Boyle Heights: Past, Present and Future

Caroline Luce
Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
UC Los Angeles

Rob Adler Peckerar
Author
Yiddishkayt

Todd Presner
Germanic Languages
UC Los Angeles

We organized a series of three events in Boyle Heights using digital tools to make academic research accessible to the public. Organized with a variety of Jewish, Latin American, and Asian American neighborhood-based groups, the event served as open forums for memory sharing and community engagement. Recently, Boyle Heights has become a flash point for debates about affordable housing and development, environmental justice, and the impacts of gentrification. By reaching back to reveal the overlapping layers of the neighborhood’s history, we hope to deepen these conversations and foster a more informed dialogue about its future. The series is part of a larger research initiative of the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies’ Mapping Jewish Los Angeles Project, examining the history of Jewish community life in Boyle Heights, as well as highlighting inter-ethnic relationships and encounters among the neighborhood’s multi-ethnic residents.