Beit Olam: The Forever Homes of East L.A.’s Jewish Cemeteries
Cindy Olnick 00:00
Today on Save As: Layers of history go underground.
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Trudi Sandmeier 00:11
Welcome to Save As, the podcast that focuses on the next generation of heritage conservation scholarship and students from the University of Southern California heritage conservation program. I’m Trudi Sandmeier.
Cindy Olnick 00:23
And I’m Cindy Olnick.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:25
So Cindy, yesterday, I believe you have some news to share with our Save As audience.
Cindy Olnick 00:31
I’m so excited to share this news. Thank you to everyone who did our Save As survey. We got such great information and we are going to use all of your comments to continue making Save As even better because that is possible. Thank you to Sian Winship for your help putting it together. And I’m super excited to announce we have a winner of the mug. Okay, congratulations to … [drum roll] Chloe Cuffel!
Trudi Sandmeier 01:07
The winner of…
Cindy Olnick 01:08
A highly collectible limited edition bespoke branded Save As mug.
Trudi Sandmeier 01:13
You know, people are really interested in getting their hands on one of these mugs. Might they be able to win one if they haven’t won one yet?
Cindy Olnick 01:21
Yeah, I definitely think so. I think we’re gonna leave that survey up there because why not? So if you haven’t yet had a chance to do our three-minute survey, please go to saveas.place, complete the survey and you too, may win. You can’t win if you don’t play.
Trudi Sandmeier 01:42
So true.
Cindy Olnick 01:43
Speaking of place we at Save As are all about place. And today, we’re about the final resting place.
Trudi Sandmeier 01:51
Yeah, I had a recent conversation with alumna Rachel Trombetta who did her thesis work on the Jewish cemeteries of East Los Angeles. They have lots of interesting challenges associated with their conservation. And so we explored that a little bit.
Cindy Olnick 02:05
You know, cemeteries mean so many things to so many different cultures and people around Los Angeles around the U.S. around the world. So this is just one little slice of that, but it’s super important. So let’s listen to Trudi’s conversation with Rachel Trombetta.
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Trudi Sandmeier 02:27
Welcome, Rachel, to the Save As universe. Thanks for coming to chat with us today about your thesis and about what’s going on with you and what you’ve been doing since you graduated.
Rachel Trombetta 02:37
Thank you so much for having me.
Trudi Sandmeier 02:38
You had kind of a different path coming into heritage conservation. And had a really interesting work history prior to coming to grad school. Let’s talk about that a little bit.
Rachel Trombetta 02:49
So, I grew up a little bit on the East Coast, then moved to LA when I was about eight years old. I ended up back in New York City for college and stayed there for a few years after college. I got an undergrad degree in art history from NYU. And then, I actually grew up in a film family, so we moved to Los Angeles when I was a kid because my father is a film editor. So really film is basically a family business for me. And I was interested in getting into it. So after I graduated from undergrad, I fell into working in the locations department for film and television, which is a really interesting department that a lot of people don’t really know about, they don’t really know what they do. But some of the more glamorous aspects of it involve scouting houses, apartments, buildings, and I was lucky enough to work on a period television show shortly after graduating.
And so when I was working in locations, actually was exposed to all of these beautiful buildings in New York City, especially in Staten Island, which is really interesting. A lot of people don’t make it down there. I’ve always loved old architecture, I’ve always loved seeing history through buildings. And so it was really fun working in the locations department and being exposed to these buildings for work. But I got more and more interested in wanting to work in these buildings, with these buildings and help to save these buildings. And so when I was working as a location coordinator in New York City, I started getting more involved in the New York City preservation world and ultimately decided to go to grad school, just to kind of fulfill, you know, a different interest that I had, and then I still have.
Trudi Sandmeier 04:31
Okay, so you came back here to LA to go to grad school. Why did you make that choice?
Rachel Trombetta 04:38
So I chose to come back to LA for grad school for a few reasons. Well, one reason was that I, in general, I miss Los Angeles. My family is here. A lot of my friends are here. I missed the city, and I wanted to come back and I felt like it was a really great place for me to try a new thing, to grow a new career. I decided to stay in LA and go to the USC heritage conservation program because it just seemed like a really great opportunity to try new things. It was a really great place to explore a new part of my identity, my interests, and I had a really great time exploring all of that.
