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Sinai Temple (Los Angeles, California) expansion

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Sinai Temple is located in Westwood, Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest and largest Conservative Jewish congregation in the greater Los Angeles area. Architect Sidney Eisenshtat designed the current synagogue building, constructed in 1956 and expanded in 1999.[1] As of 2009, the senior rabbi is David Wolpe.


History

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Begun in 1906, Sinai Temple was established as the first Conservative congregation in Southern California. Its founders saw it as a venue for the practice of traditional Judaism in an environment of assimilation.[2] The congregation first met in a B'nai B'rith hall on Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles,[2] then from 1906 to 1925 in a building at 12th and Valencia, just west of what is now the Los Angeles Convention Center, in a building that is now a Welsh Presbyterian Church.[3]

Having outgrown this facility, the congregation relocated to the mid-Wilshire district in 1925. This second building, located at 4th and New Hampshire, is now a Korean Presbyterian church.[3]

Following the trend of its congregants to move further west towards Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles, in 1956, Sinai Temple constructed its third facility at its current location at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Beverly Glen Boulevard in Westwood. The building has a striking interior marked by the use of stained glass; Eisenshtat's design has been compared to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.[1] The building was expanded in 1998, under the supervision of architect Mehrdad Yazdani and Dworsky Associates.[1]

Sinai Temple owns and operates Mount Sinai Memorial Parks and Mortuaries, a large Jewish cemetery in the Hollywood Hills, which the temple acquired in 1967 from the neighboring Forest Lawn Memorial Park. In 1997 Mount Sinai dedicated a second cemetery location in Simi Valley.[4][5]

In 1968, Sinai Temple opened Sinai Akiba Academy, a Jewish day school for pre-kindergarten through 8th grade.[6] The school's headmaster, Rabbi Laurence Scheindlin, was elected in 2009 to become president of the board of directors of the Solomon Schechter Day School Association, the national association of days schools under the auspices of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. He was the first school head to hold this position.[7]

Notable people and events

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David Wolpe, Sinai Temple's current senior rabbi, is an author and leader of the Conservative movement. In 2008, a Newsweek article named him the most influential pulpit rabbi in the United States.[8] Other notable clergy of Sinai Temple have included rabbi David Lieber, who later headed the University of Judaism; cantor and composer Meir Finkelstein; and rabbi Sherre Hirsch.

"Friday Night Live", a lively, music-driven Shabbat service intended to attract younger congregants, was initially developed by Rabbi Wolpe and musician Craig Taubman at Sinai Temple;[9] the concept is now replicated in other synagogues around the world.[3] (See also Craig Taubman). In June 2006, a Friday Night Live service at Sinai Temple saw an appearance by evangelical Christian minister and author Rick Warren, Warren's first appearance as featured speaker in a synagogue.[10][11]

Sinai Temple has also been noted for its central role in the wave of Persian Jews who immigrated to the United States after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Prior to this event, the congregation had been overwhelmingly comprised of Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European heritage. Over time the Persian Jews became fully integrated into the congregation, which is now divided about evenly between Ashkenazi and Persians. Jimmy Delshad became the first Persian Jew to become president of Temple Sinai in 1990; in 2007 he was elected as mayor of Beverly Hills and one of the most visible Iranian-American politicians in the country.[3][12]

In 1999, Sinai Temple was the site of a "second bar mitzvah" for actor Kirk Douglas, then age 83.[13][14][15]

