A Jolt for L.A.’s Oldest Synagogue : Earthquake Clouds Future of Building in Boyle Heights

An aftershock of the Oct. 1 earthquake caused serious damage to the oldest functioning synagogue in Los Angeles and has raised urgent questions about the fate of the imposing brick structure on Breed Street in Boyle Heights.

A center of religious life before World War II, when as many as 90,000 Jews lived on the Eastside, the congregation now has dwindled to a handful of members who cannot afford to repair about $150,000 in damage caused by the Oct. 4 temblor, its rabbis said.

But others in the Jewish community, including a former president of the congregation, said the Renaissance-style sanctuary can and should be saved because of its historic and architectural significance.

Full or partial funding for the repair work could be considered as early as Jan. 25 by the Jewish Community Foundation, according to Irving Allen, executive director. The foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Jewish Federation Council, an umbrella group for the community at large.

‘Amazing Building’

“I just think it’s an amazing building,” he said. “I would hope that we don’t lose it in this community. I think it’s a landmark. I would think the historical and cultural significance is very important.”

However, Mordechai Ganzweig, rabbi of the minuscule congregation, said repair work on the structure is not his top priority, and he does not intend to seek funds from the federation.

“In the long run, we just don’t see such a plan as feasible,” he said.

He opposes suggestions by officers of the Jewish Historical Society, another federation agency, to convert the synagogue into a museum or community service center.

“Our concern is for the sanctity of the synagogue, and that it exist for the purpose for which it was built, not so much to preserve the architecture of the building,” he said.

He also said it would cost “a tremendous amount of money to fix it, and I have to tell you it’s not just a question of whether the funds can be raised or not.”

“It’s really a question of is it justified to drain the community of those resources just for the purpose of preserving a building?” he said.

The 65-year-old synagogue, commonly known as the Breed Street shul (Yiddish for synagogue), is now unsafe, Los Angeles city inspectors said. Visitors are not allowed inside the building, whose chiseled nameplate bears the name Congregation Talmud Torah, (Hebrew for “the study of sacred lore).”

Threat of Collapse

Despite the damage and the threat of eventual collapse, the building cannot be torn down immediately because the Cultural Heritage Commission has recommended that the City Council name it a cultural-historic monument, said Jay Oren, architect for the Cultural Affairs Department.

The building was empty in the early hours of Oct. 4 when an aftershock of the major earthquake that caused serious damage in nearby Whittier three days earlier buckled the walls of unreinforced masonry, opened gaping cracks in the outside brickwork and shook piles of debris onto the rear aisle of the women’s balcony inside the building.

The temblor also brought down two heavy granite tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments from their niche high on the building’s facade, shattering the first five commandments on the sidewalk but leaving the rest intact.

“The tough ones are still in one piece,” joked Rabbi Yonah Ganzweig, Mordechai’s father.

The elder Ganzweig chants from the Torah, the five books of Moses, at the congregation’s morning services, which are held in a small, wooden building behind the main synagogue. After the service, the worshipers in the unheated structure often chat and take a shot of vodka or whiskey to warm the blood.

Sometimes the Torah-reading is canceled for lack of a minyan , the quorum of 10 men needed for formal prayer.

As the population of Boyle Heights and the surrounding neighborhoods has become predominantly Latino in the last several decades, the synagogue’s membership has shrunk to fewer than 20 families.

Elderly Men

Services have dwindled from every day to three times a week--Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Only a handful of elderly men pray at the synagogue where many prominent Los Angeles residents went as youngsters.

“This was considered one of the nicest shuls in the Los Angeles area. I used to have tours coming there, and a lot of people marveled at the sight of this shul, “ said Bill Meisels, 80, the former president, who drives to the synagogue from his Alhambra home to help make up a minyan three times a week.

Meisels, a retired clothing store manager, said only four of the regular worshipers live within walking distance any more. A few others drive to attend the services, disregarding the prohibition on using machinery on the Sabbath. Despite the damage, Meisels insisted that the building is intact.

“I was always under the impression it could be a museum,” he said.

But what with the shortage of Jews in the area and the threat of further damage, the Ganzweigs and Reva Zilberstein, widow of Osher Zilberstein, the congregation’s long-time spiritual leader, said they see no long-term need to cling to the present location.

“Did you know there were 27 shuls (in the area) once, and now there isn’t even a minyan?” Zilberstein said. “For whom will they make a museum? For whom will you fix the shul? There’s no Jewish people there any more.” Her husband led the congregation from 1937 until his death in 1973.

