Boyle Heights was at the core of Jewish life in Los Angeles during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the Fairfax District could claim that title until the 1980s. But the spiritual heartland of the Jewish community is now in Pico-Robertson.
When people picture a rabbi, they may imagine a man standing in front of a congregation in a synagogue. But "rabbi" means much more than that. For example, a rabbi could be a teacher, a nonprofit executive for a Jewish organization or a scholar of Jewish law - and, increasingly, some of those roles are held by Orthodox women. For decades, liberal denominations have permitted women to be ordained.
For the past 25 years, this process has been the rabbi's routine on both Thursday and Friday mornings: leaving his home in Monsey, an Orthodox enclave in Rockland County, hours before sunrise in order to circumnavigate the entire island of Manhattan. His mission: to check every part of the borough's eruv - the symbolic boundary, marked by strings and other man-made and natural elements, inside of which observant Jews may carry objects like food, keys and even babies on Shabbat and certain holidays.
As soon as I pulled up my scarf, a group of 100 men came over immediately and encircled me. They were shouting at me, threatening to rape me, chanting 'death to Arabs.' I thought the police would protect me from the mob, but they did nothing to intervene.