Irving Jacobs; Cantor, Founder of Temple

Irving Jacobs, a founding member and volunteer cantor for the now-defunct Huntington Park Hebrew Congregation for more than 50 years, has died. He was 96.

Jacobs, who was born in Lodz, Poland, on Aug. 27, 1896, died Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure.

Jacobs emigrated to the United States in 1920 and operated various businesses in New York before moving to Huntington Park in 1933.

He helped to establish the temple during the Depression. A devoutly religious man, Jacobs became a part of the “Miracle on Florence Avenue,” which created and maintained the Huntington Park Hebrew Congregation despite an aging and declining Jewish population.

As Huntington Park became increasingly Latino, the struggling congregation frequently had problems attracting the required 10 members to conduct services. For many years, each Yom Kippur eve, the congregation would appeal for one more year of survival. The members attributed each year that it did survive to divine intervention.

But the synagogue at 2877 Florence Ave. closed its doors in September, 1986. Jacobs, who had served as the group’s president and cantor, told The Times that the congregation simply was not needed anymore.

“That’s why congregations are born and that’s why they die,” he said. “They’ve outlived their usefulness. There is no demand for it.”

Jacobs insisted that the closing of the synagogue had nothing to do with the area’s increasing Latino population.

“I enjoy my Latino neighbors,” he said. “There is no case to say we were forced out by reasons that we couldn’t get along.”

The congregation had honored his efforts many times, and had established an Irving Jacobs Scholarship Fund at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City.

After the Huntington Park temple closed, Jacobs became a volunteer cantor at Temple Ner Tamid in Downey.

Jacobs was an executive in the wholesale tobacco industry and was active in many of its trade organizations.

He is survived by his wife, Miriam; his daughter, Darlene Chernove, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.