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So I’m thinking about moving to LA and I’m trying to figure out if it’s feasible for a frum Jew who aspires to grow to live there. From what I’ve seen there seems to be an enfatuation in LA, not just the frum community in LA, with gashmiyus. Specifically that life is all about how geshmak and easy someone has it (the weather is so nice! and therefore it’s the greatest place in the world….?). There is a lack of stress and focus on accomplishing, achieving and doing, like there is in other big Frum areas.
For someone who is living life to break-away from and disassociate as much as he can with a corporeal and materialistic existence I would think that living in Los Angeles would be a tremendous impediment.
Are there benefits- from a religious point of view?
In chutz laaretz the most ruchniyos neighborhoods tend to be in the New York metro area.
Posters: Please be careful about Loshon hara issues in this thread. According to Halacha, it is worse to slander a whole group of people than an individual.
Try to stick to positive comments that are not comparisons of other places.
In chutz laaretz, the NY metro area tends to have some of the most temimusdik kehilos.
cchocker – I’m not sure this is the best place to ask that question. The conditions of Toeles would not be met in such a public and anonymous site so I don’t think it would be permitted for anyone to offer you negative information. If posters offer positive information, that would be helpful of course, but probably wouldn’t give you the full picture you want and need.
The only way you can tell is by spending time there and getting to know people.
That said, on the West coast the goyim are more open-minded and more into the idea of spiritual growth and things like that, compared to the East Coasters. So it’s conceivable that influences the Yidden as well.
I would hope the goyim’s “spiritual” ideas are not influencing any Yidden.
I don’t know anything about LA, but in general there are many benefits to living out-of-town. However, I do not know if LA qualifies as out-of-town, so I don’t know if any of those particular benefits apply (although of course there may be other benefits).
What benefits apply to living out of town?
Not their ideas, but the idea that ruchniyus is important.
Another consideration is social liberalism. In the NY area the goyim are mainly social liberals, who think traditional religions like Yiddishkeit are “bigoted” because of our views about certain things. The goyim in CA are even more socially liberal.
This may not be a problem in frum neighborhoods so much, but I might worry about raising children in a region of the country that is even more prejudiced against traditional religions, because by osmosis the children could absorb it and have less enthusiasm for Torah-True Yiddishkeit. It’s possible to have socially liberal political positions and be a frum Yid but it’s kind of a contradiction, so I’m sure it’s not easy.
cchocker: my son spent 3 years learning in Yeshiva Ner Aryeh in Valley Village and his spiritual growth was amazing. The families he met out there were interested in making sure that their children experienced a frum atmosphere and tried hard to lower the gashmius. I would suggest trying to contact Rabbi Stuhlberger of Valley Torah High School.
California is more socially Liberal than NY.
In NY the Chassidic population (The non-jews do not distinguish between various charedi groups and lump them all as “Chassidim”) is considered a major part of the NYC masoic
I have a lot of family in LA, the chinuch there is excellent better than what we have in the lakewood brooklyn just look at the kids coming out of LA and moving on to yeshivas everyone of them are diamonds the top bocherem are LA boys and girls, the only reason LA is not flooding with people like lakewood is, is because it costs 3 times as much to live there. A home that costs 2k a month here cost 6k there. you would need a really good job to live there. gashmius is no different from lakewood you have very wealthy people and the regular middle class (the middle class there makes 250k per year) Bottom line its an amazing place to live amazing quality of life if you can afford it
Florida is a little cheaper than NY and its a bigger community than LA
If it costs 6k/month just for a basic home there, only wealthy folks can live there.
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