Rabbi Robin Podolsky, left, blesses the bread during a feast inside a sukkah in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019. RNS photo by Alejandra Molina
LOS ANGELES (RNS) — Corinne Mosh celebrated the first night of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot like never before.
She feasted in a space embellished
with decorative Mexican papel picado, alongside a Chicano vocalist
singing folk music in Spanish and a Jewish and Mexican-American
spiritual leader who casually switched between Spanish, English and
Hebrew.
“To me, it speaks to the diaspora of Jewish people all over the world,” said Mosh, 43.
Mosh and about 15 others gathered
Sunday (Oct. 13) in Boyle Heights — a working-class Latino neighborhood
on the east side of Los Angeles that was once a thriving Jewish enclave —
to observe the biblical holiday of Sukkot. This tradition celebrates the harvest and recalls the Israelites’ 40-year journey in the desert after they fled Egypt.
During Sukkot, which began Sunday and
ends Oct. 20, observant Jews spend time in a sukkah — a temporary
outdoor hut that signals the Israelites’ dwellings before they reached
the Promised Land. These structures are made out of thatch or branches that can provide shade and protection from the sun.
Mosh and others held their celebration in what is believed to be the first sukkah in Boyle Heights — a community with a strong Chicano and Mexican identity — in more than 30 years.
Inside the Sukkah, standing here are Shmuel Gonzales (left) and Rabbi Robin Podolsky (right).
Shmuel Gonzales, a Mexican American and Jewish community historian, helped organize the Sunday feast inside the sukkah. Shiny wreaths in violet, gold and red colors hung from side to side. Banners of traditional Mexican tissue paper decorated the shelter’s white walls. Stuffed eggplant, chili peppers filled with meat and dried fruit, and squash stuffed with tomato and tamarind sauce were served for dinner. To keep with tradition, Gonzales shook the “lulav” — a palm branch bundled with myrtle and willow branches — and a yellow citrus fruit called an “etrog.”
The lulav and etrog are waved to represent “God’s presence in all directions.”
Celebrating Sukkot with our local families; the Levine-Morris family, and Shmuel Gonzales the founder of the Boyle Heights Chavurah – the modern-day Jewish community circle of Boyle Heights and City Terrace.
“We’re here making history,” Gonzales said on Sunday.
Gonzales, 42, said the tradition of celebrating Sukkot in Boyle Heights faded after the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake damaged the Breed Street Shul, the last of the Eastside synagogues that stayed open in the decades following the population shifts of the postwar era. Vandalism and neglect contributed to the final services being held in 1996.
“I decided a while ago that (if) we
were going to have the Jewish faith alive in the Eastside no one was
going to do it for us,” Gonzales said.
For Gonzales, preserving remnants of
the Jewish faith in the Eastside is personal. His family has roots in
Boyle Heights dating back to 1896. He said the Jewish community has
embraced him as a convert. It’s estimated that about 227,000 Latino
adults in the United States identify their religion as Jewish, according
to a 2019 report released by the American Jewish Population Project.
About 40% of Boyle Heights’ population was Jewish through the 1920s and ’30s, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. While more upwardly mobile Jews established themselves in Hollywood and the Westside before World War II, the Jewish community in Boyle Heights was made up of mostly working-class families from Eastern Europe. They were mainly secular and politically engaged in the Eastside.
Gonzales held the sukkah gathering
outside a community space that hosts comedy nights and is the home of
Boyle Heights History Tours. As part of these tours, Gonzales takes
people on urban hikes and walks to explore the area’s Jewish history as
well as some of the lost cemeteries of Los Angeles. The money made
through that work helped pay for the Sukkot festivities, he said.
Sukkot is “one of these ancient
holidays that has been revived in so many different ways for us to find
relevance with it,” Gonzales said.
He tied the holiday to the homeless crisis in Los Angeles that has left more than 36,000
in the city without a home. He recalled seeing homeless people under
palm branches seeking relief from the heat. “These are homeless people
that need shelter,” he said.
He also thought of the immigration
crisis along the southern border and of the “refugees wandering through
the desert in hopes of getting to the Promised Land here.”
Sukkot, Gonzales said, is “not just
to celebrate how far we’ve come … but also to keep in mind all of those
who are still on that journey looking for their shelter.”
Gonzales also likened the sukkah to a Día de los Muertos altar, a sacred space where people honor their ancestors.
“With a sukkah, it also becomes a mystical space in which we are able to connect with our ancestors,” he said.
This is the kind of multiculturalism
that attracts Martín Olvera, who is Chicano with roots in Boyle Heights.
Olvera’s father was born in Boyle Heights and learned woodcrafting from
a Jewish man. His grandmother arrived in Boyle Heights as an immigrant
from Mexico in 1910. His New Mexican mother also made L.A. her home.
Olvera, a musician who was raised Catholic, said he values the Jewish community for standing up for immigrant rights.
Sunday was his first Sukkot, where he sang and played the violin.
“I thought it was really empowering,” said Olvera, 63.
Matthew Hom of Bend the Arc — a
Jewish, nonprofit working for social justice — also attended Sukkot in
Boyle Heights. He normally commemorates the holiday by going to services
at his synagogue and having a meal in the sukkah, but this time it felt
different.
Hom’s grandfather was raised in Boyle
Heights, and celebrating Sukkot there was special “because it allowed
me to connect to my family’s history here.” He said he’s inspired by the
history of the community because of the “social justice work and
solidarity between Jewish and Latinx residents.”
Hom, 32, said Sukkot is a way for Jews to remember their history of migration and insecurity.
“It’s precisely why we commemorate
this narrative that we feel compelled to redouble our effort to secure
immigrant justice today,” Hom said.
For Mosh, Sukkot in Boyle Heights was
a learning experience. She’s not originally from L.A. and was unaware
of the Jewish history of the community.
Although she grew up going to
synagogue, Mosh said she is not particularly religious. She remembers
going to Sunday school and decorating the sukkah and wanted her kids to
experience the tradition. Mosh said she appreciated commemorating the
holiday through a social justice perspective, considering the housing
and immigration crisis.
“It felt refreshing and familiar,” she said. “That’s the Judaism I remember and was needing in my life.”
Shmuel Gonzales, a sixth generation member of our eastside community and founder of the Boyle Heights Chavurah; seen here leading kiddush in Hebrew for our guests.
