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From debutantes to Yom Kippur queens — early Jewish club life

On Valentine’s Day some 100 years ago, if you wanted to meet someone Jewish to date in Los Angeles, what would you do?
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February 11, 2016

On Valentine’s Day some 100 years ago, if you wanted to meet someone Jewish to date in Los Angeles, what would you do? With telephones in only 30 percent of households in 1915, and the thought of telephoning someone without first being properly introduced too brazen for polite company, how could you exercise your charm? People might send out personal announcements via telegram, but that certainly was no way to declare your single status. So, did that leave you with only the option of seeking out a matchmaker?

Long before swiping or Facebook, joining a club or attending one of its events could vastly improve your social life. At the well-heeled Concordia Club in particular, one could meet a Jewish gentleman or lady from a family of substantial means who might even invite you to the “Jr. Ball,” where young people “enjoyed dancing up to a late hour.” In the 1920s, if you were a single Zionist, you could meet other like-minded Jews at the Young Maccabees Social Club. And in the 1930s, at the Bachelors’ Club Sunday night dances, one could go stag.

The Concordia Club got its start in 1891 with a membership limited to 100 of Los Angeles’ most prominent Jewish families. It was formed largely to counteract a policy of “social exclusion” from other social clubs, according to “History of the Jews of Los Angeles” by Max Vorspan and Lloyd P. Gartner.

According to the organization’s board minutes, which are written in a loopy 19th-century hand and can be found at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum’s Seaver Center for Western History Research, the club’s first president was Leon Loeb, whose wife, Estelle, was a daughter of Los Angeles Jewish pioneers Harris and Sarah Newmark. The club’s treasurer was one of Estelle’s brothers, Maurice H. Newmark.

After first renting a former Elks Lodge, by 1894, the club had moved to Burbank Hall at 542 S. Main St., which afforded them “a large ballroom, reading room, card room and banquet hall,” according to Vorspan and Gartner.

A scrapbook can also be found at the Seaver Center, which was kept by club member Leah Hellman. Born in 1875, Leah’s father, Isaiah Hellman, was a merchant who was appointed L.A. city treasurer, and Isaiah’s younger cousin was Isaias W. Hellman, one of the founders of both Farmers and Merchants banks and, later, USC. The scrapbook includes several finely embossed invitations from which one can sense the rhythm of a year at the Concordia, filled with elegant parties and balls. The scrapbook opens first to a pasted-in English translation of the Ten Commandments and the Shema, and also includes several completely filled-in dance cards, such as one with the name of Adolph Fleishman (nephew of Isaias Hellman) penned in. Also in the scrapbook is a newspaper clipping announcing Leah’s wedding, in 1901, to Eugene J. Meyberg, with Rabbi Hecht of Congregation B’nai B’rith officiating. Tragically, in 1903, however, Leah died giving birth to a daughter.

In 1902, the Concordia Club opened a new three-story, richly furnished clubhouse at the corner of Figueroa Boulevard and 16th Street, referred to by Vorspan and Gartner as the “inner sanctum of high Jewish society.” Perhaps not so high-minded, however, as in the club’s board minutes are reports of battles over caterers and disputes about which members should be censured for bad behavior, as well as the amount of the fine ($5) to be exacted if a member was caught on a weeknight playing cards in the club room “later than 12.15 o’clock.”

Giving us a feel for a dance of that era, the social column of the Jan. 29, 1911 B’nai B’rith Messenger reported on a Jr. Ball at the Concordia at which, “About 90 young people enjoyed dancing up to a late hour. … The decorations were very effective, consisting of much greenery in pergola effect and colored lights. Ahrend’s orchestra furnished the music and punch and cakes were served during the evening,” the paper reported.

Not all doings at the club were New Year’s balls or debutante dances. Members went on group picnics and put on vaudeville shows, including a “Gran Vawdyvil Show,” and the Feb. 24, 1901 issue of the Herald reports a “Minstrel Entertainment” (minstrel shows remained popular in the U.S. until the early 1900s). Going beyond the boundaries of secular-themed events at the Concordia and moving into assimilationist territory, the club also sponsored an annual elaborate children’s Christmas party, which one year had a live orchestra, magician and catered food, according to a piece in the Dec. 22, 1902 edition of the Los Angeles Times.

