What’s happening at LA’s Wilshire Boulevard Temple?

While driving down Wilshire Boulevard early one morning about a month ago, I spotted a beautiful combination of form, function and construction-an exo-skeleton of scaffolding enveloping one of L.A.’s most treasured architectural monuments. It turns out Los Angeles’ historic Wilshire Boulevard Temple, home to the oldest Jewish congregation in L.A., is undergoing a $175 million dollar renovation and restoration project. It’s a project that Rabbi Steve Z. Leder who leads the congregation at Wilshire Temple, hopes will restore the luster of this mammoth house of worship and make the synagogue a hub of urban Jewish life in L.A. for the rest of our century.

I visited Wilshire Boulevard Temple and talked to Rabbi Leder and Brenda Levin, the architect in charge of the synagogue’s renovation. Here are some more photos from the renovation and listen to our conversation, below:

(Photo credits: Dave Bullock www.davebullock.com and Saul Gonzalez)