Our foods over the Sukkot holidays focused on featuring the Sephardic-Mizrahi influenced foods of the Mexican Jewish tradition; coming from the Middle East, as many Mexican Jewish families come from Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and is high influenced by spices and flavors from the Orient. During the season it is the traditions to have foods which are overflowing as a sign of abundance and as sweet as we wish the new year to be. And as we get towards Simchat Torah – we feature foods which are cylindrical and rolled, stuffed foods that reminds of the shape of the Torah scrolls.
Alejandra Molina is a National Reporter covering Latinos and religion in the West Coast. She is based in Los Angeles. Previously, she was a reporter for the Southern California News Group where she covered cities, immigration, race and religion for newspapers like The Orange County Register, The Press-Enterprise in Riverside and The Los Angeles Daily News.
Translation of news from Enlace Judío México e Israel – During the dedication of the Centro de Documentación e Investigación Judío de México (CDIJUM) this passed Sunday, a valuable historical document came to its archive, in commemoration for this new site for the Mexican Jewish community.
Recalling the history of MS St. Louis, the president of the Comité Central de la Comunidad Judía de México, Moisés Romano Jafif, celebrated the dedication of the CDIJUM and presented to the audience the bill prepared by Alfredo Félix Díaz Escobar, who said it has its origin in the story of the tragic fate of the more than 900 Jewish crew members who were frustrated in their hope of fleeing from barbarism to our continent.
Félix Díaz presented this initiative to the Congress of the Union, which ended up being approved, for the benefit of Jewish refugees from Germany amidst the full development of the Holocaust in Europe.
After the declaration of war exercised by Mexico against the Axis in May 1942, restrictions were taken against the nationals of Germany, Italy and Japan who were residing at the time in Mexican territory, such as the seizure of property. Jewish immigrants or future refugees of German origin would fall under the framework of these measures. The deputy decided to reverse this for the benefit of the victims of Nazism by law.
Félix Díaz when he presented the initiative before the chamber of deputies on October 6, 1942, and argued for the defense he was asking the Mexican State to give the Jewish refugees, as recorded in the Journal of Debates:
“It is evident that the Israelites are the first victims and the most threatened of Hitlerism. If the civilized world fights for its freedom and for the basic principles of civilization, the Israelite people fight for their own life, and it would be unjust that the just measures that civilized countries, like ours, implant against the hostile foreigners of the nations with which we find ourselves in a state of war, they would harm the Israelites in the same way; this fact would give the unprecedented result that the victims of Nazifascism were likewise the victims of democracy”
The text of the actual legal initiative is as follows:
Article 1 – Excluded from the restrictions of the state of war imposed on the nationals of Germany, Italy, Japan and other enemy countries, the Israelites of such origin or nationality.
Article 2 – In each and every one of these cases the institution of the Israelite Colony, officially recognized by the authorities of the country, will be responsible and will certify:
a) The Israelite origin of the interested party.
b) The political and ideological loyalty of the interested party towards the cause of Mexico and the democracies.
c) The accuracy of the information you provide with respect to your co-religionists.
Article 3 – In the exclusion of the Israelites from the restrictions imposed on nationals and natives of the countries referred to in Article 1, everything related to the freezing or seizure of property, residence rights in the national territory, freedom of movement is included. general and all those points related to individual rights and guarantees that have been decreed or decreed against hostile foreigners.
Article 4 – This decree will come into force on the day of its publication in the “Official Gazette” of the Federation.
The bill was the first of its kind in the world enacted for the reception of refugees from the Second World War and the protection of Jews from any type of persecution, according to Cecilia Félix Díaz, daughter of the deputy.
Politician and writer, son of the Sinaloan poet Cecilia Zadi, Félix Díaz was a career soldier who enrolled in the activities of the Mexican Revolution in the second decade of the twentieth century. Within the national potics, which he joined in the 1930s, Félix Diaz not only formed the Comité Nacional Antinazifascista, (Antinazifascist National Committee), but also the Comité Nacional Antisinarquista, which, as the name implies, opposed the Mexican synarchism movement, one of the main groups opposed to the arrival of Jews in the country, which he described as being a “fifth column” of the Adolf Hitler regime in our country.
Félix Díaz, decided to promote his law initiative partly because of the friends he had in Europe who were living through the persecution directed against them, his daughter told Enlace Judío. Jewish families like Jalamsky, Constantine or Ramiansky were great friends of Alfredo Félix Díaz because of the support he gave to the Jews who came to our country.
Cecilia Félix Díaz described her father as someone from the left and a defender of universal values, as well as an admirer of the Jewish people due to their contributions to philosophy, literature and science, both in Mexico and in the world.
During the event, Dr. Alicia Gojman de Backal acknowledged to Cecilia the importance of Félix Díaz for the Jewish Community of Mexico, of whom she has conducted extensive research and has written several articles. “I have no words to thank you,” she said emotionally.
Her granddaughter, Sara Paola Galico Félix Díaz, told Enlace Judío she felt very grateful and moved by the Jewish community for the tribute paid to her grandfather. “My grandfather made this law, and against all odds, it was approved. It was a law which would be an example for many parts of the world, where it began to be replicated; and this legislation began to be a reality for all the lives that had been suffering a monstrous act such as the Second World War,” she said.
Galico Félix Díaz said that the Mexican legislator was a fundamental influence on her to champion social causes and values, which she considers her driving force in the country’s political life, which she says “I learned from my mother, and my mother learned them from my grandfather”.
Currently, Galico Félix Díaz has control of the Mixed Tourism Fund of Mexico City in the administration of Claudia Sheinbaum, the body in charge of promoting the Mexican capital city nationally and internationally. Previously, he held a seat in the Chamber of Deputies for the Morena party in the LXIII legislature, between 2015 and 2018.
Fighting Sweatshops and Wage Theft During the Holiday Season
The Garment Workers Center in Los Angeles is calling upon the public to stand with garment workers for their “Anti-Sweatshop Saturday” on December 1, 2018. During this holiday season it is important for people to stand with the LA garment workers and demand better wages and working conditions.
During this season it is important that we also consider making ethical choices in what we purchase and where we buy from this holiday season; so that we do not support businesses which thrive off of sweatshop labor.
