Virtual Event: Shelter in Paradise: How Jewish Refugees Shaped Los Angeles

Please join Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, HIAS, UCLA Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and 30 Years After for an engaging conversation about the role several waves of Jewish refugees played in shaping contemporary Los Angeles and how to take action for refugees and asylum seekers of all backgrounds today. Joe Goldman is the first-ever Los Angeles-based Community Engagement Director for HIAS, the world’s oldest – and only Jewish – resettlement agency. Joe works with activists, congregations, and lawmakers across the region to sustain and protect refugees and asylum seekers. Sam Yebri is a partner at the law firm of Merino Yebri LLP. In 2007, Sam co-founded 30 Years After, a grassroots civic organization that has engaged thousands of Iranian-American Jews in American civic and Jewish life. At the age of one, Sam and his family fled Iran as refugees to the United States with assistance from HIAS. Caroline Luce is the Associate Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA and the Chief Digital Curator of the Mapping Jewish Los Angeles Project. She received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA in 2013 for her work on Jewish immigration, labor and working-class culture in the American west and is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Yiddish in the Land of Sunshine: Jewish Radicalism, Labor and Culture in Los Angeles, 1900-1950. The conversation will be moderated by Jordanna Gessler, Vice President of Education and Exhibits at Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.