References

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  1. ^ a b c David Gebhard and Robert Winter, An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles (Gibbs Smith, rev. ed. 2003), ISBN 9781586853082, p. 143 (excerpt available at Google Books).
  2. ^ a b Kerry M. Olitzky, Marc Lee Raphael, The American Synagogue: A Historical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996), ISBN 0313288569, 9780313288562, pp. 47-48 (excerpt available at Google Books).
  3. ^ a b c d Amy Klein, "The Sinai Century", Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, May 18, 2006.
  4. ^ Ruth Stroud, "Westward Expansion", Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, March 20, 1997.
  5. ^ Tracy Valeri, "Mount Sinai Park Dedication Set", Los Angeles Daily News, March 15, 1997.
  6. ^ Sinai Akiba official website (retrieved October 14, 2009).
  7. ^ "Conservative school movement names board chief", Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 11, 2009 (retrieved October 14, 2009).
  8. ^ "Top 50 Influential Rabbis in America", Newsweek web exclusive, April 11, 2008 (retrieved October 14, 2009).
  9. ^ Ron Wolfson, The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community", (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2006), ISBN 9781580232449, pp. 92-94 (excerpts available at Google Books).
  10. ^ Rob Eshman, "Jesus’ Man Has a Plan", Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, June 22, 2006.
  11. ^ "Pastor Rick Warren to Make First-Ever Appearance in a Synagogue", Religion News Service, June 6, 2006 (retrieved October 14, 2009).
  12. ^ Kevin West, "The Persian Conquest", W, July 2009 (retrieved October 14, 2009.
  13. ^ Kirk Douglas, My Stroke of Luck (HarperCollins, 2003), ISBN 9780060014049, p. 110 (excerpt available at Google Books).
  14. ^ Tom Tugend, "Kirk Douglas—Bar Mitzvah Boy", Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 23, 1999.
  15. ^ Robert W. Welkos, "Douglas Beats the Count", Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1999.
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coordinates for Mount Sinai: 34°09′10″N 118°19′06″W / 34.152656°N 118.318355°W / 34.152656; -118.318355 (Hollywood Hills) 34°17′12″N 118°40′06″W / 34.286794°N 118.66833°W / 34.286794; -118.66833 (Simi Valley)

Category:Conservative synagogues Category:Synagogues in Los Angeles, California Category:Conservative Jewish day schools Category:Jewish day schools in the United States

Mosca's

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Mosca's
Mosca's in 2009
Map
Restaurant information
Established1946
Food typeLouisiana Creole Italian cuisine
Street address4137 U.S. Highway 90 West
CityWestwego
StateLouisiana
Postal/ZIP Code70094
CountryUnited States
Coordinates29°54′43″N 90°13′50″W / 29.911929°N 90.23048°W / 29.911929; -90.23048
WebsiteOfficial Site


Mosca's is a Louisiana Creole Italian restaurant in Avondale, Louisiana, near New Orleans. Open since 1946, it has long been regarded as one of New Orleans' best restaurants, known for dishes such as Oysters Mosca, crab salad, and Chicken a la Grande.[1][2]

History

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Provino Mosca, an Italian immigrant, and his wife Lisa, had a restaurant in Chicago Heights, Illinois before they moved to New Orleans in 1946 , after their daughter, Mary, married a Louisiana oysterman, Vincent Marconi. They opened Mosca's in Avondale, a remote area on the West Bank of the Mississippi River, in a building owned by New Orleans crime family boss Carlos Marcello. Mosca's became known both for its excellent food and as a meeting place for the city's organized crime syndicate. Marcello's son still owns the restaurant building. [3] Provino died in 1962. Lisa (by then known as "Mama Mosca"), their children, John and Mary, and Mary's husband Vincent took over the restaurant. "Mama Mosca" died in 1979 and Vincent died in 2004. The restaurant was damaged in Hurricane Katrina[4]but reopened, repaired but almost unchanged, in 2006.[5] John mostly retired after the hurricane, but Johnny's wife Mary Jo Angelotti, who took over as chef after Mary retired, continues to operate the restaurant with other family members, now including John and Mary Jo's daughter Lisa.[3] [6] Mosca's received a James Beard Foundation Award in 1999.[3][7]


Location and cuisine

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Mosca's is known for its out-of-the-way location, a seventeen mile drive on U.S. Highway 90 from the Crescent City Connection bridge, and its ramshackle exterior, as well as for its distinctive Italian Creole food.

Writing in the 1970s, pioneer New Orleans food writers Richard and Rima Collin[8] described the restaurant as "a white shack on the left in almost total isolation" and rated it as one of New Orleans' "Best of the Best", calling it "a joyous place with no airs whatsoever, bubbling over with the noise of serious eating on a massive scale" and a "New Orleans institution". They described the food's heritage as deriving from "the middle of Italy, the Romagna-Lazio region, rich in seafood."[9] (According to the restaurant's website, Provino Mosca came from San Benedetto del Tronto, a coastal city on the Adriatic Sea in the Marche region of central Italy.[6]

