Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel

Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel describes itself as an inclusive, traditional Sephardic Jewish community that welcomes Jews of different cultural backgrounds and affiliations.[1] Its understanding of Sephardic tradition extends beyond religious practice to encompass art, music, literature, and food.[1] A 2008 census categorized the temple's Talmud Torah as Conservative. A 1960 directory included one Conservative entry and a duplicate Orthodox entry for the same address and telephone number, a discrepancy discussed below.[2][3]

The congregation is in the Westwood neighborhood and is listed at 10500 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90024.[4][2] Services at the temple incorporate English, Hebrew, some Ladino, and some Farsi, the last reflecting the congregation's Persian Jewish membership.[4]

The temple's institutional history traces organized Sephardic life in Los Angeles to an influx at the beginning of the twentieth century, primarily from the Ottoman Empire — including Salonica, Egypt, Turkey, and Rhodes.[5] The congregation identifies Mordecai Zeitoun, a native of Algeria, as the first Sephardic Jew to arrive in twentieth-century Los Angeles; he and his daughter Rose came in late 1904, and their son Roger, born February 14, 1907, is described as the first known Sephardi born in the city.[5]

An early communal organization, the Avat Shalom Society, was founded by 1912 but later dissolved amid ethnic differences and disputes as Sephardim arrived from different parts of the Levant.[5] A diarist named David d'Ancona had written of Los Angeles as early as 1876: "Los Angeles is the Damascus of America" — a description the congregation cites as a prelude to its own founding generation.[5]

On February 1, 1920, a group of immigrants formally organized the Sephardic Community of Los Angeles — also known as La Communidad — at a meeting held at Walker Auditorium, 730 S. Grand Avenue, at 2:00 p.m.[6] Rabbi Abraham Caraco served as the community's first rabbi, and Adolphe de Castro Danziger was elected its first president, with Mandolino Levy as provisional president and Jose Estrugo as vice president and secretary.[6] Monthly dues were set at one dollar per member.[6]

In 1924, La Communidad purchased property at 52nd Street and Second Avenue for a synagogue, but construction proved impossible as funds were nearly exhausted.[6] Rabbi Caraco died in 1925 and was succeeded by Rabbi David Tovi; community members volunteered as cantors, and Moise H. Hattem served as the first Gabbai.[6] That same year, Mme. Rebecca Hattem founded the Sephardic Sisterhood.[6] As membership grew, the congregation sold the 52nd Street property in 1928 and purchased a $12,000 site at Santa Barbara and LaSalle Avenues, with fundraisers and banquets supporting construction.[6] A groundbreaking ceremony was held on September 1, 1931.[7]

Among those central to this era was the Amado family, whose grandparents had emigrated from Izmir, Turkey.[4] Rafael Amado helped raise funds for the building; his sons Milton and Richard and his grandson Ralph Amado all remained involved with the congregation across subsequent decades.[4]

The Santa Barbara Avenue temple, named Tifereth Israel, was completed and dedicated in 1932 and is described by the congregation as the first Sephardic synagogue built in Los Angeles.[7] It was a cream-colored stucco building in a California style, with a central tevah facing the ark; men and women sat alongside one another so that families were not separated.[7] The temple's history records Rabbi Jacob M. Ott's description of the arrangement: "The rabbi isn't the center of the service. The Torah is and the community sees itself around it."[7]

A 1960 national synagogue directory recorded the congregation as "Sephardic Community of L.A. — Temple Tifereth Israel" at 1561 West Santa Barbara Avenue, listing Rabbi Jacob M. Ott and president Richard J. Amado and classifying it as Conservative.[3] Postwar growth eventually made the building too small for the expanding congregation.[8]

In 1959, the congregation merged with Haim VaHessed, also known as the Sephardic Brotherhood, a group that had split from the community in 1926.[8] The combined body took the name The Sephardic Community and Brotherhood of Los Angeles, and Rabbi Jacob M. Ott — described in one oral-history account as Ashkenazi and originally from Chicago — was invited to lead it that year.[8][4] He served until retiring in 1992 and took a deep interest in Sephardic heritage throughout his tenure.[4][8]

As members moved westward, congregation leaders sought to preserve Sephardic culture, heritage, and religious rites within the broader Ashkenazic landscape of Los Angeles Jewry.[8] By the time of the 1970 groundbreaking for a new site at Wilshire Boulevard and Warner Avenue, the temple family numbered more than 600 members.[8]

