in New Orleans. Courtesy of Bonita L. Weddle.
102
historic designation at the local level, and likely at the state level as well. If designated, these
cemeteries could become eligible for helpful grants, and designation would enable cemeteries to
receive more recognition, support, and financial assistance from the local community and those
interested in Jewish history and cemetery preservation nationwide.
Special Events and Activities at the Cemetery
Beyond the option of historic designation, educational materials, historic tours of the
cemeteries, volunteer cleanup days, and special events are some of the other efforts that can
facilitate this connection.
251
Beth Israel, Mount Zion, and Agudath Achim are better suited for
some of these activities than others due to their layout and organization. Many cemeteries that
need help with funding consider using their cemeteries’ open space and park-like settings for
special events. Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles partners with the organization,
Cinespia, to present screenings of classic and popular films at the cemetery on summer nights.
The event is hugely popular, draws hundreds of attendees each night that picnic on the grass
before the film begins, and has helped to restore the cemetery after it fell into a neglectful
condition at the end of the twentieth century.
252
In 1997, the National Trust for Historic
Preservation placed the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. on their Most Endangered
Sites list. With dedicated volunteer work, private donations, grants, fundraisers, Congressional
appropriations, and special events, the cemetery was able to bounce back from disrepair. One of
the most successful programs at Congressional Cemetery is their K9 Corps, a dog-walking
program that allows members to walk their dogs off-leash on the cemetery grounds in exchange
for an annual membership fee [Figure 5.5]. The benefits of this program have been great:
donations from dog-walking members cover approximately 25% of the cemetery’s operating
income, equivalent to the cost of the grounds maintenance contracts; many of the program
members volunteer with activities like cleaning the grounds and archiving cemetery records; and
the many members and dogs walking the grounds serve as a presence to discourage vandalism.
253
251
Tammie Trippe-Dillon, Grave Concerns: A Preservation Manual for Historic Cemeteries in Arkansas, (Little
Rock, AR: Department of Arkansas Heritage, Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, 2000), 109-113.
252
“Cinespia at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery,” Cinespia, Accessed April 13, 2018, http://cinespia.org/how-
to/cemetery/.
253
“Brief History of Congressional Cemetery,” Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional
Cemetery, Accessed April 12, 2018, http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/history.asp; “Dogwalking,” Association
for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery, Accessed April 12, 2018,
http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/dogwalking.asp.
103
Some cemetery professionals are apprehensive about introducing special events and
activities into their cemeteries, since there is a concern about being disrespectful to the deceased
and to the sacred and solemn nature of the cemetery. This is a valid concern, and it is ultimately
up to each individual cemetery to determine if outside events can be orchestrated in a manner
that is respectful, appropriate, and in the spirit of the cemetery. When asked if Home of Peace
Memorial Park would ever consider opening up their grounds for events like movie screenings,
Richard George replied that he views these ventures as positive, but currently considers them to
be out of the cemetery’s expertise. At Beth Israel, Mount Zion, and Agudath Achim, it is
unfortunately impossible to even consider special events such as these, since these cemeteries do
not have the amenities of space and grass that attract people to other cemeteries. What these
cemeteries do have, however, is a physical record of Los Angeles’ early Jewish community,
which can be used to educate and connect with Jewish youth.
Programming Suggestions to Create Youth and Community Engagement
One way to create awareness and interest in these cemeteries within the Los Angeles
Jewish community would be to create a nonprofit organization on behalf of the cemeteries—
“Friends of East L.A.’s Jewish Cemeteries”— and have this organization partner with local
Jewish schools to create a curriculum that combines learning about the city’s early Jewish history
with visits to these cemeteries. This curriculum would focus on early Jewish pioneers and pre-
World War II Jewish life in multicultural Boyle Heights. Students would then take an all-day
field trip in the middle of the school term to Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles, where they
would meet with a member of the cemetery organization to take them on a tour of Beth Israel,
Mount Zion, and Agudath Achim. Students would see the graves of Rabbi Yitzchok Werne,
Chief Orthodox Rabbi of Los Angeles (buried in Beth Israel); Rabbi Moshe Berman, Rabbi of
Congregation Agudath Achim and Chief Justice of the Orthodox rabbinical court of Los Angeles
(buried in Agudath Achim); Lamed Shapiro, Yiddish-language writer; Morris Soriano, a
Figure 5.5: Cemetery Dogs Website Logo. Courtesy of Historic Congressional Cemetery.