In her New Orleans food memoir Gumbo Tales,[10] Sara Roahen says, "Mosca's is just the sort of family-run restaurant that New Orleanians tend to covet: it's creaky, set in its ways, and no picnic to find."[11]

In an edition of Roadfood written after Hurricane Katrina, Jane and Michael Stern comment that the restaurant seems unchanged since its reopening. They ask the rhetorical question, "can this two-room joint with the blaring jukebox really be the most famous Creole roadhouse in America?"; then they describe the experience as a "culinary epiphany", and say that "roadside food gets no better, or more garlicky, or heartier, than this."[12]

Calvin Trillin, in a November 2010 article about the restaurant in The New Yorker, also remarks on its seemingly unchanged nature since 1946. He recounts that the Mosca family had once considered moving the restaurant to a more convenient location, but the idea had met substantial resistance from their mostly local customer base.[3]

Many writers comment that almost every party orders more or less the same items, served family-style in very large portions, from Mosca's relatively short menu.[13][3] These archetypal dishes include:

  • Oysters Mosca (also called Oysters Italian Style), which the Sterns call "a festival of garlic, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and bread crumbs").[12]
  • Shrimp Mosca (also called Shrimp Italian Style), described by local food critic Tom Fitzmorris as "enormous, whole, unpeeled, with olive oil and tons of garlic".[13]
  • Marinated crab, served as a salad or in the shell.[2][3][9]
  • Chicken a la Grande, a simple dish cooked in a skillet with (in Trillin's words) "only salt and pepper, rosemary, oregano, white wine, and, of course, ten cloves (or is it heads?) or garlic".[3]
  • Spaghetti bordelaise, described by the Collins as "perfect homemade pasta and a remarkable, perfectly balanced oil and garlic sauce"[9], and which Roahen calls "as much butter, oil, and garlic as your body can process without suffering a systematic failure."[11]
  • Pineapple fluff for dessert, which the Collins called "a bit of delicious New Orleans kitsch."[9]

References

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  1. ^ Frances Frank Marcus, "What's Doing in New Orleans", New York Times, December 11, 1983.
  2. ^ a b Julia Reed, "My Blue Heaven", New York Times, August 19, 2001.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Calvin Trillin, "No Daily Specials", The New Yorker, November 22, 2010, pp. 60-65.
  4. ^ Brett Anderson, "Remaking MOSCA's: The West Bank culinary landmark took a hit from Katrina but aims to reopen with its roadhouse patina and mouth-watering menu intact", Times-Picayune, March 15, 2006.
  5. ^ Pableaux Johnson, "The Aroma of Garlic Is Back on the Bayou", New York Times, August 23, 2006.
  6. ^ a b "A Short History of Mosca's Restaurant" at Mosca's official website (accessed November 19, 2010).
  7. ^ James Beard Foundation America’s Classics Award Winners at James Beard Foundation Awards official website (accessed November 19, 2010.
  8. ^ Judy Walker, "Richard H. Collin, 'the New Orleans underground gourmet,' dies at age 78", Times-Picayune, January 22, 2010.
  9. ^ a b c d Richard & Rima Collin, The New Orleans Restaurant Guide (New Orleans: Strether & Swan, 1976), pp. 38-40.
  10. ^ Sara Larson, "One Book One New Orleans chooses Sara Roahen's 'Gumbo Tales'", Times-Picayune, June 1, 2009.
  11. ^ a b Sara Roahen, Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table (W. W. Norton & Company, 2009), ISBN 9780393335378, pp. 67-71. Excerpt available at Google Books.
  12. ^ a b Jane and Michael Stern, Roadfood: The Coast-to-Coast Guide to 700 of the Best Barbecue Joints, Lobster Shacks, Ice Cream Parlors, Highway Diners, and Much, Much More (Random House, 2008), ISBN 9780767928298, p. 261. Excerpt available at Google Books.
  13. ^ a b Tom Fitzmorris, "Mosca's" at The New Orleans Menu Restaurant Report (accessed November 19, 2010.
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Official website Category:Restaurants in New Orleans, LouisianaCategory:Jefferson Parish, Louisiana