Unfortunately, this problem hits more close to home for more discount bargain buyers than you might imagine.
Certainly there have always been sweatshops in Los Angeles – piece sewing garment shops that are often dangerous and which pay less than the legal wages. Historically these sweatshops have long thrived off of immigrant labor; often taking advantage of new immigrant and undocumented laborers.
Though the seriousness of the current conditions in the 21st century shocked me to the core as it was explained to me by local garment workers themselves of how widespread this is. And how many major stores my own family shop at buy and sell sweatshop garments.
This story hits close to home for many of us. Especially for working-class people in immigrant communities.
A few years ago I began to volunteer doing community organizing in the neighborhood of Pico Union; a working-class, immigrant community near the Downtown Los Angeles Fashion District. When I was brought in by the Pico Union Project my work started with surveys and listening sessions. Before I did anything we partnered with IDEPSCA – the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California – which represents the largely Salvadoran community of laborers in the neighborhood – we set out to get to know what the needs and concerns of the community were.
The two items which topped the list of needs and concerns for the neighborhood were not so surprising to us: housing and jobs.
Though as I walked the neighborhood and listened to the residents and workers of our area I began to more clearly understand how these issues went hand in hand. The local laborers began to explain it to me this way:
If you consider it, most American consumers think that their clothes are made in some other county. That they are made for cheap in Asia or Latin America where impossibly low wage are legal. Consumer accept this because they think this human suffering is a world away. So they feel less guilty about it.
However, the truth is that many clothes you will find on the rack are made in sweatshop conditions here in Los Angeles, often made by Central American and Asian immigrants in our very own city, for less than legal wages.
When I began to talk to our neighbors about this I soon realized that every person I was talking who worked in the garment shops in our area were being paid somewhere between $4.75 and $5.15 per hour; far less than the minimum wage in the City of Los Angeles.
Now with that low of wages, consider how hard it is for a family to pay rent for an inner-city home or apartment; and how many people under one roof it takes in order to just pay the rent alone.
Many families are on the verge of homelessness because of illegally low wages they are paid, and the ever-growing rents as these urban communities begin to experience gentrification.
And that is just scratching the surface of what the difficulties and injustices these workers face.
But how did this problem get so wide-spread? And why is it of such consequence to the people of our city?
Understanding the Sweatshop Garment Sourcing
In the past it was true that many garments were made overseas; outsourced to other countries and shipped here, in order to cost less than it would be to make in the United States.
However, there began a shift in the garment industry in past few decades.
If you look in your closet you will even find clothes labeled from places you would expect, like China and Bangladesh. However, in many cases these garments were sent in pieces from abroad and sewn together and decoratively finished here in Los Angeles sweatshops.
Now if you’re not necessarily a fashionista who follows fashion seasons, you might not appreciate how this came to be. So let’s break it down.
In other cities there are generally two or four fashion seasons annually, which define the style of clothing produced in that city for the year.
Though in Los Angeles, in contrast, shops began to pull off amazing turn-around times in garment work, enabling as many as twelve fashion seasons a year; so a retailer could have a new product line in their shops every month. Even more recently, some retailers begun to demand new and cheap products every two or three weeks, even every week in some cases.
This is only possible by doing the final sewing and decorative work stateside. The pieces coming in by import from Latin America and the Pacific Rim through the port of Los Angeles, and finally being pieced together in rickety sweatshops lining the downtown Fashion District and surrounding communities.
And this is how Los Angeles became the largest manufacturer of clothing in the country, producing garments which are sold at Macy’s, Nordstrom, Forever 21, Urban Outfitters, Burlington, Dillard’s, TJ Maxx, and especially Ross.
It’s very simple to understand this system of exploitation. Retailers are paying suppliers less, which in-tern are paying laborers less, just so consumers can buy throw-away fashion.
And that is the heart of the problem. People don’t question where they are getting their products from, and few consumers are holding their favorite retailers accountable to buy sweatshop-free garments.
Let me give you some real world examples of this culture of exploitation and wage theft.
In 2016 YN Apparel, a supplier of clothing for Ross Stores, was officially charged by the California Labor Commissioner’s Office with contracting with factories which paid workers as little as $6.00 per hour. YN Apparel agreed to pay $212,000 in back wages. Though the investigations found that Ross would have had to pay their supplier twice as much in order to pass on a basic minimum wage to the factory employees.
“The Times reviewed more than a dozen claims for back wages filed with the California Labor Commissioner’s Office in the last two years, from workers who say they were compensated with irregular checks.
“Rosa Murillo, a senior deputy commissioner for the Labor Commissioner’s Office garment unit, said she has conducted inspections where factories require workers to use a check cashing company that operates in the same building as the factory. Some bosses insist that workers collect wages at specified check cashing companies or at the factory itself, said workers, advocates and lawyers interviewed by The Times.
“”It appears as if the owner of the garment factory is speaking with the owner of the check cashing place. It’s almost as if they have an understanding to cash the check even though the information is incomplete,” Murillo said.
“In a case this year, the Labor Commissioner ruled that JK Mode, a garment factory that later became DHL Apparel, had paid workers below the minimum wage and ordered that the companies pay more than $283,000 in back wages to seamsters. One worker testified that his bosses inaccurately reported that they worked eight hours per day when he actually worked 12-hour days, and made him retrieve his weekly pay from the company, which took a fee of 1%. The company did not appeal the decision.
“[Jesus Francisco] Moreno, the clothes packer, says he is undocumented, does not have a bank account and has little choice but to cash his check at the van. [a check-cashing van at the factory]
“Moreno said he worked a 54-hour week in mid-July, meaning he received just over $8 per hour. The van operator took $4.50 of his total $450, he said.
“When workers do get official checks, they say the hours often are doctored to make it look as if they are getting paid the minimum wage.”
Though wage theft doesn’t just end there.
One of the unfortunate realities of being an undocumented worker is that sometimes they are not just underpaid, in some cases they are not even paid at all at the end of the week, with the employer expecting the employees to be too scared to report the case because they are undocumented; this is also another form of wage theft that the Garment Workers Center and IDEPSCA regularly try to help people find redress for.
Though sometimes fighting outright wage theft is hard to win. Often times a shop that is shut down for stolen wages and bad working conditions; they usually close down a few days or weeks, and just open up again under another name. Often at the very same location, and preying upon the same population of local workers. Repeating the cycle of wage theft and labor abuse among those most desperate for work.
