Los Angeles, CA – Next-Door Neighbor Takes Synagogue to Court

Los Angeles, CA – Since Esma Younis moved to Highland Ave. near Third St. in 1973, a series of families have moved in and out of the home next door.
One resident was allegedly “the king of the gypsies,” she says. Another family seemed nice enough when they moved in, but soon there were loud noises and fights and ultimately a restraining order.

Then “a nice rabbi” bought the two-story house next door at 303 S. Highland Ave. Small prayer groups met at the home, but neither Esma, a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, nor her husband and two children minded.

But all that changed, she said, after Rabbi Chaim Baruch Rubin tore down the house and built an 8,100-square foot synagogue on the property. Her lawsuit will be heard by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elizabeth White on Tues., Oct. 7.

“I’m not only doing this for myself,” said the grandmother of two. “This is an historic place. Hancock Park is a residential area. This is supposed to be a house not a synagogue.”

Since the temple was built in 2003, weddings and bar mitzvahs mitzvahs take place late into the night, Esma said. On Saturdays and Jewish holidays the congregation conducts services for up to 60 people, and she and her family have been “subjected to excessive noise, dangerous traffic and parking conditions, loss of privacy and diminished property value,” she alleges.

Some evenings when congregants gather outside, cigarette smoke rises to her second-floor bedroom window. The temple’s outside stairs also give a bird’s-eye view into its bathroom, she adds.

Further damaging neighborly relations, the rabbi had promised to help with any inconveniences incurred from his remodel. So when rats scrambled out from his property and crawled into her attic, she contacted him. No aid was given she says.

“She doesn’t have any money and she doesn’t have any power and the city hasn’t cared a fig about Esma Younis,” said her attorney Michael Wright, of Steptoe & Johnson. She is the “most overlooked and neglected person in this whole story. Her interests have been sacrificed by self-seeking politicians,” he added. “The future of the neighborhood is at stake. We’re going to keep fighting.”

Years back, when still on friendly terms, she recalls the rabbi came by with papers for her to sign, approving his plans for what he called a simple remodel; it would only involve the inside of the house, he promised. Why not, thought Esma, whose husband had since died of cancer. She signed the document without reading it.
“That was stupid of me,” she says in hindsight. A few days later she thought she felt an earthquake, which was in fact the impact of the Spanish brick tile roof caving in next door.

Before long a bulldozer had leveled the 3,000-square foot, 70-year-old home. Only two wooden beams remained, apparently all that was needed to be a certified remodel, a fireman told her.

Driving in her car—maybe from her job of 33 years at the courthouse as an Arabic language interpreter—she heard on the radio that a federal judge gave the Etz Chaim Jewish Orthodox congregation permission to build a temple in Hancock Park. “My heart stopped,” she said.

She filed a complaint against the congregation in 2004, but several other lawsuits have kept it on hold. Several lawsuits and appeals later, a federal judge ruled in the homeowner group favor a year ago.

Wright called the enforcement arm of the city—the building and safety department officials—”trembling Chihuahuas” for not closing down the temple. But city officials claim court filings by Etz Chaim attorneys have halted city action.

Temple attorney Fred Gaines recently filed an application for a conditional use permit to hold religious services on the site. Temple officials allege the building is a home. A hearing date has not been set.