Community Briefs

November 9, 2006

Two neighborhoods reveal Orthodox community’s fault lines

Pico-Robertson vs. Hancock Park

By Amy Klein

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But Diana Gruenbaum, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1982, is considering a move to Pico-Robertson.

"When I moved here people wouldn't say ' Good Shabbos' to me, because I wasn't completely covered. I was offended by it," she said. "It's less comfortable to be myself." She also wants to move because her son, Jason, and his new wife live in Pico-Robertson, after trying out Hancock Park for eight months unsuccessfully.

Naor, who also moved from Hancock Park and was instrumental with her husband in running the other major Modern Orthodox synagogue there, Sharei Tefila, says that some accused her of abandoning them because they were the "last stand."

"You don't want to feel like you have to go to shul because you have to," she said. Now, as a member of Muskin's shul in Pico, she and her husband are happy to be "among their own kind." "It's a distinct difference -- Zionist modern orthodoxy is a dying breed on that side of the town," she said.

But she tells a story of a house on her new block in Pico-Robertson being remodeled for an ultra-Orthodox family with two complete separate kitchens.

"All of a sudden they decided this side of the town is not for them, they needed to go to the other side, because they're more frum," she said, using the Yiddish word for religious.

The types of people moving from Pico-Robertson to Hancock Park also include people who grew up in Pico-Robertson but got more religious and secular people who got religious at ba'al teshuvah (return to the faith) institutions like Aish HaTorah and wanted to continue their religious growth.

"I see many people in Pico getting into yiddishkeit; it's a veritable incubator for teshuvah," one observer, who preferred not to be named, said about secular people getting into Judaism. "I don't see the growth made on the Westside. I see many people getting into it and staying at a certain plateau and not going further."

It seems to be a matter of perspective. What Harlow and other Modern Orthodox see as pressure to conform or failure to live up to the standards, others feel as a positive influence. What Naor likes about the openness and modernity others might feel is not religious enough.

Manny Saltiel had lived in Pico-Robertson for 11 years. But six years ago, he and his wife decided to move to the other side of the town after realizing they had many friends and that people there were simpatico.

Saltiel, 49, says before he moved to Hancock Park he was told about stereotypes.

"People warned us that it's too overbearingly religious, and unless you live up to high standards you won't be accepted," he said. "But we found it totally untrue. People are warm and friendly." "There is a problem with stereotypes," said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, who lives in the La Brea area but works at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Pico-Robertson and is familiar with both worlds. "People don't often bother looking at people on an individual basis and make assumptions, which leads to friction," he said. "There is a reduced sharing between the two communities, because the two stereotypes are seen as gospel truth, and it's like L.A.'s separation barrier."

What happens is that both sides lose out, Adlerstein said. "Anytime that you look at another group of people as a whole, you become judgmental and smug -- the exaggeration allows people to dismiss whole groups. By dismissing whole groups you can't recognize the qualities of individuals."

A number of religious communities around the country show a divide like the one in Los Angeles. In places where the community is small, the Orthodox band together, although differences threaten to pull them apart. Especially when they live in one location, as they do on Yates Street in East Memphis, Tenn.

There, a block with two Orthodox shuls is the center of the two-mile radius where most of Memphis's 2,500 religious Jews live. The flagship Modern Orthodox shul, Baron Hirsch (which was founded at a different location 150 years ago), boasts of a membership of more than 1,000 families and has attendance of 300-500 people each week.

Memphis is a community that is proud of its Southern hospitality and unity, where all stripes belong to the JCC and participate in Jewish federation events.

But when a yeshiva-ish community -- black hat families from a local kollel -- came to Memphis some 30 years ago, it caused tension.

"There was friction that they weren't mingling with the regular community," said Josh Kahane, a Memphis native who belongs to Baron Hirsch.

After a number of tries at their own minyan prayer groups, three years ago the newcomers founded The Young Israel of Memphis across the street from Baron Hirsch. Contrary to its Modern Orthodox-sounding affiliation with the Young Israel movement, it is actually an ultra-Orthodox synagogue with some 40 to 50 people and its own rabbi. With a new rabbi at Baron Hirsch, tensions have eased.

"There's more sense that even though the hashkafa's different, we can work together," Kahane said. Besides, as the two communities live side by side, there's a lot of intermingling: "You go to each other for lunch, because if you didn't go there then who would you go to? It's such a small community."

Not all small communities can get along well, though, especially if they aren't all living in the same half-mile radius.

In Denver, the divide is obvious.

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