Standing with Garment Workings this Holiday Season
This issue of sweatshop labor and wage theft effects immigrant people from Pico Union and South Central Los Angeles, to Chinatown and Boyle Heights. In all these communities we have hard-working garment workers as residents which are struggling to survive.
This season we are asking people to avoid buying disposable fashion from these retailer!
Though we are also asking you to contact the corporate and regional offices of these retailers. Again, the biggest problem there is many of us don’t ask where are garment come from. It is up to consumers to demand of our favorite retailers that they only stock sweatshop-free and fair-wage sourced clothing.
And lastly, we need to support the unions and the unionization of apparel and textile shops in Los Angeles. One of the biggest reasons that workers wages are so low and working conditions are so bad, is because of the decline of the unions in this country.
“Basta al robo de nuestra salud.” Stop robbing us of health. Make LA sweatshop free!
As a Jewish American and as a Mexican American, I am well learned in how important the garment industry has historically been for both of these immigrant and working-class communities over the years. Over a century ago, after 146 garment workers were burnt alive in a sweatshop factory their supervisor had locked them into, in the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire of 1911; most of them Jewish and Italian women; women laborers fought to unionize garment shops across the country. In 1933 here in Los Angeles Jewish labor socialists also helped bring Latina seamstresses gain membership into the unions for the first time. Improving working conditions and leveraging better wages for many of our own families.
Now a century later, all the hard work that we did in union organizing has been rolled back. The new immigrants of today are being exploited and being subjected go dangerous working conditions, just like many of our immigrant forebears were also subjected. We need to stand with the workers who are now struggling in this era.
This holiday seasons as you shop for Chanukah and Christmas, make sure to buy and give sweatshop-free and fair-wage sourced clothing!
Boycott Ross Dress For Less: This is one of the largest of the sweatshop sourced retailers in our region. Though have you noticed that they keep building new stores in minority, immigrant, working-class communities? These retailers buy clothing from producers who pay their immigrant workers below the minimum wage, which Ross ends up selling to many unwitting consumers in those very same communities in which Ross is enabling labor abuse and wage-theft. Don’t buy from Ross… no se compensa!
Is what you eat political? Do you accept the claim that your food choices determine your social order in this world? And do you accept that conforming to white American norms in eating is important in transforming people of color into better citizens? Will assimilating ones food choices make people of color less prone to crime and revolutionary tendencies?
Believe it or not, this is something that has been explored and well discussed in our communities for over a century.
In the 1920s in Southern California there were social reformers who were sent on transform the eating choices made by the public, especially among the immigrant working-class.
One of the most notable reformers to arise in this era was a lady by the name of Pearl Idelia Ellis, of the Department of Americanization and Homemaking, of Covina City Elementary Schools. She was the author the guide “Americanization though Homemaking” which was published in 1929, detailing her work.
Ellis’ work was based in Southern California, which put her in contact with local Mexican American homemakers. Where she would set an agenda for transforming their food choices into ones which made them more like the Anglo Americans they were expected to model.
In 1915 the California state legislature had passed the Home Teacher Act, which would allow school districts to employ teachers “to work in the homes of the pupils, instructing children and adults in matters related to school attendance,… in sanitation, in English language, in household duties,… and in fundamental principles of the American system of government and the rights and duties of citizenship.” This legislation was largely born out of an Americanist panic which arose at that time, as nativists insisted that society demanded that these so-called uncultured immigrants be Americanized.
This legislation enabled reformers like Pearl Ellis to take her work directly into the homes of the people she was trying to effect, with the official authority of state and local government behind her. While the work of Ellis extended into modeling almost every form of homemaking, she took special attention to food. She spent much time and energy with special concern for the nutrition of families and trying to influence their food choices.
She would encourage certain food choices for Mexican American mothers: giving up tortillas, and replacing them with sandwiches on store-bought white bread, made with mayonnaise and “commercial spreads,” and minced meats. They were further encouraged to give up essential staples of their diets like beans, and replaced them with lettuce and mixed salads (example: boiled spinach with mayonnaise, mixed fruit with mayonnaise, cherry-topped banana with mayonnaise, and even “pineapple and avocado salad with mayonnaise to carry out the color scheme”.)
In this manner she instructed mothers in making what she determined to be affordable and suitable food choices. She even went as far as to provide menus for their school lunch choices: “One glass of milk; one cheese sandwich; one lettuce sandwich; one graham cracker sandwich; one apple or pear; one cooky [sic]”.
She would set for people a top-down approach in how to transform Mexican homes into Americanized homes, starting with their choice for a child’s lunch. And based on the assumption that the dietary issues of the community was not based on a lack of food, but rooted in their poor choices of foods.
Professor George Sanchez of USC sheds some light on this for us:
“Food and diet management became tools in a system of social control intended to construct a well-behaved citizenry. A healthy diet was seen not only as an essential for proper health but as fundamental for creating productive members of society. In the eyes of reformers, the typical noon lunch of the Mexican child, thought to consist of “a folded tortilla with no filling,” became the first step in a life of crime. With “no milk or fruit to whet the appetite,” the child would become lazy and subsequently “take food from the lunch boxes of more fortunate children” in order to appease his or her hunger. “Thus,” reformers alleged, “the initial step in a life of thieving is taken.” Teaching immigrant women proper food values would keep the head of the family out of jail, the rest of the family off the charity list, and save taxpayers a great amount of money.”
(Mothers and Motherhood: Readings In American History; “Go After the Women: Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant Woman, 1915-1929)
The ideas of Americanization would not just be taught to mothers, but it would carry over into the education of girls in the school system. As young Mexican American girls were taught these values in order to model them for the home. With the idea that gradually one could transform the tastes of the family into more Americanized ones; which was further reinforced by the school lunch system.
The very table and every meal plate thus became battlefields for cultural assimilation.
Though make no mistake about it, their proposed model American-style diet was even intended to do nothing less than help maintain social order itself.
