Los Angeles Jewish Home

About the Home

The Los Angeles Jewish Home was started in 1912 when a small group of caring Angelenos gave shelter to five homeless Jewish men at Passover.

Simon Lewis, a local grocer and one of the Home's founders, was haunted by the plight of the destitute elderly in the community — "forlorn old people without family, friends, or shelter standing within our gates, pleading for our assistance."

From that humble mission to provide shelter for indigents from the County Hospital and "County Farm," and a place for them to observe Passover, the Home has grown to become one of the country's leading senior care providers.

The residents of the Hebrew Sheltering Home found a new home full of warmth and Jewish tradition. By 1916, Lewis had raised enough funds from the community to purchase the Home's first permanent structure in the Boyle Heights section of downtown Los Angeles.

Over the two generations that followed, the number of Jewish Home residents grew to an impressive 350 seniors. By the mid-1960s, most of the early Jewish population of Boyle Heights had migrated to other parts of the city, and plans were made to create a Home in the San Fernando Valley to serve the growing population there.

Already operating in Reseda, on the current site of the Home's Grancell Village, was tha well-established institution called the Industrail Center for the Aged. This kibbutz-style farm and settlement for the unemployed during the Great Depression was converted to help Jewish seniors who could not longer care for themselves, and after the war became known as the California Home for the Aged.

Significant gifts throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s from the Grancell and Rosenkrantz families led to construction of multiple residences and facilities, including a synagogue, at the California Home. Expansion accomodated a Jewish population in Los Angeles that had more than doubled since the start of the war. Improvements in healthcare led to a rise in the average age of residents from 70 to 80.

In 1972, the California Home for the Aged was renamed menorah Village, for the first time offering distinctive levels of care, from independent living to skilled nursing. In 1976, the Boyle Heights Jewish Home for the Aged moved to its new residential facilities on the current site of Eisenberg Village. Then, in the late 70s, the two San Fernando Valley Homes merged, becoming the Jewish Home for the Aging of Greater Los Angeles.

The 1980s and 1990s saw construction of new clinics, residences, and skilled nursing facilities, and the rise of the Jewish Home population to nearly 900 residents. In 1990, Eisenberg Village became the name of the Victory Boulevard campus, recognizing decades of support by Ben B. (of blessed memory) and Joyce E. Eisenberg.

The Home's Goldenberg•Ziman Special Care Center, a 96-bed home for Alzheimer's patients, opened in 2002. Made possible by a gift from Paul goldenberg and the Richard Ziman Family, the Center received an award for its innovative, patient-sensitive design and environments.

In 2004, the Home's Skirball Hospice began providing high-quality compassionate end-of-life care to patients in or outside the Home, regardless of faith, culture, or ethnicity.

From 2004-2007, the Joyce Eisenberg-Keefer Medical Center, the Home's 249-bed skilled nursing facility on the Grancell Village Campus, was completed and opened. The complex of three interconnected buildings — the Brandman Research Institute, the LaKretz/Black Twoer, and the Bross-Bresler Pavilion — feature state-of-the-art skilled nursing, a geriatric research center, and an acute geriatric psychiatry unit.

Also on Grancell Village, the Ida Kayne Transitional Care Unit provides short term rehabilitation services for seniors healing from traumatic injury, surgery, and a variety of other conditions.

Fountainview at Eisenberg Village, the Home's Continuing Care Retirement Community, which opened in 2010, offers 108 spacious, upscale one- and two-bedroom residences for independent senior living.

The Home's Centennial year saw the opening of the Brandman Centers for Senior Care (BCSC), the Jewish Home's first Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). The new facility at Grancell Village serves the comprehensive medical and home care needs of frail independent seniors throughout the community. Named in recognition of a founding gift by Joyce and Saul (of blessed memory) Brandman, the Brandman Centers will expand to improve the wellness of our senior community with in-home services at centers throughout the city.

The Home has secured property in the Playa Vista complex of West Los Angeles for the development of our new Westside campus, to be called the Gonda Healthy Aging Westside Campus. The Gonda Campus will be the home of Fountainview at Gonda Westside, a new continuing care retirement community, and residential facilities for assisted living and memory care. in addition to a new site for our Brandman Centers for Senior Care, Westside expansion will include the opening of a nearby Jewish Home skilled nursing facility.

Additional expansion at the beginning of our second century of service to the community includes development of the Hirsch Family Campus in Reseda, which will include a new residential care facility, a Brandman Center, and a permanent home for the Annenberg School of Nursing. On Grancell Village, the entire southern half of the campus will be remodeled. Two buildings will replace some of the original structures, allowing the Jewish Home to care for more than 180 new residents with assisted living and memory care services.

While the Los Angeles Jewish Home has been known by several names over more than a century of evolving care, one thing hasn't changed — the ongoing devotion of our community to maintain a special place where our seniors are cared for and truly feel "at home."

For more information about residence at the Los Angeles Jewish Home, please contact Admissions Director Sato Artinian at 818.774.3303 or Satenik.Artinian@jha.org.