As an item in the Messenger’s social column on Feb. 9, 1917 indicates, the Concordia’s clubhouse was used for Jewish community-minded social events as well: “On Thursday afternoon, February fourteenth, the Council of Jewish Women will give a card party for the benefit of a philanthropic fund at the Concordia Club House. This fund is to be devoted to scholarships for needy young girls.” In March of that same year, the Auxiliary of the Ida Straus Day Nursery also planned a dance and vaudeville show at the Concordia.

In 1915, with some of its membership driving to change the Concordia into a country club, as well as conflicts brewing over building ownership and sale of the property, the board minutes mark the building’s sale to the Musicians Mutual Protection Association in 1918. Perhaps as a legacy, when Hillcrest, the Jewish country club, was established in 1920, former Concordia member Samuel M. Newmark (nephew of Harris and Sarah Newmark) was among the founders, becoming Hillcrest’s first president.

Beginning in 1932, even if you weren’t among the chosen rich, you could head over to the Royal Palms Hotel in the elegant West Lake Park neighborhood, near Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, for a dance. These dances, put on by Benjamin Rose, along with a group he organized in 1931 called the Society Bachelors’ Fraternity, made the hotel a place where young Jewish adults could meet and foxtrot or swing to live big-band music for an admission price of 45 cents.

As reported by George J. Fogelson, who interviewed Rose in 1985, the first dance was a “huge success” with around 700 young people coming in “large numbers from all of the Jewish neighborhoods in Los Angeles, including Boyle Heights, West Adams, Temple Street and Santa Monica Boulevard near Western.”

By 1934, after many of his friends who had helped organize the dances had lost interest, Rose changed the name to the Bachelors’ Club and ran the weekly dances, held on Sunday nights, by himself. According to ads that ran weekly in the B’nai B’rith Messenger, as well as promotional matchbooks, the entertainment included Mickey Katz, “with his entire orchestra,” along with big bands fronted by the likes of Harry James and Woody Herman, as well as Carlos Chia and “his Latin Rhumba music.”

Despite the Great Depression, in the late 1930s, these dances were a huge financial success, and Rose began using a portion of the proceeds to help the children at the Julia Ann Singer Nursery in Boyle Heights, a nonprofit daycare for factory workers’ kids. Each Saturday, Rose and some of his friends would take about 15 children to the shoe department of the downtown May Co. store at Eighth and Hill streets and buy them shoes, an effort which continued until 1953, when the dances stopped, according to the Western States Jewish History.

In 1939, Rose began an annual tradition that would get him noticed in the Los Angeles Times — a crowning of a “Yom Kippur Queen” at a Yom Kippur Ball held once the Day of Repentance had ended. “Contestants for queen were nominated by local synagogues, youth groups and social clubs,” Western States reports. With around 150 contestants per year, the winner was chosen by a committee that included Rose and others who helped run the dances, and was selected “on the basis of popularity, beauty, education and charm.”

The Yom Kippur dances became so popular — an attendance figure of 2,500 is often cited — that some years they were held in larger venues than the Royal Palms, including at the Ambassador Hotel.

What clinched the news coverage was having the Yom Kippur Queen offer an invitation, with a photographer on hand, to an elected Los Angeles official to come to the dance. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, when Fay Ringer won in 1948, she invited City Council President Harold Henry. In 1950, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, ball-goers witnessed the coronation of Marge Weiss, a representative of Jr. Hadassah, by her guest, Police Chief William H. Parker. In 1951, Natalie Gold invited Roger W. Jessup, chairman of the county board of supervisors, to a dance held at the Officer’s Club on Sunset Boulevard.

But were the dances successful at bringing Jewish couples to wed under the chuppah? Rose felt so: He met his wife, Harriet Kay, at a dance in 1941.

Have an idea for a Los Angeles Jewish history story? Contact Edmon Rodman at edmojace@gmail.com. 

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