L.A.'s Wilshire Boulevard Temple rebuilds on past glory
The landmark temple, long a center of Jewish life in Los Angeles, is embarked on a multimillion-dollar expansion and renovation.
The landmark Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the oldest Jewish congregation in Los Angeles and one associated with the men who invented the motion picture industry, has begun a multimillion-dollar renovation and expansion that symbolizes the reversal of the Jewish exodus from the eastern part of the city.
Senior Rabbi Steven Leder said he didn't know how much the project will cost because the details are evolving. But the Reform temple already has spent $20 million buying the five pieces of land it didn't own on the block that runs from 6th Street to Wilshire Boulevard and Hobart to Harvard boulevards in Koreatown. It expects to spend an additional $30 million renovating its sanctuary -- and that is just a piece of the project.
"It's a massive job," the rabbi said. "It's not hard to run up a bill."
"The synagogue world has never seen a campaign of this magnitude," said David Mersky, a senior lecturer on Jewish philanthropy at Brandeis University whom temple leaders consulted. "If this campaign were to succeed, it will dwarf every other campaign by a minimum factor of two."
Leder hopes the project will turn Wilshire Boulevard Temple, still one of the largest congregations in the city, into the center of Jewish life in the region, and especially for the eastern part of the city, an area mostly abandoned by other congregations as Jews have moved west and dispersed throughout Southern California.
"We will build the most vibrant center of Jewish life the city has ever known because we can and we must," Leder told the congregation in his Yom Kippur sermon last year.
Leder, 48, said in an interview that the temple is following the return of younger Jews to places like Silver Lake, the Wilshire corridor, downtown and Los Feliz.
The expansion was not undertaken without serious study. A survey commissioned by the temple found that from 1995 to 2005, in the area roughly from La Cienega Boulevard to Glendale and from the Hollywood Hills to the Santa Monica Freeway, the number of Jews increased by 28%, about 4,000 more people.
"I think Wilshire Boulevard is very singularly positioned through the major project to really act as a magnet for Jews who live east of Beverly Hills, younger adults, younger families, so I think it's a very visionary initiative," said John Fishel, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
An estimated 500,000 to 600,000 Jews live in Southern California, making it the second-largest Jewish community in the country, after New York.