104
founding member of the city’s Sephardic community, and Max Babin and Lena Hauph, owners
of the city’s first Kosher restaurant (all buried in Mount Zion).
254
Teachers could also assign
older students the name of a person buried in one of these cemeteries to research and then write a
short paper or presentation. This would be an excellent way to teach students both about those
buried in these cemeteries and how to do historical and genealogical primary research using
census documents and newspaper archives. The field trip could then include additional visits
with a member of the Boyle Heights Historical Society to nearby historic properties in Boyle
Heights like the Breed Street Shul or Sakura Gardens, a Japanese assisted-living facility that was
formerly the Keiro Retirement Home and the Jewish Home for the Aged, which shows the
neighborhood’s Jewish and Japanese roots. In order to have a fuller understanding of the history
of the Eastside, students could also visit Roosevelt High School, a location of the 1968 East L.A.
Chicano Student Walkouts, or the Ruben Salazar Park, which, located just a few blocks away
from the Jewish cemeteries, was the location of civil unrest between protestors and law
enforcement during the 1970 Chicano Moratorium March.
255
It is especially important now, at a
time when Boyle Heights is experiencing anger and fear in the face of gentrification, that the
curriculum, while focusing on Jewish history, includes a bigger picture of Boyle Heights’
history, recognizing the significance of the many different cultures that called Boyle Heights
home over the years.
Another potential partnership with Los Angeles’ Jewish schools would help students
learn about different Jewish burial traditions. In 2002, Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary in
Culver City partnered with the Santa Monica Synagogue to create a program introducing Jewish
fourth and fifth-graders to Jewish burial and mourning rituals, which involved having a full
mock funeral for the children’s television character, Barney the Dinosaur. The program saw
students witness the “death” of Barney, born Bernard Dinotzuris or Barney Dinosaurski
depending on the year, take him to the mortuary, and experience a full funeral service [Figure
5.6]. Children toured the casket selection room, carried the casket to the hearse, and flashed-
forward to the yarzeit, where they witnessed the unveiling of Barney’s grave marker. The
254
Gonzales, “Downey Road.”
255
“Keiro Retirement Home,” Los Angeles Conservancy, Accessed April 15, 2018,
https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/keiro-retirement-home; “Roosevelt High School,” Los Angeles
Conservancy, Accessed April 15, 2018, https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/roosevelt-high-school; “Ruben
Salazar Park, Los Angeles Conservancy, Accessed April 15, 2018, https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/ruben-
salazar-park.
105
program may sound strange, but it was a great success, helping students to understand the
different mourning periods and the reasoning behind certain traditions, and exposing the children
to the experience of death and a funeral. Parents who later had a family member or friend pass
away stated that their children, after attending the program at Hillside, found the experience to be
a bit more manageable and less frightening.
256
The Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles could host a similar educational experience,
but instead of hosting a mock funeral, would utilize a cemetery tour to teach students about
different Jewish burial traditions. Home of Peace Memorial Park would be an excellent choice
for this educational experience, as it is perhaps the only Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles that has
a wide array of traditional graves including upright headstones, mausoleums, cremation urns, flat
markers, and Orthodox graves with ledgers. Students would learn about the traditional reasons
behind the ledgers on Orthodox graves and upright headstones, current Jewish views on
cremation, and interpret the symbols on headstones. They would also learn about Jewish
mourning periods, including the traditional unveiling of the headstone one year after the burial.
This program would provide insight into how different cultures and time periods influenced
burial traditions, and it would also follow in the shoes of the no longer active Hillside/Santa
Monica Synagogue program, familiarizing young people with death and mourning, and making it
seem a little less foreign and unknown.
256
Naomi Glauberman, “Kids Learn Burial Rites from Barney,” Jewish Journal, May 5, 2006, 23, from the personal
collection of Jill Glasband.
Figure 5.6: Funeral Program for Barney Dinosaurski, Courtesy of personal collection of Jill Glasband.