In her work titled “Americanization though Homemaking,” published in 1929, Pearl Ellis contended:
“The old adage, ‘ As a man thinketh so is he,’ might be easily translated to, ‘As a man eatest, so is he,’ for his thinking is controlled to a greater extent. Than we are wont to realize by his eating and digestive processes… Employers maintain that the man with a home and family is more dependable and less revolutionary in his tendencies. Thus the influence of the home extends to labor problems and to many other problems in the social regime. The homekeeper creates the atmosphere, whether it be one of harmony and cooperation or of dissatisfaction and revolt. It is to be remembered that the dispositions, one angelic, become very much marred with incorrect diet and resultant digestive disturbances.”
Yeah… how about that take on dietary pseudo-science based in classism.
Now think about that, vato, next time you find yourself eating your bologna and mayo, on white bread, that somehow found its way into your face!
History tell us that people who lack cultural sensitivity take the reins, they do more damage than just make culturally inappropriate food choices. They also tend to want to change our diets as a form of maintaining the social order.
Topics of further discussion:
The social pressure to Americanize ones diet was also experienced by other immigrants as well, especially among the Jews in the “corn beef belt” of Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles. The dietary choices of Ashkenazi Jews from the east were often considered too exotic and rich; they were expected to conform to a more Americanized diet. In some cases Jewish social service organizations even encouraged what they considered cheaper and more mainstream treif (non-kosher, religiously inappropriate) foods. When the Los Angeles Council of Jewish Women in 1928 published their “Helpful Hints for Jewish Housewives,” they included recipes for Virginia ham, pork chops, oysters and other non-kosher recipes as well as advertisements for Best Foods Mayonnaise, Maxwell House Coffee, and branded canned vegetables and other processed foods.
Lunchtime social pressure to assimilate. In Fred Okrand’s interview for the UCLA Center for Oral History Research, “Forty Years Defending the Constitution, Oral History Interview” Tape 1 side 2 – Feb. 4th, 1982, Okrand speaks of his classmates at Lorena Street School in Boyle Heights: “… The kids would make fun of me…because they would be eating sandwiches on white bread, on what we would call kvachehdikeh, soft white bread. But my mother was a Jewish woman; she would go to the varshehveh bakery on Brooklyn Avenue and get good Jewish rye bread. And I remember being ashamed somehow, that I was eating rye bread and the other kids weren’t….” He was shamed for eating cheaper and darker Jewish rye bread, instead of grocery store-bought white bread.
A brief history of how Jewish immigrants lent their acquired experience in organizing to more recent Latino immigrants.
Two girls wearing banners with slogan “ABOLISH CH[ILD] SLAVERY!!” in English and Yiddish (“(ני)דער מיט (קינד)ער שקלאפער(ײ)”, “Nider mit Kinder Schklawerii”), one carrying American flag; spectators stand nearby. Probably taken during May 1, 1909 labor parade in New York City.
During the 1920’s, many workers such as fieldhands, miners and fishers went on strike because of huge pay cuts. They also weren’t happy because their pay was being lowered but they were still forced to pay the same amout of tax. This led to huge strikes and many of the worker’s families were starving because they were not being paid at all.
After an initial period in East Coast and the mid-west cities, significant numbers of Jewish immigrants and their families drawn by the economic boom, move to Los Angeles, eventually making Boyle Heights home to largest Jewish community west of Chicago.
“Under the direction of Israel Feinberg, the Los Angeles ILGWU membership rose from 30 to 2,000 between 1930 and 1935, making it one of the larger unions in Southern California. Part of the growth resulted from the 1933 strike by Latina dressmakers. By 1938 the ILGWU’s Spanish-speaking branch had a float in the city’s annual Labor Day parade, and Latinas were active within the union.” – Kenneth Burt
In 1933, the Los Angeles garment industry employed nearly 7,500 workers, half of which were scattered in an estimated 200 small sweatshops in the downtown garment district. Latinas comprised nearly 75 percent of those workers, with the rest consisting of Italians, Russians and Americans.
“Under the direction of Israel Feinberg, the Los Angeles ILGWU membership rose from 30 to 2,000 between 1930 and 1935, making it one of the larger unions in Southern California. Part of the growth resulted from the 1933 strike by Latina dressmakers. By 1938 the ILGWU’s Spanish-speaking branch had a float in the city’s annual Labor Day parade, and Latinas were active within the union.” – Kenneth Burt
(Revised November 2015)
Jewish-Latino relations in the US are built upon a legacy of recognizing a shared immigrant and working-class experience. We have a long history of being natural allies in promoting social advances. And it all began with organized labor.
At the start of the 20th century an influx of impoverished Eastern European Jewish immigrants provided this country with a desperate and eager labor force. Many of these new immigrants going into the garment and dress-making industry. However, the working conditions in this era of the industrial revolution were terrible and even deadly. Women laborers such as these were among those who organized as early as 1900 in New York City, founding the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU). Often holding meetings in Yiddish.
With immigrants venturing west and industry taking off in the booming years of Los Angeles, ILGWU became established here in 1910.
However, by the 1930s the largest growing group of new union members were Spanish-speaking Latinos. Saby Nehama –a Sephardic Jew, a Jewish person of Spanish descent –first organized efforts among Spanish speakers on the east coast. And then whole Spanish-speaking branches were soon established in several major cities. [see “Memories and Migrations: Mapping Boricua and Chicana Histories,” p. 130]
“On September 15, 1933, a young, New York labor organizer by the name of Rose Pesotta landed in Los Angeles. Pesotta once worked in Southern California where she had been discharged from a garment factory and blacklisted for union activity. Now Pesotta was returning at the request of garment workers to organize their industry. Within one month a new International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) local was formed and the garment industry found itself in the middle of a bitter strike with Rose Pesotta leading the charge.
“In 1933, the Los Angeles garment industry employed nearly 7,500 workers, half of which were scattered in an estimated 200 small sweatshops in the downtown garment district. Latinas comprised nearly 75 percent of those workers, with the rest consisting of Italians, Russians and Americans. Nearly half of the female dressmakers made less than $5 a week, which stood as a clear violation of the $16 a week California minimum wage for female workers and National Industrial Recovery Act’s (NRA) Dress Code, which set standards in the industry. Workers who attempted to organize were routinely fired and blacklisted by the employers. The local leadership of the ILGWU, consisting of mostly white men, had no interest in organizing female dressmakers, feeling that most either leave the industry to raise their families or shouldn’t be working in the first place.
