Walking past Cashio and Robertson Blvd last night on the way to Torah Talk, I noticed that the Sephardic shul on that north-west corner was no more. The building was empty. It had signs up saying vacant.
Prior to Sephardi shul, there was a Breslover shul at this location.
Who’s moving in next? Will this holy site go for profane purposes?
I’ve also noticed that what used to be a Sephardic day school just north of Cashio, south of Pico, is no more. It has been replaced by a school teaching Spanish and Mandarin immersion.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry for South-Robertson:
In 2009, the Los Angeles Times’s “Mapping L.A.” project supplied these “Pico-Robertson” neighborhood statistics: population: 18,019; median household income: $63,356.[3]
[edit]Education
Part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the neighborhood is served by Canfield, Crescent Heights, Shenandoah, and Castle Heights elementary schools and Emerson Middle School. The high school for the South Robertson neighborhood is Hamilton High School. The magnet school Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES) is in the nearby Faircrest Heights neighborhood.
[edit]Jewish community
The neighborhood features more than thirty Certified Kosher restaurants [1], including delis, Chinese, Italian and Mexican restaurants, a donut shop, a frozen yogurt shop, bakeries, and butchers. The community features four men’s mikvahs and one woman’s mikvah, the largest known as the Los Angeles Mikvah. There are several Jewish day schools located in the Pico Robertson area. The Chabad community operates four schools, Bais Chaya Mushka and Bais Chana, both of which are on Pico Boulevard, as well as the newly relocated Cheder Menachem on La Cienega. Yeshiva University High School has campuses on both South Robertson Boulevard and West Pico Boulevard, in the heart of the Pico-Robertson Jewish community.
The community overall has a wide variety of Jewish denominational groups. Over the past two decades, the Orthodox community has grown to become the most largest Jewish denomination in the area. This is evident in the growth of the Hasidic community. According to Chabad [2], the Hasidic movement has eleven centers in the immediate Pico-Robertson area, including the two high schools, boys cheder, day school, six synagogues, and a community center. Minyan Finder reports over twenty synagogues operating in the area.
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and on YouTube. Facebook Fan Page.
This week we study Parashat Korach (Numbers 16:1-18:32).
