Police Learn the Rules of Jewish Law

As the police officers ambled into their morning roll call, Larry Blumenstein amiably prepared to toss himself, for the eighth time this week, into the cultural divide between Orthodox Jews and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Suppose you want to issue a jaywalking ticket to a man who just dashed across eight lanes of traffic, Blumenstein told the officers. If it is the Sabbath or a Holy Day and he is an observant Jew, he will respectfully refuse to sign it.

If you ask to see some identification, he probably is not carrying any. And if you try to hand him the ticket, he will simply lay it on the ground.

“It’s problematic from a police perspective,” Blumenstein said. “If it happened on a weekday, it would be considered disrespectful.”

But for 25 hours every week, from sundown Friday to an hour after sundown Saturday, observant Jews honor God’s commandment to Moses on Mt. Sinai to keep the Sabbath holy. They abstain from any form of work, including many everyday tasks like writing, driving, using the telephone and carrying objects.

As chairman of the police education committee for the Jewish Federation, Blumenstein generally makes the rounds at the North Hollywood station twice a year, visiting multiple roll calls--”our semiannual indoctrination,” joked Sgt. Ray Davies as he introduced Blumenstein to a cluster of officers Thursday morning.

The briefings are timed to coincide with Jewish holidays, a time of high visibility for Jews.

Because they travel on foot to their synagogues, observant Jews might be seen as “walking targets” who are especially vulnerable to harassment or attack, Blumenstein said.

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As the Jewish community prepares for its High Holy Days, beginning on Sunday with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish Federation is conducting briefing sessions, which will eventually reach about 600 officers at six LAPD stations citywide.

The organization also briefs police officers in the spring, before Passover.

“The truth of the matter is that Jews from all segments are going to be walking to shul” or synagogue, said Annabelle Stevens, the federation’s director of public relations.

“They’re with their kids, with their families. It’s like a dead silence in this city on Yom Kippur,” a day of atonement that begins this year on the evening of Sept. 29.

Of the 247,668 Jewish households in the Los Angeles area, 10,324 are Orthodox, according to a survey released by the federation last July. The survey covered the area served by the federation, which is most of Los Angeles County and a portion of eastern Ventura County.

Some members of the Orthodox community dispute the federation’s numbers, saying they don’t square with a baby boom in Orthodox families and a surge in the numbers of Orthodox schools, synagogues and restaurants.

In North Hollywood, one of the oldest Jewish enclaves in the San Fernando Valley and home to about 18 synagogues, Blumenstein estimated there were 3,600 Orthodox households.

About two years ago, some Orthodox Jews were harassed en route to their North Hollywood synagogues, Blumenstein said.

They endured taunts and objects hurled at them from car windows, he said, noting that the Police Department’s aggressive response put an end to the incidents.

“We just don’t have a major problem anymore,” said Davies. Because the threat of violence appears to be low, Davies said, “We are just into making these people realize that they are safe.”

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As Blumenstein points out in his briefing, Jews in the United States are often affected by international events, such as terrorist bombings in Israel, where some Americans have friends or relatives.

Others were born in foreign countries, where “The police were feared and when you saw a policeman, you went the other way,” he said.

“I could very well see myself taking something wrong because of ignorance to the culture,” Officer John Kirkpatrick said after the briefing.

The police briefings began informally about a decade ago, Blumenstein said, at the invitation of a North Hollywood police captain. The effort was next extended to Van Nuys.

Last year, the Jewish Federation got involved, setting up a committee to run the program and expanding it to the West Los Angeles, Hollywood, Wilshire and Pacific divisions.

As he concluded the briefing, Blumenstein succinctly summed up the fundamentals of traditional Jewish culture. “Basically, you go and you pray and you eat.”