Los Angeles, CA – Orthodox Growth Drives Tension in Hancock Park.

Los Angeles, CA – Gitel Rubin was recently strolling with her son in her Hancock Park neighborhood when, she said, a neighbor drove by, rolled down her window and yelled out. The driver was upset that Rubin’s family was expanding a newly purchased home to 10,000 square feet to make room for their six children, said Rubin, an Orthodox Jew.

“We’re watching your project carefully!,” Rubin said the driver yelled. “You better make sure you’re leaving enough yard space and not overbuilding for your large family!”

A year or two before, Rubin said, a longtime neighbor turned a cold shoulder to her and her father at a community meeting over whether to renew the conditional use permit of their neighborhood Jewish day school.

“Don’t talk to me,” Rubin said the man told her father. “I’m on the other side.”

As Orthodox Jews increase their presence in Hancock Park, this genteel Los Angeles neighborhood of gracious homes and leafy trees has become a battleground over religion, land use and historic preservation.

Neighbors have clashed over two major land use issues — whether the day school, the Yavneh Hebrew Academy on 3rd Street and Las Palmas Avenue, is improperly using its space as a synagogue, and whether an Orthodox Jewish congregation properly converted a home into a synagogue on 3rd Street and Highland Avenue in an area zoned for single-family residences. Both issues are currently embroiled in litigation.

read extende article [latimes]