Mordechai Ganzweig said, “Our plan is that the shul should either be relocated someplace in town or preferably in Israel.” He said proceeds from an eventual sale of the property could be used to build a synagogue in a new Israeli settlement or neighborhood.

For the foreseeable future, however, services will continue in the small, wooden building at the present location as long as there is anybody interested in attending, the Ganzweigs and Zilberstein said.

“If the shul will cease to exist, it will happen by itself,” Mordechai Ganzweig said. “But we have no plans to close it.”

Inspired by the synagogues of big cities in Eastern Europe, the building was completed in 1923. It features a peaked roof, high-arching windows, stained glass, chandeliers, murals and rich woodwork. Movie historians believe that the synagogue scenes of the pioneer talkie “The Jazz Singer” were filmed there.

‘Unhappy Limbo’

Although the designation as a city landmark has yet to be endorsed by the City Council, the board’s action effectively put the building into a state of “unhappy limbo,” said Robin Cramer, chief deputy to City Councilman Richard Alatorre, whose district includes Boyle Heights.

Alatorre and City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky summoned a meeting earlier this year to try to work out a solution for the building, but the Ganzweigs and officers of the Jewish Historical Society are barely speaking to each other, and the meeting produced no results.

“I don’t want to wash dirty linen in the newspaper, but the Jewish Historical Society has put itself in an adversarial position, as though they want to preserve the building and we don’t, and that’s not the case,” Mordechai Ganzweig said.

“But management of the shul is looking at the long range,” he said. “What will be in 10 years? It is very important that the building be used only for the purpose it was constructed for. An Orthodox synagogue, period. And that excludes a lot of possibilities. There is no provision for the desanctifaction of a synagogue.”

Possible Uses

Steven J. Sass, vice president of the Jewish Historical Society, said there are several possible uses that do not conflict with maintaining the synagogue as an Orthodox congregation.

“First of all, it’s important that the building be preserved merely for architectural reasons,” he said. “It reflects a form of synagogue architecture, as well as religious architecture that you can’t find in Los Angeles any more. “

Beyond that, he said, the sanctuary could be retained as is, and the full basement converted to serve as a museum or community center that would serve as a bridge between the Jewish and Latino communities.

“We want to see it continue as the Breed Street Synagogue as long as it can,” Sass said. “Services should be conducted as they always have been. We’d hate to see the earthquake code used as an excuse to tear it down. That would be a real crime.”

Marcia Josephy, a lecturer on Jewish art and folklore, made a similar point, saying “You have a whole period of history that museums are recreating, and here you don’t have to recreate it.”

She was so inspired by a tour of the building, that she held her son’s bar mitzvah there five years ago, the first such ceremony held in the dying congregation in years.

“We hired a florist to decorate the place, but when he came in and looked around, he said the place was so beautiful and had such character that he really didn’t need to do anything,” she said.

Happy Results

The state of affairs at the Breed Street Synagogue stands in contrast to the happy results of a gala evening earlier this month that yielded more than $200,000 for another old synagogue that finds itself in similar, but different, circumstances.

The Pacific Jewish Center, a beachfront congregation in Venice that is also built of unreinforced brick and mortar, rocked and swayed during morning prayers on the day of the big earthquake Oct. 1, but it sustained no damage and also came through the aftershock unscathed.

Nevertheless, city officials have made it clear that the small building, erected in 1914 as a shoe store and bakery, will have to be brought up to earthquake standards or face condemnation.

But the gala event, where Pia Zadora sang for free and contributed the services of her own 34-piece orchestra, raised enough money to buy the building back from the Jewish National Fund and bring it up to code, according to Michael Medved, president of the congregation.

He said the building passed into the hands of the Jewish National Fund, which supports Jewish settlement in Israel, when the directors of the then-moribund synagogue were moved to contribute whatever they could raise to help Israel during the heady days after the 1967 Middle East war.

Dissident Group

Legal action by a dissident group of synagogue members blocked the actual sale of the property, however, Medved said.

The rejuvenation of the congregation in recent years led to lengthy negotiations that concluded in an agreement to pay the Jewish National Fund an undisclosed sum in order to regain the deed to the property, he said.

“The main difference between the Breed Street situation and our situation is that we have 200-plus people every Sabbath, and they’re young people,” Medved said. “For us the biggest problem in the last few years has been finding housing for young couples that want to move” within walking distance of the synagogue.

Ironically, when the shoe store and bakery became a synagogue in the mid-1940s, it was known originally as Congregation Talmud Torah, because it was intended to be a sister congregation of the original Breed Street Synagogue, Medved said.