106
The beautiful ceramic portraits that are especially prevalent in Beth Israel, Mount Zion,
and Agudath Achim provide an opportunity to engage youth interest in these cemeteries through
art [Figure 5.7]. These portraits, showing the faces of early Jewish Angelenos, make those buried
in these cemeteries seem more real—and make visitors feel more familiar with and endeared
towards the deceased. However, as discussed, these portraits are vulnerable to vandalism and
many have already been destroyed. An important volunteer project for Jewish youth and adults
would be to research those buried in the cemeteries who have ceramic portraits on their
headstones, attempt to track their living family members, and see if the families have originals or
copies of the photos used to create the ceramic portraits. These photos could be copied and
archived, and then be used to create new replacements for the broken portraits, or saved to create
replacements in case any of the intact portraits break in the future. Replacing broken and
vandalized portraits would help to bring these cemeteries back to what they once were, and help
to make them appear as respected and cared for as possible.
Another potential project would incorporate the talents of local artists to create works of
art based on these ceramic portraits. Self Help Graphics & Art is a nonprofit based in Boyle
Heights and East Los Angeles, which since 1970 has been dedicated to helping Chicano and
Latino artists produce and distribute prints and other artistic media. Self Help Graphics & Arts
hosts workshops, many of which are donation-based, and free youth and community outreach
programs to train local artists to learn the arts of printmaking and digital media.
257
Advocates for
the cemetery would coordinate with Self Help Graphics & Art to curate a collaborative project
257
“About Us,” Self Help Graphics & Art, Accessed April 15, 2018, https://www.selfhelpgraphics.com/about-us/.
Figure 5.7: Sign to Replace Broken Ceramic Pictures at Agudath Achim. Photo by author.
107
between the Jewish community and the local Latino community. During a special workshop or
session, artists would create prints and digital media artistically interpreting these cemeteries and
the faces seen in the ceramic portraits. The artists would learn new techniques and enhance their
portfolios, and the cemeteries would then use those images in informational material for the
cemeteries. This media would include interpretive signage in front of the cemeteries providing a
brief description of the cemeteries’ history surrounded by the art produced at Self Help Graphics
& Art. It would also include a website designed using the prints and digital media, which would
provide the history of the cemeteries, photos, and a burial registry.
All of these projects would bring community recognition to these cemeteries, helping to
preserve them by creating a sense of familiarity, interest, and respect within both the Jewish
community and the local Eastside community. It is incredibly important to consider all of the
potential ways to include local Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles residents in these
endeavors—including them in the narrative of the history of the area and giving them the
opportunity to be a part of the preservation of the Jewish history in their neighborhood.
108
CONCLUSION
Why should we save the Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles? For those who are
unfamiliar with their history and significance, this is a difficult question. In today’s urban
communities, real estate is a highly coveted commodity—and cemeteries cover many acres of
valuable real estate near downtown Los Angeles. Today, the cemetery industry is also in a state
of flux. As people increasingly choose cremation over burial (from less than 5% in 1960 to
approximately 48% in 2015) and debate the environmental impact of embalming, cremation, and
care of the cemetery itself, the death-care industry has found itself staring at its future with less
certainty. The American relationship with death and cemeteries is changing, but in truth, it has
always fluctuated. Americans have gone from having funeral viewings in their homes to
outsourcing burial preparations to mortuaries and funeral homes. Burial grounds have shifted
from disheveled churchyards to parks filled with rolling hills, and then to pristine spaces with flat
markers.
258
Now, green burials and aquamations are just some of the options being presented to
those interested in a more environmentally conscious solution, and people are actively seeking
alternatives to the common cemetery.
259
While we do not know that Americans will always look to the cemetery as the eternal
resting place for themselves and their loved ones, we know that already existing cemeteries offer
valuable physical evidence of the history of our ancestors and our communities. Walking through
the Jewish cemeteries in East Los Angeles, one sees traditional Jewish symbols etched on
tombstones, plaintive epitaphs grieving the unexpected loss of a child, grave markers indicating
religious and cultural beliefs and burial practices, a series of early death dates indicating a
devastating flu outbreak, and the faces of generations of Los Angeles Jews staring out from
ceramic memorial portraits. Today, these four cemeteries are arguably the most visible Jewish
resources in Los Angeles’ Eastside besides the Breed Street Shul. Surrounded by single-family
residences and their Latino neighbors, they provide essential reminders of some of the cultural
layers that helped to build the Eastside. If Angelenos allow these cemeteries to fall into neglect
258
Sloane, David Charles, Is the Cemetery Dead?, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), 19-27.