Angelo Brocato's

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Angelo Brocato's
Brocato's reopening in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina
Map
Restaurant information
Established1905
Food typeIce cream and desserts
Street address214 N. Carrollton Avenue
CityNew Orleans
StateLouisiana
Postal/ZIP Code70119
CountryUnited States
Coordinates29°58′33″N 90°05′57″W / 29.975853°N 90.099052°W / 29.975853; -90.099052
WebsiteOfficial Site

Angelo Brocato's Italian Ice Cream Parlor (often called Brocato's) is a family-owned ice cream parlor located in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded in 1905, it is regarded as a New Orleans institution.[1] Severely damaged by flooding after Hurricane Katrina, its 2006 reopening was viewed as a significant advance in the rebuilding of the Mid-City area.[1][2]

History

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Angelo Brocato was born in Cefalù, in Sicily. and at the age of 12 became an apprentice at an ice cream shop in Palermo. He later came to the United States; after opening a small ice cream store on Decatur Street, in 1905 he opened a larger ice cream parlor in the 500 block of Ursulines Street in the French Quarter. In 1921 the establishment moved to a larger space at 612-614 Ursulines, a white-tiled space with ceiling fans, modeled after fashionable parlors in Palermo. This area of the French Quarter was an ethnic Italian neighborhood at the time, but the Italian population moved away over the years.[3][4]

Angelo Brocato died in 1946. The business continued under his wife and children. Angelo Brocato, Jr, died in 1982; the store is now run by his son, Arthur Brocato, along with other family members.[3][4]

The Ursulines store remained open until 1981; Brocato's also maintained a presence on Jackson Square for some years thereafter. The present location in Mid-City, near the corner of North Carrollton Avenue and Canal Street, was purchased in 1978.[4]

Brocato's interior, February 2007

Brocato's expanded its facilities in 2003[5] and celebrated its centennial in July 2005.[3] Two months later, Brocato's Mid-City neighborhood found itself under five feet of water when the city's flood control systems failed after Hurricane Katrina. The store was severely damaged[6] and for a time it was reported that it might not return. The store did finally reopen in September 2006,[2] and enjoyed immediate crowds. The reopening was viewed as a significant advance in the rebuilding of the Mid-City area. [1][7]

In the pilot episode of the HBO television series Treme, set in New Orleans three months after Hurricane Katrina, the character Creighton Bernette declines an offer of lemon ice at another (fictional) restaurant, saying that he would feel disloyal to eat lemon ice anywhere else while Brocato's was still closed.[8]

Desserts

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Italian cookies on display at Brocato's 2006 re-opening

Angelo Brocato's first product was torroncino, a cinnamon-almond gelato. Brocato's still serves it in the same sliced-block form as in 1905.[4] The business now sells a variety of gelati, Italian ices, cannoli, cookies, and other desserts.[3] According to the Brocato's website, lemon ice is the "best-seller".[9]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Adam Nossiter, "Spumoni Fills a City’s Void, and Its Belly", New York Times, October 1, 2006.
  2. ^ a b Judy Walker, "Scoop of Tradition - A city that has lost so much got back something cherished this weekend when the Brocato family reopened its Carrollton Avenue ice cream parlor", Times-Picayune, September 26, 2006.
  3. ^ a b c d Judy Walker, "A scoop of history - A century after it opened, Angelo Brocato still makes ice cream the old-fashioned way", Times-Picayune, July 28, 2005.
  4. ^ a b c d Sara Roahen, "Arthur Brocato, Angelo Brocato’s Ice Cream & Confectionary – New Orleans, LA", Southern Foodways Alliance, February 17, 2007 (accessed November 19, 2010).
  5. ^ Keith Pandolfi, "Addition doubles sweet success of Brocato family", New Orleans CityBusiness, February 3, 2003.
  6. ^ Sara Roahen, Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table (W. W. Norton & Company, 2009), ISBN 9780393335378, p. 30 Excerpt available at Google Books.
  7. ^ Leslie Eaton, "Parade Returns, and New Orleans’s Heart Rejoices", New York Times, February 2, 2008.
  8. ^ Josh Jackson & Patrick Jarenwattananon, "'Treme,' Episode 1: A World Of Profundity", NPR.com, April 12, 2010.
  9. ^ "Store" at Angelo Brocato official website (accessed November 24, 2010).
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Angelo Brocato.

Category:Restaurants in New Orleans, Louisiana Category:Ice cream parlors

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