MID-WILSHIRE : Rabbi Joins Call for Interracial Dialogue

Los Angeles’ oldest synagogue, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, celebrated its 130th anniversary this month, but as Rabbi Harvey J. Fields looks ahead at the city’s problems he speaks with an urgency that echoes the ancient Jewish prophets.

“I’m fearful that the clock is ticking,” Fields said. “Within five years we’ve got to have something significant to show by way of improvement in our urban communities, particularly in Los Angeles. The situation is deteriorating too quickly and the walls between communities are going up too quickly.”

As chair of the Interfaith Coalition to Heal Los Angeles and president of the Interreligious Council of Southern California, Fields is helping organize a neighborhood dialogue to break down barriers between people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

He described the pilot program as a way to “reduce and eliminate the strangling stereotypes that people carry around about each other” by working on small neighborhood projects.

The temple’s 7,000 members, drawn from all over the Los Angeles area, recognize that worshiping in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood, with its many Latino and Korean-American residents, gives them a responsibility to “bellow very loudly about prejudice and stereotypes,” Fields said.

“Either we’re going to inhabit this space that is getting smaller every day in a caring way or we’re literally going to blow each other up.”

The temple, with its massive dome, rosette window and long hallways decorated with murals depicting 3,000 years of Jewish history, was built in 1929 and is a registered national historic landmark.

The congregation and its rabbis have a tradition of social activism. Through a food program organized by Hope-Net, a multidenominational coalition of Mid-Wilshire congregations, volunteers distribute bags of food to about 130 people each Sunday, said Glenn Wasserman, co-chair of the temple’s community service committee.

Temple members are also active in Hope-Net’s affordable-housing project and worked with the Second Baptist Church in South-Central to register more than 3,000 voters last year, Wasserman said.

The way to bind people of different backgrounds is to emphasize their common desire “to build a society that respects the sacred image of each human being,” Fields said.

Religious leaders can shape their congregations into the “critical mass of hope, shared values and cooperation” needed to shift the climate of opinion in the community at large, Fields said.

A March 25 conference of the city’s religious leaders sponsored by the Interfaith Coalition to Heal Los Angeles will be a step toward that goal, he said.

While the rebuilding effort requires creating “a community of decency,” it will not succeed without better schools, more jobs and affordable housing, said Fields, who is a member of the Rebuild L.A. board of directors.

Fields said he hopes that the city’s fortunes can rebound, but added: “Optimism without a heck of a lot of hard work isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

Information on the neighborhood dialogue program: (213) 388-2401.