Anti-Semitism Alleged at Local Bar

According to a visitor at Tenants of the Trees, a bouncer asked he remove his

Star of David necklace before entering the bar. Photo: iStock.

SILVER LAKE—Amid a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the city, as reported in January by the Los Angeles Police Dept. (LAPD), a patron of Hyperion Avenue’s Tenants of the Trees said he was asked by a bouncer to hide his Star of David necklace before entering the bar.

According to Eli Horowitz, a Los Angeles based public relations director, he visited the bar January 10th for a friend’s birthday party.

After verifying he was on the guest list, Horowitz said the bouncer told him in a “hostile manner” that he would not be allowed in unless he removed his necklace or tucked it into his shirt.

According to Horowitz, the bouncer told him he “didn’t want to see that religious crap” in the bar.

Horowitz complied, he said, to avoid causing a scene at his friend’s birthday.

“I just took the high road and went in because I was with my friends and we were there for a purpose,” he said.

The next day, Horowitz said, he contacted Tenants of the Trees via direct message on Instagram to clarify the door policy and ask for an explanation. According to screen grabs of that conversation provided to the Ledger by Horowitz, the bar responded, “Yeah, just a little fashion advice from one Jew to another, don’t wear any jewelry. You look like a [expletive] moron.”

Horowitz said he was “shaken up” by the incident, but even more so by the response.

“The fact that he answered the same way on Instagram kind of led me to believe it wasn’t an isolated incident, not just some random bouncer,” said Horowitz.

Tenants of the Trees did not respond to requests for comment.

The LAPD announced January 22nd that the city had seen a 60% increase in anti-Jewish crimes from 2018 to 2019, compared to a 10% increase in hate crimes overall.

“We’ve seen a real shift in the cultural tone of how people talk about Jews in this country over the last few years … and the [Silver Lake] community feels it,” said Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center (SIJCC) Executive Director Neil Spears.

That shift, Spears said, has led to the type of environment where “you can be targeted even for wearing a Star of David at a bar.”

“It saddens me to know that there are such blatant anti-Semitic activities happening here, but given the rise of white nationalism and white nationalist rhetoric, no community is immune,” said Spears. “Silver Lake is not immune from that.”

While the person who responded to Horowitz on Instagram self-identified as Jewish, that does not preclude the possibility that Horowitz was asked to hide his necklace for anti-Semitic reasons, according to Spears.

“Jews can act in ways that are anti-Semitic,” he said. “When people in a marginalized group live in a community that has prejudice or bias against them, it’s inevitable that even the people in that marginalized group start to internalize some of those messages about themselves.”

This is not the first time Tenants of the Trees has faced bad publicity. In 2016, the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Police Commission asking them to deny the bar a permit to host live shows, citing multiple noise complaints and a “lack of proper business management” and a “lack of basic common decency towards our community.”

The commission ultimately approved the permit.

Earlier that year, several Tenants of the Trees patrons reported having drugs slipped into their drinks while at the bar.