In 1993, Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel merged with Sephardic Beth Shalom, formerly the Sephardic Hebrew Center, a union the temple's history presents as reuniting communities that had originally shared a common root in the Avat Shalom society founded in 1912.[9] A 2014 study's appendix later listed the congregation with a membership figure of 500; this was a study-reported count rather than a current membership estimate.[10]

The congregation moved to the Wilshire and Warner site in 1975, before its sanctuary was complete, initially holding services in Amado Hall, named for benefactor Maurice Amado.[9] A two-day Sephardic '79 festival raised funds for the sanctuary, which was dedicated in September 1981.[9] More than 1,000 guests attended the dedication, at which the Torah scrolls were carried in procession accompanied by youth and elders, a canopy, song, and shofar blasts.[9] California Governor Jerry Brown addressed the gathering, and the Maurice Amado Foundation provided the main sanctuary.[9] The temple's own account characterizes the completed building as "new in substance but old in spirit and tradition."[9]

The sanctuary's stained-glass windows depict the history of Sephardic Jewry from the Golden Age in Spain through the settlement of Sephardic Jews in Greater Los Angeles, incorporating religious institutions and Sephardic figures.[11] Sephardic-Israeli artist Raphael Abecassis designed the windows, which were commissioned by the Maurice Amado Foundation as a living memorial honoring Dr. Morris and Regina Amado Tarica and were dedicated on January 24, 1994.[11]

On October 1, 1987, King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain visited the temple and were greeted by Rabbi Ott and congregation leaders.[9] Six shofroth sounded as the royal couple entered the sanctuary, and the congregation sang "Havenu Shalom Alehem."[9] Their visit lasted approximately 45 minutes, during which a 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck Los Angeles.[9] The temple's history characterizes the occasion as the first visit by a Spanish monarch to a Jewish synagogue in more than 500 years.[9]

High Holiday services at the temple incorporate Ladino prayers and customs alongside Hebrew and English.[4] These include Ein Keloheinu and the closing Neilah prayer El Nora, performed in both Hebrew and Ladino.[4] Farsi is also used during services to accommodate Persian congregants, reflecting the congregation's evolving demographic composition.[4]

The Sisterhood of the congregation published a cookbook, Cooking the Sephardic Way, likely in the 1970s, and a later cookbook project incorporated Persian and other recipes as a means of drawing together the community's changing membership.[4] An oral-history account noted that the proportion of congregants with active comprehension of Ladino had diminished considerably over time.[4]

The archives of Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel formed the first major acquisition of the UCLA Sephardic Archive Center.[12] The donated materials document Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and North African Jews who migrated to California in the early twentieth century, the development of Sephardic culture in Los Angeles, and Sephardic Jews' contributions to the city's Jewish and urban life.[12] The collection includes photographs, audiovisual material, and rare books dating to the mid-nineteenth century, with many rare documents written in Ladino.[12]

The archive's initial focus was the Ladino-speaking community whose roots lay in Turkey and the Balkans, with a planned expansion to materials from North African, Iranian, and other Middle Eastern communities.[12] Archive director Sarah Abrevaya Stein cautioned that such documents could be fragile and at risk of permanent loss when kept in unsuitable storage conditions and said, in translation, that it was imperative "to collect them, preserve them, and make them available to scholars and members of the community."[12]

Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel was among the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish organizations that signed a letter dated August 4, 2019, addressed to the California Board of Education's Instructional Quality Commission.[13] The letter provided feedback on the proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, raising concerns about the representation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish experiences, antisemitism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[13] The letter was coordinated by JIMENA, an advocacy organization focused on Jewish communities from the Middle East and North Africa.[13]

The congregation's 1920 founding is distinct from the opening of its first synagogue building. An HUC oral-history interview recalled the building as opening in 1930, while the institutional history dates its completion and dedication to 1932.[4][7] The temple's history page gives the dedication date as February 21, 1932, while its timeline page gives February 12, 1932.[7][14] The 1920 founding account similarly records two attendance figures — forty young immigrants who formed the community and thirty-nine men at the first organizational meeting — without resolving the difference.[6]

The 1960 national synagogue directory contains two entries for Temple Tifereth Israel at the same address and telephone number but lists different presidents and different classification codes — one Conservative, one Orthodox — without explanation.[3] Lindheim's suggestion that the congregation had not really had a Sephardic rabbi until around the time of Rabbi Bouskila, and her speculation that Sephardic Beth Shalom may have had more Ladino-speaking people in its leadership and clergy, are qualified personal recollections; the 1993 merger itself is separately recorded in the temple's institutional history.[4][9]