Trudi Sandmeier 05:16
As happens when you finish your degree, we make you write a thesis. So you picked a very interesting topic. Tell me what the title of your thesis is.
Rachel Trombetta 05:27
The title of my thesis is “Beit Olam: A Home Everlasting — The Jewish Cemeteries of East Los Angeles.” So Beit Olam means a forever home. And, you know, when you think of cemeteries, you think a cemetery really is, it’s going to be a cemetery forever, right? So if a cemetery is established, it’s going to be there forever. And in the Jewish tradition, this is taken very seriously. When Jews move to a new community, the first thing that they do is establish a burial ground because for them, it means that they’re establishing their roots and that this is the place that they’re going to stay. So a cemetery is a really important cultural touchstone for the Jewish community.
Trudi Sandmeier 06:12
The Jewish community in Los Angeles, was established pretty early on in the city’s history, where and when, when did that all start here in LA?
Rachel Trombetta 06:22
I believe there were about eight Jews in LA when it was first established as a city and the Jewish community, for the most part, really centered itself in downtown Los Angeles during the 19th century. So the first Jewish cemetery in LA was actually established in what we now know as the Chavez Ravine. During the 19th century, the Jewish community mostly lived and worked in downtown Los Angeles. By the 1910s, increasing industry and crowded housing in downtown caused the Jewish community to start leaving the area. And working class Jews who were often from Eastern Europe moved east across the river to Boyle Heights, and neighboring City Terrace where they could find affordable single-family residences and fresh air and they could travel via streetcar to their downtown workplaces.
Trudi Sandmeier 07:14
So there seems to be a lot of cemeteries in and around Boyle Heights. What’s the story there? Why are there so many cemeteries over there?
Rachel Trombetta 07:22
In early Los Angeles history, most of the cemeteries in LA were located around downtown. And as the 19th century went on, the cemeteries you know, gradually became too small, they ran out of room, they became derelict, they were unsightly. And so there became a need to create new cemeteries elsewhere. Also in the 19th century, there was this idea of miasma, the concept of miasma. Basically, people thought that if you lived close to a cemetery, you could potentially become sick from the fumes emanating from people buried in the cemetery. And so there became a need to create more cemeteries elsewhere. And when they were looking for open land, Boyle Heights became a location for potential cemeteries. So Evergreen Cemetery was established in Boyle Heights. And so when there were attempts made to establish more cemeteries in Boyle Heights, the community, because of this fear of miasma, but also because they believed real estate prices would be affected by having a cemetery in their neighborhood, really did not want the cemeteries in their neighborhood. And so many cities at the time, not just Los Angeles, were creating laws, prohibiting new cemeteries within city limits, people started looking across the city lines into unincorporated Los Angeles County. And that’s how cemeteries ended up in East LA.
Trudi Sandmeier 08:54
There’s a lot of them though. There’s kind of a crazy concentration of cemeteries in a really small area.
Rachel Trombetta 09:01
There are 11 cemeteries still existing in this area that’s within a two square mile radius of Boyle Heights and East LA.
Trudi Sandmeier 09:10
Yeah, that’s a lot. That’s a crazy lot.
Rachel Trombetta 09:12
Yeah.
Trudi Sandmeier 09:14
So you can understand why people would be freaked out about having all of these places filled with dead people around their neighborhood. I mean, you know, that seems valid.
Rachel Trombetta 09:25
It that does seem valid to me, I get it.
Trudi Sandmeier 09:27
But they’re not all Jewish cemeteries, right? There’s different denominations that created cemeteries specifically for links to a particular church or a particular congregation. But your thesis was specifically focusing on the Jewish cemeteries in East LA. So why those what was the interest for you in focusing on those cemeteries?
Rachel Trombetta 09:50
So actually, when I was trying to come up with a topic for my thesis, I really didn’t know what I was going to write about, but I knew that Boyle Heights in particular was a really interesting neighborhood. It has all of these layers of multicultural history. It’s been an immigrant community for years and years and years. And not just a Jewish immigrant community. So I was driving around and just trying to come up with inspiration for my thesis. And I happened to go a little farther east into East LA and all of a sudden, I started seeing the cemeteries and there’s so many cemeteries. And not only are there so many, but many of them are immigrant cemeteries, and these three cemeteries in particular, I just truly happened to drive by. And they were so interesting to me, because they look like no other cemetery that I had seen in the area, or even in the rest of the United States. So I was instantly interested. I always loved cemeteries, but I had kind of a casual love for cemeteries.
