Bringing the history of Jews in L.A. into clearer focus

What is the Jewish experience in Los Angeles?

“Nobody even thinks about Jews being here or, if they do, maybe they think about Hollywood,” said Karen Wilson, guest curator at the Autry National Center. “They might possibly, if they’re local, think about Boyle Heights. But there’s not a sort of instantly recognizable image.”

The question is at the heart of a new exhibit, “Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic.” It proposes many answers in many voices, speaking in a multitude of tongues.

“It hopefully will remind us although we may have different pasts, we may have different specific experiences, we all share the present and we shape the future together,” said Wilson, curator of the exhibit.

Amid the broad array of experiences and opinions, several recurring themes emerge. Jews in Los Angeles have a rich history, beginning with Jacob Frankfort’s arrival about 1841, and it is a history that remains to be explored.

In discussing the exhibit’s section on the city’s Sephardic Jews, local historian Arthur Benveniste talked about his family, which was from the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea and spoke Ladino.

“I grew up thinking the Jews spoke Spanish,” he said. “When I got to high school, somebody told me there’s a club for Jewish boys. So I found it and I joined. And these guys didn’t speak Spanish. They spoke something I never heard of called Yiddish.”

Consider the story told by Stephen J. Sass, head of the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California, about the historic Breed Street Shul just off Cesar Chavez Avenue hosting a pre-Grammy concert by Quetzal, the East L.A. band that won an award for best Latin alternative album. This too is part of the city’s Jewish history.

Building on the museum’s 2002-03 show “Jews in the American West,” the exhibit features some artifacts that have an obvious Los Angeles connection.

There’s a baseball signed by Sandy Koufax, three of Billy Wilder’s Academy Awards, a piece of the city’s second synagogue built in 1896 by the predecessor of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a “Scroll of Fame” inscribed by dozens of Max Factor’s famous clients and a set of monogrammed plates brought from France about 1860 by merchant Solomon Lazard, one of the founders of the Hebrew Benevolent Society, the city’s first Jewish organization.

But a Barbie doll? A poster reading “War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things”? These too are part of the city’s Jewish history.

Wilson explained why she included Lorraine Art Schneider’s tiny, original 1966 artwork, which was transformed into one of the icons against the Vietnam War.

“Los Angeles doesn’t get any credit for anything,” Wilson said. “Like nothing really happens here and we’re all narcissistic, that we don’t pay attention to what happens in the rest of the world.”

“Finding that piece, making that connection.... This is one of the most influential cultural pieces of the 20th century, and it’s a product of Los Angeles, and it’s a product of a Los Angeles Jew. How much more important can it be for this show?”

“Mosaic” is more than an exhibit. It’s a two-way conversation, as if to say: “If your story isn’t here, please add it.” For example, visitors can trace their migration across the city using lengths of string, transforming a map of Los Angeles into a network of people in transition.

Asked about her own story, Wilson said she came to Los Angeles from Texas in 1974, and earned a master’s in Judaic studies at Hebrew Union College and a doctorate in history at UCLA. “I’m a transplant but I’m rooted here,” she said. “I moved to Manhattan for four months but I was homesick so I came back.”

Yes, Los Angeles is not New York.

Political scientist Raphael Sonenshein described coming to Los Angeles after having been told “by everyone on the East Coast” that an interracial coalition in politics was impossible.

“So it was quite a shock to me when I arrived in Los Angeles in 1974 and got hired as an intern by Mayor Tom Bradley, that the city was being governed by a black-Jewish coalition, which I had been told ... could not possibly exist. I felt like I was an anthropologist who had found a lost tribe.”

“When Israeli politicians come to the United States, they are used to going to two places: New York City and Washington,” he said. “They go to Washington to talk to the politicians, they go to New York to talk to the organizations and to hear a single point of view from New York, which they decide they are very comfortable with.

“When they come out here, they get a little bit at sea. ‘I don’t recognize this Jewish community out here.’ If Jerusalem and Tel Aviv can be different in terms of their orientations, why can’t New York City and Los Angeles ? ... In fact there is kind of an L.A.-as-Tel Aviv and New York-as-Jerusalem.”

Still another view was expressed by USC history professor Steven J. Ross: “I think if you were to ask ‘What’s the Jewish experience in Los Angeles?’ the question is ‘How many Jews do you have?’ And that’s how many experiences you have.”

larry.harnisch@latimes.com