“But Rose Pesotta refused to buy into that dismissive attitude. With the ILGWU International’s approval, she began laying the foundation for a new local (Local 96). She reached out to the Latina community through a bilingual radio program and a weekly paper called, The Organizer.”
This work of organizing would not just be expanded into other cities, it would also result in cross-cultivation in other forms of civil rights organizing. As historian Kenneth Burt wrote:
“In sections of the Bronx, in the West Side section of St. Paul, Minnesota, and in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles, Spanish-speaking Latinos replaced Yiddish-speaking Jews as the newest immigrant group.
“Organized labor often served as a bridge between these working-class, ethnic communities. Unions also provided a political voice for the emerging Latino community.
“The International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) served this function on the Eastside of Los Angeles. The ILGWU engaged directly in civic life. It also helped establish and worked through a variety of Latino and Jewish and organizations, as well as broad-based civil rights coalitions.
“The groups in the ILGWU’s sphere of influence included the Jewish Labor Committee and the Mexican American-oriented Community Service Organization (CSO). Early CSO leaders included Maria Duran and Hope Mendoza from the ILGWU.
“Directly and indirectly the ILGWU played a key role in the election of Edward Roybal to the Los Angeles City Council in 1949, and to the adoption of fair employment and fair housing laws in California in the late 1950s and early 1960s.”
The Community Service Organization (CSO) was uniquely created to be a “Mexican NAACP.” Ross and Alinsky took notice that Mexicans were by far the largest and yet most ill treated minority. Mexicans still being the only minority group to not be widely organized. And also standing alone in having no political power or decision-making, with less than 10% of Latino citizens being registered to vote. [see “The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights.”]
“In 1947, in direct response to rampant police abuse, a lack of educational opportunities, widespread discrimination in government services, a strong culture of bigotry that allowed even people of good conscience to turn a blind eye to the suffering of their neighbors, and ultimately, to the Zoot Suit Riots and Bloody Christmas, the Community Service Organization was founded by Antonio Rios, Edward Roybal, and Fred Ross, Sr. Quickly, the CSO became a training ground for the first generation of Latino leaders, including Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Gilbert Padilla. Recognizing the need for a unified Latino voice and for some semblance of political representation, the CSO initially concentrated on organizing voter registration drives in Latino communities all across California. In 1949, the CSO‘s efforts culminated in the election of Edward Roybal, the first Latino to serve on the Los Angeles City Council.”
Royball would ride a wave of crucial Yiddish speaking political support in Boyle Heights, backing his ascent to City Hall and further still. The future Congressman Edward Roybal would later take his social causes to the halls of the US Congress with him as well.
Fred Ross would continue to expand CSO at the behest of Alinsky, helping establish their presence first in Oxnard and later in San Jose. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, trained by CSO in Alinsky style protest, would then take the cause directly into the local fields; thus founding the United Farm Workers, which is widely considered the most influential and visible Latino organization to date. The UFW is the primary historical and still active model for Latino activism to this day.
[Learn more about the discipleship of Cesar Chavez under the tutelage of Saul Alinsky’s, and the rise UFW as an outgrowth of CSO. See “Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa.”]
While today American Jews might not be the face of the working-class anymore, many Jewish community leaders have made it an activist goal to fight for workers rights and better immigration reform for Latinos. Maintaining a legacy of support for these and other progressive causes, due to the similar collective memory Jews have of their grandparents and great-grandparents being exploited as poor immigrants.
Getting off the bus, and on to the streets. A metaphor for inter-community engagement.
The former “Congregation Tiferes Jacob – Congregation Talmud Torah.” 59th and Brentwood, just east of Broadaway.
The religious and cultural history of our lesser known neighborhoods always intrigues me. I learn something new everyday. And I see amazing sights nearly everyday. However, what I have learned the most has come not from tour bus excursions. It’s from getting off the public buses, and by making my friends pull over to see something usual which catches my eye.
A few days ago as I was taking the express bus north towards Downtown Los Angeles I found myself staring over the rooftops before Slauson Avenue. Looking for the landmark which has kept me intrigued for a while now. Until I spot it. And as I exit the bus at Slauson Metro Station – disembarking at the station right in the middle of the 110-freeway – I keep my eyes on this almost gleaming beacon.
Just east of the 110-freeway, beyond the rows of speeding freeway traffic in front of me, and down in a residential community below, I can clearly see this great building with two blue copulas, one bearing a Star of David and the other a Christian cross.
After spending much time wondering about this, I have finally started to uncover the history of this site as a former synagogue. Following leads from old city directories and oral histories.
So I have spent the past couple weeks returning to the site. Talking to people in the neighborhood, to get to know the history of the area. Also collected some pictures and video of the local sites. This day, my unplanned stop is spurred on by pure impulse and curiosity.
This object of my curiosity is just a couple of blocks away, which is easily walkable. So I descend the freeway’s Metro station platform, making my way over to Broadway.
Here in this area right here off of Broadway, there are a lot of churches right on this thoroughfare. Some of these house of worship are really impressive, like the Greater New Canaan Church of G-d in Christ – just a block over on Brentwood Street, she’s a real beauty!
Though most of the churches here are more humble – being just converted storefronts and former commercial buildings. Small make shift congregations, as it seems to have been in this area since its earliest days.
Though churches of today are more dense. Several of them are directly next door to each other, all smashed up together on the very same corner in some cases. Side-by-side storefront churches, reflective of the diversity and divergence in religious thought found in fundamentalist sectarianism common to the area.
Just at the corner of 59th and Broadway alone, there are two interesting churches. They are just in eyesight of an old synagogue.
The first is the very dispensationally named Concilio de Iglesias Pentecostales “La Nueva Jerusalem (sic).” Which seems to have been a African-American church which has more recently changed their signage to Spanish, and which is now seemingly renting back space from their own meetings from the Spanish congregation. A striking example of the more recent demographic changes in the area.
Now notice that even though this movement feels comfortable co-opting Jewish elements and symbolism, their sign shows the tension of the duplicity: “Cien porcento trinitaria. Pardre, hijo, espitu santo.” (Translation: “100% Trinitarian. Father, son, holy spirit.”).
It’s the second church – the one right next to it – which really caught my eye. “Iglesia Cristian ‘El Dios de Santidad.‘” A fundamentalist holiness church. More precisely, my attention was grabbed by their proudly placed sign emblazoned with a Star of David, that is morphed with a menorah.
