From Monday night’s show:
Rabbi Rabbs: “As if the first seven of them within walking distance of that corner and went out of business weren’t a sign that this is not a business to go into. They’ve been working on this building (on Alcott and Robertson, near Pico Blvd) to remodel it and they just put up a sign for a kosher frozen yogurt store.”
Read MoreThis was a hot topic of discussion at the kiddish club on Shabbos morning.
Will a kosher wine store make a go of it in Pico-Robertson?
The profit margins on wine are tiny, about 10%.
Pico Blvd. is now home to an all-Kosher wineshop, opened last week, which offers myriad non-Manischewitz options for your Passover dining needs.
The Cask
8616 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
310-205-9008
http://www.thecaskla.com
I remember a friend of mine moved from a university in Australia to one in California. And he went to work in dress shorts and received an unexpectedly large amount of derision. Dress shorts aren’t acceptable in the U.S.
Dress shorts are the way to go in Australia. Even bank managers wear them with ties.
I was shocked when I came to California from Australia in 1977 and found that it was often impermissible to wear shorts, even on the hottest of days. Long pants were required by many social situations.
In many ways, Australia is a less formal country than America.
Today it is close to 90 degrees in Pico-Robertson but you won’t find many Orthodox Jews walking around in shorts. Particularly not the women. The only Orthodox Jews who wear shorts in America are the modern Orthodox. It is a sure sign of limited Jewish religiosity.
I remember a story in Leon Wieseltier’s book Kaddish about a man coming to shul in the summer and asking whether or not to say a certain bracha (blessing).
He was told it was said with pants.
Read MoreTune in for the most exciting event in Pico-Robertson on Monday nights!
We’ve been doing this show weekly for a year.
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 Chukkat (Numbers 19:1-22:1).
* The ritual of the red heifer makes sense to me. The red is for blood. The ritual makes the pure impure and the impure pure kinda like garbagemen and policemen and military. Only contact with dead people is impure (Num. 19:11). Not contact with dead animals. We recoil from dead animals. We recoil from death. As we should.
* Moshe was never getting into the promised land. We all wander in the desert hoping to get into the promised land.
* Moshe’s sin wasn’t hitting the rock. God told Moshe to take his rod. Moshe’s sin was saying to the Jews, “Shall we bring forth water from the rock?”
Exodus 17 has an identical story where Moshe hits the rock.
* Moshe gets in trouble because of something he does in public. I don’t know of any examples of God punishing anyone for doubting.
* As you go through the Tanach, there are increasingly few miracles. In the later books such as Ezra and Nehemiah, there are no miracles.
* Moshe does not argue with God after he’s told he won’t get in. Moshe frequently argued with God but not here. Moshe does not resign as leader. He keeps leading the Jews.
* It bothers the rabbis of the Talmud that Moshe does not get in. There are classic midrashim on this. It is Jewish to get annoyed with God and for God to get annoyed with the Jews.
* Jews are not to conquer Canaan to take booty and to rape. No, you are to take Canaan to create a holy land that will be a light to the world.
* If a man tells you he’s Elijah the Prophet and he’s been sent from Heaven to make a Moshiach baby with you, employ some skepticism before you give it up to him.
* Girls may think some girls look good in short hair but I don’t. Nothing sexy about short hair on a woman. It’s just plain dykey. I hate it. I also hate pantsuits. Butch!
* Have you tried these “Slut Walk” parades for meeting young, free thinking ladies?
* Richard posts to my FB: I ran into a few Jewish girls, in my day, rebelling against their secular Jewish background. Most of them, would sleep with any guy, that had a beard, and looked somewhat orthodox.
* I want to discuss this new book on the synagogue in America.
Read MoreThe Robertson branch of the Los Angeles Public Library will start opening on Mondays beginning July 18.
The branch is currently closed on Saturdays and Mondays but open Sunday afternoons.
Read MoreThe name of the college yearbook where I grew up in Australia (Avondale College in Cooranbong) was the jacaranda.
I love this purple flower and it blooms twice a year in Pico-Robertson for about a month each time.
Particularly south of Pico Blvd, these purple blossoms dot the sidewalks and when they are fresh, they even crackle under foot.
The one downside of the jacaranda is that they tend to stick to the bottom of your shoes and they are easy to track into your home.
Read MoreI rarely set foot in the Robertson branch of the LAPL without running into Orthodox Jews I know from shul.
Every year, this branch becomes more and more Orthodox. It is the only branch open on Sundays.
Pico-Robertson keeps getting more Orthodox and more traditionally Orthodox (rather than Modern Orthodox). The chareidim (traditional Orthodox) will dominate this neighborhood in 20 years.
Chabad has expanded dramatically in the past dozen years.
Read MoreIt is at Glatt Mart. You can’t beat the prices. I picked up celery yesterday for 79c. It was twice that price at Ralphs, half a mile west on Pico.
The Persian Elat market next door to Glatt Mart also has inexpensive produce. It is a dirtier older version of Glatt Mart. The aisles are crammed and there are more Persians and more pushing.
Read MoreI notice very few vacation buildings in Pico-Robertson. But you go a few blocks outside of Pico-Robertson to La Cienega Blvd and east of La Cienega on Pico, and you’ll find some vacancies.
There was that great Hollywood video store on La Cienega and Pico that is now vacant as more of us get our movie entertainment from Netflix.
The Orthodox Jewish community is pushing east of La Cienega and south of Airdrome into the black community, dispossessing African-Americans and reducing the crime rate in Pico-Robertson proper. You’ll find old people walking the streets at night in the hood and that’s always a good sign.
I write about real estate, refinancing, and mortgages here:
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 Shelach (Numbers 13:1-15:41).
Read MoreWalking 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).
Read MoreThe Eighth Annual Ariel Avrech ZT’L Memorial Lecture will take place Sunday, June 5, 2011, at 10 AM at the Young Israel of Century City, followed by brunch.
Young Israel of Century City
9317 West Pico Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90035
We are pleased to announce that Yossi Klein Halevi will deliver this year’s lecture: What Is Expected of a Survivor People: Lessons My Father Taught Me.
World-renowned journalist and author Yossi Klein Halevi will address the following questions: What would today’s Jewish world look like from the perspective of a Holocaust survivor? Where have we as a people succeeded and where have we failed? For the first time in his life, Yossi Klein Halevi will confront this challenge from a very personal viewpoint — the worldview of his father, a Holocaust survivor.
Read MoreA block south of 18th Street on the southbound La Cienega Blvd, traffic has been shut down.
As I drove north on La Cienega at 12:45, I saw a police car, an ambulance, and a fire truck outside the Coffee Bean headquarters along with small crowds of people looking distraught.
A hundred yards up the street, just one block south of 18th, an emergency vehicle blocked off the southbound La Cienega, diverting traffic to side streets.
Read More