There is no other way to characterize the Jewish community of Los Angeles than as sizable and diverse. As the second largest Jewish population in the United States and in the world outside of Israel, the Jewish community of L.A. contains both multiple denominations and cultural sub-groups, and even sub-sub-groups, each with distinct practices, traditions, and in some cases, regions of the city that reflect historically distinct patterns of settlement.

Today, over 700,000 Jews live in L.A. The first forebears of this community settled in the city even prior to California’s admission into the United States in 1850. The migration of Jews to L.A. can be distilled down to four main waves or influxes. The discovery of gold in 1848 brought the first surge of Jews, who rather than engaging in mining, opened stores in mining towns. The second wave of Jewish immigration to the City of Angels came in response to World War II in the early 1940s, with many arrivals being Holocaust survivors. The third wave consisted specifically of Persian Jews who fled Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the fourth and most recent wave occurred in 1989 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the out-migration of Soviet Jews. By the early date of 1873, Jewish business, focused around retail and trade, already had a strong presence in the city. As a result, Jewish businessmen organized the city’s first Chamber of Commerce, which led to further Jewish prominence in specifically the city’s burgeoning real estate and entertainment industries.

By the beginning of the 1900s, already three major areas of Jewish concentration emerged in L.A. — Temple Street, Boyle Heights, and Central Avenue. Between 1920 and 1940, two distinct sides to Jewish L.A. emerged: “the Yiddish, Orthodox, working class eastside and the more affluent and acculturated westside." While notably divided by sect and socioeconomic status, Jewish ethnicity played a role in this division, as well – and remained visible even as the twentieth century ended. For example, the Jewish westside centered and to some degree continues to center around Beverly Hills (primarily Iranian Jews), Westwood (dubbed Tehrangeles in reference to its significant Persian population, the largest outside of Iran), West Adams (primarily Sephardic Jews from Greece), and Wilshire (where the Sephardic Temple Tiffereth Israel is located). 

As the Jewish population in L.A. grew, so too did Jewish life, again in a variegated fashion. Leading up to World War II, two rabbis and congregations towered over religious life: the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which became the largest congregation in the United States, practicing classical Reform Judaism, and Congregation Sinai, an Orthodox synagogue. The creation of the Federation of Jewish Welfare Organizations in 1912, the first Jewish Community Center (JCC) in 1924, the Jewish Centers Association (which overlook all JCCs) in 1943, and many newspapers, such as the Jewish Community Bulletin, in 1954, further fortified communal life. Despite being meant to serve all Jews, different ethnic groups usually frequented only certain of these institutions, further underscoring subdivision.

Despite these religious and communal efforts, as a collective, the Jews of L.A. tend to be less religious than those in the rest of the United States based on a 1986 survey: 56% had no formal Jewish affiliation, and only 39% belonged to a synagogue. Sephardic Jews are usually more observant, though they make up a tiny fraction of the community (estimated to have accounted for 3% in 2020). Though a minority, this group played a key role in the organization of L.A.’s broader Jewish life. Sephardic Jews started arriving in L.A. in the mid-1800s during the California Gold Rush and the subsequent expansion of railways; the majority, however, arrived in the aforementioned second wave (1940s), more than half of them fleeing Rhodes during World War II to an area that reminded them of the Mediterranean climate and coastline of their former home. The first settlers were primarily bachelors who sold produce – specifically flowers. They were Ladino-speaking (an exclusively Sephardic language combining Spanish and Hebrew) and did not frequently mingle with other Jewish cultural communities, or even with Sephardics from other regions. Nevertheless, the Sephardic community grew rapidly, and soon there were enough families for specifically Sephardic neighborhoods to form. This led to increased Sephardic prominence in the Jewish community — so much so that a Sephardic man named Samuel Labatt even founded L.A.’s first Jewish organization, serving the entire Jewish community, and UCLA created a specifically Sephardic archive to honor the group’s lasting influence, not just on in the community, but throughout greater L.A. as a whole. 

It is against this backdrop, and from within the Sephardic community of L.A., that the Sisterhood of the Sephardic Temple Tiffereth Israel compiled the Sephardic Heritage Cookbook — a conscious effort to “transmit to their children…tastes…from their family kitchens,” but perhaps more importantly, an etching of their culture, pride, and history.

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