Now notice that even though this movement feels comfortable co-opting Jewish symbolism, their sign shows the tension of the duplicity: “Cien porcento trinitaria. Pardre, hijo, espitu santo.” (Translation: “100% Trinitarian. Father, son, holy spirit.”).
The reason a sign like this is necessary, is because in many Latino and black churches Trinitarianism is not just a given. Indeed, the “Apostolic” subbranch of Pentecostalism (aka: Oneness Pentecostalism, or “Jesus only Pentecostals.”) does not believe in the trinity. There are those who follow their biblical fundamentalism to their logical end, and therefore reject any blatant form of plurality in the godhead. This is a tension for many fundamentalist people and holiness congregations which strain on the issue. (See a mainstream evangelical critique of this fundamentalist movement: “What is Oneness Pentecostalism?”)
Many of these churches are outgrowths of church-splits over such doctrinal differences dividing them. This well positioned signage here therefore serves as a notice and warning for people entering the door of this congregation’s firm doctrinal stance.
This artifact revealing that the range of religious thought and questioning in this area is more nuanced than many mainstream white people expect.
Now I notice that the first church, “Nueva Jerusalem” Pentecostal Church, they had a person standing in the doorway. A young black gentleman holding religious tracts and doing some street preaching.
So I ask him if he has lived in the area long. As this has historically been known as a black neighborhood for many years, I ask if his family might have a bit more historical connections to the area than the people I’ve been talking to so far.
I begin relating to him that I’ve been speaking to a lot of the Spanish-speaking residents lately, but that most tell me they are quite recent immigrants. Many of them being central-American families – may of them from Guatemala – who tell me they don’t have enough time living in the area to know the history. Families telling me if I learn the history here, to come back and share the story with them!
The young man says that he’s lived I the area his entire life. And says he knows a bit of the history, which other locals have related to him. Saying that he might be able to help.
As I lift my hand and gesture towards the old building with a Star of David just a block away he quickly blurts out, “Oh, that used to be an old synagogue! It started out way back in the day as a Jewish temple. Today it’s a Baptist church. It’s really old and awesome looking on the inside!”
Without me even doing so much as making a suggestion as to what the site used to be, he instead begins to tell me the story of the site. Telling me in brief how the church purchased the old synagogue building in the 1950s, and then later remodeled it in the 1960s.
He insists with excitement, “You really need to visit on Sunday, to see the inside and talk to the pastor.” Saying that he had once been given a tour and told the history by the church pastor.
I tell him that I find this all fascinating. And that I’d love to hear about the old Jewish history of the area.
And then I mention that for me to hear all this from a non-Jewish person really is even more fascinating. As the Jewish community really seems to be unaware that this site is here and seems to have forgotten the history of this community.
I relate to him that the very thought of this area once being home to a sizable working-class Jewish community really touches something within me, both as a Jewish person and as an ethnic person of color. And that witnessing it, even from the outside, really moves me. Explaining how I’ve been by several times recently with other Jewish friends of mine.
When he hears I’m Jewish his ears perk up. He then asks me: “Have you ever considered Christianity?” Of course, he’s a street preacher so this response does not come as a surprise.
I respond with the same confidence he’s showing in the marketplace of faith: “I do consider it quite often, but honestly, I more often discuss the topic with people who are converted from Christianity to Judaism. And with inter-faith families who are exploring faith.” And I begin to tell him how much of my work is related to helping a diverse spectrum of people return to their historic Jewish faith. And also teaching Judaism to new converts, who are seeking out the Jewish faith.
The guys jaw drops. Surely, he’s never received this answer from someone before! He’s never gotten a response this chutzpadik. So for a while he was just stunned and listening. But I could see that he began to become intrigued hearing of the diversity of race, nationality, language and cultural expression in Judaism. Something he said he had never heard of or considered before.
I tell him how I appreciate the philosophy and teachings of Christianity. And though I love to talk about this faith, I don’t believe it is the path for me. And begin to remind him that the bible says Jews are to be true to our own G-d and not follow after the gods our ancestors did not know. (Deuteronomy 13) That it’s important for me to be faithful and true to the Torah of my G-d, which the scriptures call an eternal covenant between the Divine and the Jewish people. (Genesis 17:7)
He then related to me that he knew a few Jewish people. And that he had several Jewish coworkers. But that his impression of them and their families, was that they didn’t know much about the bible. And so they didn’t really seem Jewish enough to him, as far as he could see. Having a disconnect in his mind between his Jewish acquaintances, and what he understood Jews to be from his reading of the bible.
And he was further troubled and unable to understand how less than pious people could still consider themselves Jewish.
So I took a moment to hear him out. And to consider where he was coming from. In this case, standing literally in the doorway of a “holiness” church – a church which fundamentally believes that even most Christians aren’t really “saved” from hell, because they believe they are lax regarding sin. A group which especially preaches against people who drink, smoke, or even those who listen to secular music. This group has especially become fixated with castigating gays and lesbians in more recent years.
For these people, sin is all around. And to give in to it, means loosing your salvation and place in heaven. This is an old school doctrinal position, which is still quite common in the hood.
So I begin to speak to him one-on-one as a person of faith doing outreach in the inner city. To show him that I both appreciate his beliefs, and truly believe that the power of faith needs to be shared with a society so badly in need of hope. But that I believe we need to transform the way we communicate our faith to people.
And for a while, I begin to make the case that our relationship with our faith and G-d is not an all-or-nothing affair. And that to have this type relationship with G-d is unhealthy, as it would be in any relationship.
I relate to him how I have always been taught by my rabbis that the Jewish faith is not all-or-nothing, it is choosing to embrace holiness one mitzvah at a time. Making inspired and righteous choices, one little act of goodness at a time.
For a while I begin to talk about the realities of society, and our very inner city communities here. Pointing out that there are so many people in need of faith in their lives. Especially here, where life is so very hard for many. And yet for some reason when people can’t live up to some standard of perfection, they are rejected. Shunned and tossed out of their faith communities.
I begin to relate to him the stories I hear from people in these neighborhoods, how many faithful and soulful people feel rejected by their religion. How many who cannot live up to such high ideals are often ejected into a world with no moral guidance. Sent lost and stumbling into an underworld of real danger.