Trudi Sandmeier 10:57
And all that has changed now.
Rachel Trombetta 10:58
Yes. And now I am, I’m the cemetery friend in my group. I’m the cemetery fanatic.
Trudi Sandmeier 11:03
Oh, you’re that one.
Rachel Trombetta 11:04
Yes. These cemeteries are really interesting, because they are Jewish and they are primarily Orthodox Jewish in style. And it was so surprising to come across them in that area, because now East LA is primarily Latino, and it’s almost 100% Mexican American. And so I just was so curious, why were the cemeteries here? Why did they look the way they look?
Trudi Sandmeier 11:28
Totally.
Rachel Trombetta 11:29
I was curious about what the story was.
Trudi Sandmeier 11:30
Well, that’s as good a reason as any to start writing a thesis about it. Figure it out as you go.
Rachel Trombetta 11:37
Yeah, there you go.
Trudi Sandmeier 11:38
All right. So you focused on four cemeteries in particular.
Rachel Trombetta 11:43|So in the 19th century, the Jewish cemetery that was established in Chavez Ravine was already having problems. It was very small. It was on hill. When it rained, it was muddy, and they couldn’t get up to the cemetery. And they needed a new cemetery. In 1902. The B’Nai B’rith congregation, which was the first Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, and later became the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, purchased 30 acres in East LA for Home of Peace Cemetery, and they moved all of the bodies from the original Jewish cemetery to the new cemetery via horse and cart. And Home of Peace was really the preeminent Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles for many years. There are many studio heads buried at Home of Peace. There’s a couple of the Three Stooges, famous actors, really the Jewish who’s who of Los Angeles was buried in Home of Peace. Home of Peace is a pretty large cemetery. They offer many different types of burial, cremation, and they’ve gone through some changes in ownership, but they still exist today. They’re still performing burials. They have a pretty established endowment fund. Home of Peace is still very active and still providing burials for the Jewish community in Los Angeles.
Trudi Sandmeier 13:03
But there are these three other smaller cemeteries that are kind of right nearby. What’s the story with those three?
Rachel Trombetta 13:10
Two out of the three were established by independent congregations in Los Angeles, orthodox congregations. Beth Israel Cemetery was established in 1906 by Congregation Beth Israel which was the oldest orthodox congregation in LA. Agudath Achim Cemetery was established by the Orthodox Agudath Achim congregation and Mount Zion Cemetery, which is in between the two was actually established by the Jewish Free Burial Society. And it was initially established to provide proper orthodox burials for indigent Jews who might not be able to afford a proper burial.
Trudi Sandmeier 13:51
So you said you really notice these graveyards when you drove down the street because they looked really different. So what do they look like?
Rachel Trombetta 13:58
So the majority of the graves have these upright headstones and are covered lengthwise with concrete ledgers or slabs. The cemeteries are also organized in really tight rows, they’re packed very tightly, there’s no greenery, there’s no green space, they have paths that go through. And there are also a lot of ceramic memorial portraits on these headstones.
Trudi Sandmeier 14:23
So it’s a picture of the person who’s buried there.
Rachel Trombetta 14:26
Ceramic memorial portraits are photos of the deceased that have been fired and killed, covered in resin and placed on the headstone. They’re really beautiful because it allows you to see the person who was buried there and it creates this really strong connection. They are also very susceptible to damage though. So Beth Israel was established in 1906. Mount Sinai was established in 1916. And Agudath Achim was established in 1919. So they were all established within about 20 years after Home of Peace on Whittier Boulevard.
Trudi Sandmeier 15:00
Did they fill up? Or why did people stop using the cemeteries?
Rachel Trombetta 15:05
So there was a combination of factors that led to the cemeteries not being used as much. Following World War Two Jewish communities, Jewish businesses, Jewish congregations were all moving westward. And Boyle Heights was becoming an increasingly Latino neighborhood. By the 1970s there were very few Jews left in Boyle Heights.
Trudi Sandmeier 15:28
And so they were pretty far away from the cemeteries. Did they create new cemeteries at that point?