259
Green burial is an umbrella term for the movement to develop environmentally friendly burial grounds—leaving
little visible trace of human impact. Interestingly, traditional Orthodox Jewish burial is very similar to green burial.
Aquamation is a newer form of cremation that attempts to be more environmentally friendly. The process employs a
water-based chemical process inside of a hot and high-pressured system to reduce the body to ash and bone (Ibid.,
56, 77).
109
and abandonment, what does that say about how we value our history, value our ancestors, and
value the current residents of East Los Angeles?
In this thesis, I presented the history of the four oldest extant Jewish cemeteries in Los
Angeles, accompanied by explorations into Orthodox Jewish mourning and burial rituals and
brief histories of Jewish Los Angeles, the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, and early cemeteries
in Los Angeles to provide context. I then discussed the issues that threaten these cemeteries and
Jewish cemeteries in general, and offered best practices to mitigate the neglect and abandonment
that will be inevitable without further interest and funding. I believe that Beth Israel, Mount
Zion, and Agudath Achim could all benefit by increased support from the Jewish Federation of
Greater Los Angeles. I also believe that educational programming and coordination between
local organizations like Self Help Graphics & Art could garner increased interest from Jewish
youth and an increased sense of involvement with and consideration for the local Latino
populations in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. As development and change approach Boyle
Heights, it would be interesting to see if these cemeteries, and the other cemeteries in Boyle
Heights and East Los Angeles are affected by shifting and expanding populations and businesses.
Although these cemeteries will benefit from support from the Eastside community and
conservation community as well, I am specifically directing my recommendations at this city’s
Jewish community because they are the biggest stakeholders here. These cemeteries contain the
graves and memories of the Jewish community, but they are also in unstable conditions because
of lack of involvement from this community in recent years. I wish to make it clear, though, that
this is not an issue of blame. It is not one single person or community or organization’s fault that
these cemeteries are in a threatened condition. As stated earlier, cemeteries are especially
delicate and vulnerable resources that can be difficult to maintain and difficult to restore even
with an engaged community, since they also usually require substantial funding and expertise.
However, I do believe that with an interested and supportive community, care and funding will
follow. It is my hope that this thesis will not only provide valuable information to encourage
engagement with these cemeteries, but will itself be the first step in supporting their care.
110
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This master’s thesis explores the history and conservation issues of the four oldest extant Jewish cemeteries in the Los Angeles area: Home of Peace Memorial Park (1902), Beth Israel Cemetery (1907), Mount Zion Cemetery (1916), and Agudath Achim Cemetery (1919). These cemeteries neighbor one other in an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County called East Los Angeles, which borders the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Boyle Heights once was a multicultural neighborhood containing a substantial Jewish population, but in the latter half of the twentieth century, the Jewish population relocated to the Westside and San Fernando Valley, and Boyle Heights became almost entirely Latino. The cemeteries discussed in this thesis range in the level of care and attention they receive. Home of Peace, the oldest extant Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles, still actively serves the Jewish community, though its popularity diminished with the establishment of more modern Jewish cemeteries closer to postwar Jewish neighborhoods
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Trombetta, Rachel Elizabeth
(author)
Core Title
Beit Olam: A home everlasting -- the Jewish cemeteries of East Los Angeles
School
School of Architecture
Degree
Master of Heritage Conservation
Degree Program
Heritage Conservation
Publication Date
07/09/2018
Defense Date
07/09/2018
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
abandoned cemeteries,Boyle Heights,burial traditions,cemeteries,Cemetery,ceramic memorial portraits,Chicano,Chicanx,East Los Angeles,Heritage Conservation,Historic Preservation,Jewish,Latino,Latinx,Los Angeles,Los Angeles County,OAI-PMH Harvest,Orthodox Judaism
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Language
English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
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Advisor
Sandmeier, Trudi (
committee chair
), Luce, Caroline (
committee member
), Sloane, David Charles (
committee member
)
Creator Email
rachel.e.trombetta@gmail.com,trombett@usc.edu
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https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-15467
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UC11671498
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etd-TrombettaR-6383.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-15467 (legacy record id)
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15467
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Thesis
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Trombetta, Rachel Elizabeth
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The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
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Tags
abandoned cemeteries
burial traditions
ceramic memorial portraits
Chicano
Chicanx
Latino
Latinx
Orthodox Judaism