I tell him that many religious people always complain how so many have no moral compass, when we tend to be the very ones taking it away from people and sending them wandering into a wilderness of doubt.
I began to speak to him about my passion for faith and righteousness. And that I feel we need to open the doors wide, to welcome people back to reclaim their spiritual core. And to even rediscover faith anew.
And from there we begin to talk about religion and the bible for about the next hour-and-a-half. For some time him asking questions, and me responding with patient answers. To which he responds with signs of agreement and nods, to his noticeable surprise and delight.
Having heard me mention righteousness and holiness before, he says that he notices that I use these words differently than he’s ever heard before. So I spent some time talking with him about demystifying words of the bible, and understanding them by their clear and obvious meaning.
How righteous is when people decide to do the right thing, not if they believe the right thing. How righteousness is when we do right by G-d and man. As that is the true and literal meaning of righteousness.
And how holiness is not attaining some sense of ethereal perfection. But how kedusha – holiness as described in the Torah – is when something is set-aside for a divine purpose. When we take something that is mundane and ordinary, and we do something extraordinary with it.
I express how I feel it’s very important to understand that when the words of the bible are taken at face value, they call us to do right by others (which is righteousness) and to infuse spiritual inspiration into the ordinary things we encounter in our world (which is holiness).
However, there was one thing which still left him wondering. So he ventured to ask me, “What about salvation? Do you believe you are saved? What about leading people to salvation?”
So I ask him to really consider that word again. To really think about what that word means. To consider the words of the bible and contextualize its meaning. How salvation means saving people from harm and danger.
I ask him to consider how the Jewish people from the time of the bible until present have been troubled by so many hardships. Suffering enslavement, persecution, war, occupation, and near-annihilation; the Jewish people have always understood salvation as being saved from these calamities. For this is the word’s true meaning, and my people’s true reality as Jews.
Then I begin to relate to him in-depth about how my inner city experience has also reinforced this clear view of what salvation is for me. As a person of color, from a struggling working-class community.
As I see the need and challenges in our urban communities, I cannot help but be reminded of what salvation means. As salvation literally means saving, helping and rescuing people from their disparity. Salvation from sword (violence), plague (disease), famine (hunger) and woe (grief, sorrow, sadness).
I contented that leading people to salvation is not helping people attain some abstract religious and philosophical ascent. Insisting that is something which most of the common man here doesn’t really have the luxury to entertain and worry about anyhow. The people of these communities here need saving from real life troubles.
I begin to tell him how we all need to get back to the basics of faith and religion. And begin to remember salvation is in the true sense, and not just as a metaphor.
I see him continuing to nod his head in agreement. Smiling and laughing as I describe my faith in my own very urban and colorful fashion.
Then we get back to talking about people reclaiming their roots and about fostering communal interconnectivity. And about how exploring this history here can help us have more appreciation for the spirit of our historical working-class communities. Discussing my desire to uncover our shared history as a multicultural Los Angeles. With him agreeing that there is an important story to tell here in this community.
The gentleman then tells with excitement that he hopes I will return to see the inside of the old synagogue soon. Asking for my business card. so he could pass it on to the ministers of the church which owns the building.
And saying that he also wished to keep in touch, to talk again sometime. Before shaking my hand heartily, as I departed and continued on my way to explore the site.
One of the things that I could not help but be shaken from this interactions, is the fact that the story of Judaism is being told here. It’s just that so far we aren’t being part of that discussion.
Now all I need is more people to be willing to get off the bus with me. To be continued….
“Beit Midrash Srere” (בית מדרש שרירא) of Los Angeles, founded in 1922. This modest old synagogue was once one of over 30-some Jewish congregations in and around the area of Boyle Heights, east Los Angeles.
Though many of us know the larger shuls of the area, its important to keep in mind that many local Jewish congregations of the classic era operated from store-fronts and mere shteibles – little buildings, small houses like this. As struggling immigrants, that was the best many of them could afford at the time.
And so it is to this day in this community, that we have many immigrant churches operating from store-fronts and re-purposed synagogues.
Though small, each of these congregations have in their own way left a lasting mark on the area. Something which needs to be recognized and celebrated.
Beit Midrash Srere, founded 1922: The original face of the building, before the windows were changed and made smaller.
We are taking some video and pictures of this site today, because it has gotten a major make-over. This building is looking better than it has in years!
Though its sad to see that few of the original Jewish fixtures remain here.
I’m told by people who grew up on the block that many Christian groups have come and gone over the years, trying to change the gates and remove the Star is David from the building. And that city officials and Jewish groups didn’t let them.
One group had removed the gates with the Star of David on them.
Though the more recently crafted gates have been decoratively adorned with both crosses and Jewish stars, which are inlaid into them.
I think it’s really important to maintain these treasures of the past to the greatest extent we can, because these are living examples of our diverse past. Many of these sites have their Jewish elements historically registered, some of these buildings even come with the sales contract stipulating of them not to make changes which would jeopardize the historical integrity of the sites. But I’m learning that this is something which is hard to maintain when the building has changed hands so many times.
Today it is a Spanish speaking church, called “Iglesia Cristiana Roca de Salvación.”
Unbeknownst to many, Christian Messianism and Hebrew-Christians sects among Latinos have been growing in popularity since the 1970s. Most developing with no direct connection or relationship to the Jewish people, yet.
Interestingly, one of the Christian groups which occupied this site at one time was the “Iglesia Cristiana Hebreos,” a Spanish-speaking Hebrew-Christian congregation, a form of Latino messianic church.
It should be noted that there are actually a few Jewish sites in the neighborhood which have been well maintained by Messianic sects or churches which feel great affection for the Jewish symbolism.
Hopefully soon we will explore more of these sites together as well!
![Two girls wearing banners with slogan "ABOLISH CH[ILD] SLAVERY!!" in English and Yiddish ("(ני)דער מיט (קינד)ער שקלאפער(ײ)", "Nider mit Kinder Schklawerii"), one carrying American flag; spectators stand nearby. Probably taken during May 1, 1909 labor parade in New York City.](https://barrioboychik.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/abolish_child_slavery.jpg?w=382&resize=382%2C261#038;h=261 "Jewish girls protesting child labor:")
Barrio Boychik 