Rachel Trombetta 15:34
Jewish people started burying their loved ones in newer and more modern cemeteries that were being established on the Westside and in the Valley, closer to where these Jewish communities were.
Trudi Sandmeier 15:45
So what becomes of these Jewish cemeteries at this point?
Rachel Trombetta 15:48
The congregations and societies establishing these smaller cemeteries were moving, they were dissolving, they were getting smaller, they were merging with other congregations. And ultimately, the two smaller cemeteries that were owned by congregations were sold to a for-profit, Jewish mortuary. Also, at the same time, Boyle Heights was kind of losing its reputation at the heart of the Jewish community. As time went on, people kind of forgot that Boyle Heights had been a center of Jewish life in the early 20th century. And I know that when I was growing up in LA, if you asked me where the Jewish neighborhood was, I would have probably said the Fairfax district, and even today now, people would probably say that the center for Jewish life is Pico Robertson, it’s no longer the Fairfax district. And the Jewish community as it’s moved has really lost a lot of its connections with Boyle Heights and East LA.
Trudi Sandmeier 16:46
What are the issues that they’re grappling with now in terms of keeping the cemeteries in good shape and viable and even open?
Rachel Trombetta 16:55
So Home of Peace is still an active cemetery, they have burials, and they have established an endowment fund. So an endowment fund basically ensures that there are funds that will go towards the maintenance of the cemetery in the future. Beth Israel and Agudath Achim have experienced some damage due to vandalism, just general ground settling, earthquake damage, and the ceramic portraits are particularly vulnerable. They’re very easily damaged, and over the years, they’ve actually been used for target practice. The smaller cemeteries now are almost full, they don’t have any endowment funds to care for their future. Donors do their best, but without an endowment fund the future of the cemeteries is pretty precarious. Mount Zion has been experiencing cycles of damage, and community-funded restoration for decades now. One of the quotes that I included in my thesis that really just sums it up is John Llewellyn of Forest Lawn said, a cemetery is the only business that sells something once and takes care of it forever.
Trudi Sandmeier 18:04
Right. So it’s a huge challenge to come up with the money to keep taking care of these things when the people themselves have passed away, their families have moved away, and they’re not close by, paying attention to these to these places anymore.
Rachel Trombetta 18:22
I think an interesting thing about these cemeteries is not only is the Jewish community really distanced from the cemeteries geographically, but also traditionally, Jewish people are not encouraged to visit cemeteries. Often, Orthodox Jewish doctrine teaches that Judaism is a religion of life, and not of death. So you limit the amount of death that you bring into your life. And part of that means not regularly visiting the cemetery and memorializing the loved one at home, rather than focusing on the cemetery as the place where you remember them.
Trudi Sandmeier 18:59
Yeah, so it creates a really big disconnect for these particular small cemeteries linked to the Orthodox communities that make it especially challenging.
Rachel Trombetta 19:08
Exactly.
Trudi Sandmeier 19:09
There’s some challenges just from a conservation perspective about cemeteries. What are some things that make cemeteries hard to conserve?
Rachel Trombetta 19:18
Cemeteries are extremely complicated, they’re kind of an interesting niche in the conservation world. One of the issues with cemeteries is that it’s really difficult to adaptively reuse them. With a historic building, there’s the potential to adaptively reuse it; you can turn it into a home, you can turn it into a business, it can create profits, and you can use those profits to then restore the building in the future. A cemetery is a cemetery forever, you can’t change that. And sometimes people have been able to create really interesting programming to help fund cemeteries.
So a good example of that is Hollywood Forever. Partners with Cinespia to have movie nights on the lawn. Also, Congressional Cemetery in Washington DC has this really great dog walkers program where members can walk their dogs off-leash on the cemetery grounds. And that covers like a quarter of their yearly operating budget. But with every cemetery you’re not necessarily going to be able to do that. So there’s always a question of ethics. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of having entertainment and activities and programming on cemetery grounds. So three out of the four Jewish cemeteries in East LA are very small. They’re very tightly packed, there’s no grass or space to do any programming. And so unfortunately, they really can only be used at a cemetery.
Trudi Sandmeier 20:46
Cemeteries are a category of landmark that we kind of typically stay away from, because unless the design of the cemetery itself is significant, you know, there’s always famous people buried in a cemetery. There’s always important city figures, you know, people important in history who are in a cemetery. So if we landmarked all of them, every cemetery would be a landmark. And we don’t do that in conservation at all. It’s the exception rather than the rules.
