A New Start for Historic Temple

In a development that reflects the ever-changing spiritual texture of Los Angeles, a historic but dying Hollywood synagogue that once counted among its members such luminaries as the Warner brothers, actor Edward G. Robinson and cosmetics king Max Factor is getting a new lease on life as the region’s first Iranian American Jewish center.

Earlier this year, Hollywood Temple Beth El’s congregation decided to sell the building, citing dwindling membership and financial troubles.

After months of speculation and considerable angst among longtime congregants over the fate of the venerable building, it was purchased in a $2.8-million transaction put together by Beverly Hills real estate entrepreneur Ezat Delijani, who is president of the Iranian-American Jewish Federation.

The Jewish presence in Iran goes back nearly 2,700 years, but the community has shrunk drastically since that country’s Islamic revolution. Los Angeles now has one of the world’s largest concentrations of Iranian Jews.

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The purchase reassured many members of the congregation who had feared the building would be torn down to make way for a parking lot or condominiums.

“It really rejuvenates and gives life to the temple again,” congregation President Sanford Gaum said. “In life there’s a beginning and an end. The heyday of Hollywood Temple Beth El’s 75 years [is over]. Hopefully, this is a new Temple Beth El.”

Last Sunday a thousand people, including Israel’s deputy prime minister, Moshe Katsav, turned out for a celebration of the new center. The fete was described as the biggest thing to happen at Temple Beth El in years.

While the essential religious rituals of Iranian Jews closely resemble those of the historic Conservative congregation, longtime members will notice some changes.

Services in the main 1,200-seat sanctuary will be in Farsi and Hebrew instead of English and Hebrew, according to Delijani and Daniel Wolfberg, a member of the temple’s executive committee.

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That is expected to change as new generations of Iranian Jews grow up and assume leadership roles. “Our younger generations . . . are already more comfortable with English than Farsi,” Delijani said. In the meantime, separate services will be held in English and Hebrew in smaller rooms within the temple.

Hollywood Temple Beth El will keep its old name. But it will also be known as the Iranian-American Jewish Center, Delijani said.

Historic plaques and existing seating arrangements will be preserved.

Mindful that the changes could elicit fears among some old-time congregants, including Holocaust survivors, that they may be forgotten or moved aside, Delijani stressed that they will always hold an honored place in the new culturally mixed community.

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“We came here to this city after the [Iranian] revolution after 2,700 years living in Iran. We moved to Los Angeles in a free country,” Delijani said. “We appreciate so much our American Jews. They help us so much. They open the door of their temples, their schools. They welcome us. . . . We are thinking we are all Jews. We love each other like sisters and brothers. It will be proved in the future that [we will welcome them] exactly as our sisters and brothers welcomed us.”

Attendance at services had been averaging 40 to 50 people a wee before the sale. Delijani said in an interview he expects the new center to immediately draw 600 to 700 congregants for weekly services, and 1,200 within a year.

In March, the congregation had reported 240 families on its rolls, but this week Wolfberg said a review of records indicated only 120 dues-paying families.

Only one of the 20 classrooms in the building had been in use, Delijani said, with 25 enrolled students. He wants to double the enrollment by the year’s end.

“We’ve had such a precipitous decline in membership since March. This [transaction] is going to save the place,” Wolfberg said. “Everyone involved hopes to create a center that will be a home and community center for the Jews of Los Angeles of all types.”

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Rabbis of other nearby temples said last March that changing demographics alone--the death of longtime members at Temple Beth El and the moving away of others--was not solely responsible for the temple’s decline.

“I’m not sure it had to be this catastrophic,” Rabbi David Lieber, president emeritus of the University of Judaism, told The Times last March. Lieber, who served the temple for more than 30 years during High Holy Days, noted that other synagogues nearby are thriving.

“They were not successful in attracting other young leadership,” Lieber said.

Temple Beth El has been a part of Hollywood history since the congregation formed in 1922. The present building, on Crescent Heights Boulevard near Sunset Boulevard, was erected in 1952 after a gala fund-raising campaign that included a dinner party at the downtown Biltmore Hotel. The master of ceremonies was Eddie Cantor.

The Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack L., contributed heavily to the building fund, Wolfberg said, and their father, Benjamin Warner, was an early member.

Others included producer Hal Wallis, Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle, director Mervyn LeRoy, producer Joe Pasternak and film stars Carmel Myers and Robinson.

Last March, the congregation’s executive committee--faced with dwindling membership and finances--recommended that the congregation sell all or part of the 44,000-square-foot campus. After a brief delay, the congregation approved.

“Basically the congregation wanted me to go and find someone who would keep it as a synagogue,” Gaum said this week. “I could have got more money from an investor to tear it down and make a parking lot, or build condos. But we wanted to keep it as an active synagogue.”

Wolfberg, an attorney, described the real estate transaction as one of the most complex he has seen. He said a new 15-member governing board will oversee operation of the new Iranian-American Jewish Center/Hollywood Temple Beth El. Five members of that board will be drawn from the old congregation, and 10 from the Iranian Jewish community.

A separate Hollywood Temple Beth El charitable trust foundation with its own governing board will be created. It will hold the first-trust deed, a 15-year mortgage, on the temple. The charitable trust will receive the $2.8 million over a period of time and use the proceeds to retire the mortgage and to support the Iranian-American Jewish Center and other Jewish charitable activities, Wolfberg said.