A Renewed ‘Temple to the Stars’

More than 1,000 people celebrated the inauguration of a new Iranian American Jewish center Sunday at a historic Hollywood site that was once known as “the temple to the stars.”

“This has been a dream of our community for many years,” said Ezat Delijani, president of the Iranian American Jewish Federation, which purchased the Hollywood Temple Beth El last August for $2.8 million.

The temple, now called Hollywood Temple Beth El/Iranian American Jewish Center, welcomes Jews of all backgrounds, said Delijani, who is also its new president.

Underneath the hazy afternoon sun, kippot-wearing men carried Torah scrolls wrapped in blue velvet down Crescent Heights Boulevard as ecstatic people with outstretched arms swarmed around them to touch or kiss the sacred texts.

The dedication of the center was a milestone for the Iranian American Jewish community in Los Angeles, many of whom immigrated only 20 years ago when the government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi collapsed and Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini’s Islamic fundamentalist regime seized control of the country.

Delijani said about 30,000 Iranian American Jews live in the Los Angeles area, the largest concentration of the population in the United States. Though the local community was served by about 10 temples, some with schools and facilities for gatherings, there were “none as big as this one,” he said.

Despite the festivities, there was a touch of melancholy for some members of Beth El, as the ceremony made official something they had known would be inevitable for a long time--the turning over of their temple to others.

“It’s quite an experience and a little sad,” said Frances Linsk, president of the temple from 1993 to 1997 and a member for 35 years. “It’s something we have to get used to.”

Founded in 1922, the Hollywood Temple Beth El was once one of the top synagogues in California, with a congregation that not only numbered more than 1,000 but also included Hollywood glitterati. Among its members were the Warner brothers, cosmetics mogul Max Factor, Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle, producer Joe Pasternak and film stars Carmel Myers and Edward G. Robinson.

The temple’s current 55,000-square-foot complex, opened in 1952, was funded in part by the Warner and Factor families, temple officials said.

But as members aged and their children moved away, Beth El’s congregation shrank. By last summer the number of people attending Saturday services in the main sanctuary built for 1,200 had dwindled to as few as 50, with an average age of about 75 or 80, said the temple’s immediate past president, Sanford Gaum.

In August, the Beth El congregation of Ashkenazi Jews--or Jews of Central or Eastern European origin--decided to sell the temple to the federation, whose members were Sephardic Jews from the Middle East.

The sale was a match made in heaven, Guam said. Beth El members had hoped to maintain the building as a synagogue rather than selling to developers who might turn the property into condominiums. The conservative Ashkenazi congregation also believed it had more in common, in many ways, with the new conservative Sephardic congregation than it would with orthodox or reform Ashkenazi congregations, Guam said.

The new Sephardic members, who already number more than 600, now hold Saturday services in Farsi and Hebrew in the main sanctuary, while the Ashkenazi congregation, whose services are in English and Hebrew, has moved into a smaller auditorium in the complex.

“We miss being there,” said Linsk of the main sanctuary, which has wood paneling, stained-glass windows and balcony seating, as well as the ark containing the Torah scrolls. “But we have to adjust.”

Zvi Dershowitz, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple who currently conducts the Ashkenazi services, said the new center should be celebrated by all Jews.

When Iranian Jews fled to the United States to escape persecution 20 years ago, Ashkenazi Jews in Los Angeles welcomed them with open arms, Dershowitz said.

Dershowitz led efforts to help Iranian Jews immigrate legally, find jobs and integrate into American society. Even now, “we should invite them into our home,” Dershowitz said. “We have much more in common than not--the same God, the same history [of persecution]. We only speak different languages and have different accents.”

The new center is also revitalizing an underutilized temple, its current leaders say.

Much more than a place to hold Saturday services, Delijani said, the center will be a place where people of all ages can gather and get to know each other seven days a week. Eventually there will be a school, a senior center and even athletic facilities at the site, he said. It will also host concerts, weddings, bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs.

As for people who are less enthusiastic about the change, Guam said, “there’s no point in talking about the great things that happened 50 years ago. That’s for telling stories at tea time,”

“Hollywood Temple Beth El had a long luxurious life,” Gaum said. “We’ve given it another life. We’re reborn.”