Rachel Trombetta 21:17
Yeah. So there are limited tools that are available to conserve the cemeteries, and ultimately, a lot of cemetery conservation comes down to grassroots efforts to create interest and create connection between communities and their local cemeteries.
Trudi Sandmeier 21:35
And that’s a challenge in East Los Angeles when the Jewish community lives far away, and that they’re not park-like spaces necessarily, or at least the three smaller ones are not, it’s really a different experience going there. It’s a lot of concrete.
Rachel Trombetta 21:51
Okay. So when I was researching the cemeteries and trying to figure out why they look the way they look, why they have these upright headstones, why they have the concrete ledgers. One thing that I thought was interesting is, if you’ve ever been to a Jewish cemetery, you probably noticed that it is a tradition in Jewish cemeteries to leave little stones on top of somebody’s headstone when you’re visiting, and it mostly has now become a sentimental thing, it indicates that person is loved that person was visited, it’s a little token instead of leaving flowers. But there are some theories that the reason why Jewish people leave stones on someone’s headstone goes back to when, long, long ago, when we would bury our loved ones where they died and then placed stones on top of the grave to protect the bodies from wild animals, disrupting the bodies. And so every time you visited somebody’s grave, you would leave another stone, it was a way to keep the grave safe. But it also indicated respect and love. And so there is a theory that these concrete ledgers have evolved as a continuation of this tradition of stones, of leaving stones on top of the burial site.
Trudi Sandmeier 23:13
Yeah, that’s super interesting, and really different than a lot of other cultural traditions in the way that they handle their burials, for sure.
Rachel Trombetta 23:20
Yeah.
Trudi Sandmeier 23:21
And it makes the cemetery look really different and unique. It’s just a completely different vibe. I encourage everyone to go and look at the show notes for this episode, because we’re going to have a bunch of photos of these cemetery so you can really get a sense of what it looks like. Or better yet, drive out to East LA and see them yourself. Let’s turn the page. So what have you been up to since graduating?
Rachel Trombetta 23:44
So I’ve continued to work in film, and I still work in locations. But I also work as an art department researcher for film and TV, which has been really great, because I’ve been able to combine my researching expertise that I learned in the heritage conservation program, and through researching this thesis with film, and it’s been a really interesting combination. It’s been really fun.
Trudi Sandmeier 24:07
When you work in the location department for film and television, what does that mean? What do you do?
Rachel Trombetta 24:13
So the locations department is responsible not only for finding the locations that we film in, but also for making it all happen? It’s a lot of logistics. So you’re working with the homeowners, you’re working with neighborhoods, you’re working with communities, you’re working with the city, you’re filing permits, but you’re also making sure that the locations are treated properly and are left the way that you found them. And if anything comes up, you help restore them.
Trudi Sandmeier 24:44
Because filming can be tough on places and historic buildings sometimes get kind of abused in the filming process. So the role of the location. People are very important when it comes to historic resources and making sure that they are in as good or better shape as they were when you found them.
Rachel Trombetta 25:03
Yeah.
Trudi Sandmeier 25:04
But it is really sometimes a huge source of income for historic places to work with the film and television industry as a way to help pay for restoration work that needs to be done. Because everybody benefits then as long as it’s done carefully, right? Exactly. You know, Los Angeles stands in for so many other places in the country. And I think it’s a job hazard for people like you and I, when we watch television or go to the movies, and we’re like, oh, that’s not Washington, DC, that’s downtown LA.
Rachel Trombetta 25:40
I know, it’s, I’m at the point where I know too much. It can really ruin my enjoyment.
Trudi Sandmeier 25:45
Take you out of the moment doesn’t it?
Rachel Trombetta 25:47
Takes me out of the moment, of course.
Trudi Sandmeier 25:49
Yeah. For those of us in the know, people who know the city, we know what we’re seeing. Well, thank you, Rachel, for coming and spending a little time with us here on Save As to talk about your work and about what you’ve been up to since you’re finishing grad school. It was fun to chat and to revisit some of these topics that I remember vividly from our time together at USC.
Rachel Trombetta 26:13
Thank you so much for having me.