en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Iranian_Americans_in_Los_Angeles
Los Angeles (and Southern California in general) is home to a large Iranian-American community. With population estimates between 300,000 and half a million, Southern California boasts the largest concentration of Iranians in the world, outside of Iran.[1]
Due to the wealth of many Iranian immigrants into Los Angeles, the stereotype that the public had of Iranians were of people who do shopping on Rodeo Drive and drive expensive automobiles.[24] As of 1990 many Iranians do shopping and eat out later than non-Iranians, so many businesses in the Los Angeles area extended their hours to accommodate Iranian customers.[23]
Culture shock affected many Iranian families shortly after they arrived in the United States,[28] partly because Iranian men who were accustomed to being the breadwinners and authorities in their households found their power diminished.[29] Initially many Iranian families practiced arranged marriages but by 1990 the practice was declining.[28] As of 2009 many older Iranian women in the Los Angeles area still practice doreh, where they have large gatherings where they enjoy entertainment, talk, and eat. Kevin West of W Magazine stated that the increase in working hours of Iranian women in the region could threaten this custom.[22]
Today, the vast majority of Persian Jews live in Israel and the United States, especially in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and on the North Shore of Long Island. According to the latest Iranian census, the remaining Jewish population of Iran was 9,826 in 2016.[6]
Before the Iranians came, Beverly Hills was a sleepy little village populated by cranky Eastern European Jews and polyester-clad Episcopalians from the Midwest. Hollywood was an embarrassing slum. Santa Monica was a communist enclave, downtown one large skid row. The food was rich, heavy and unsophisticated, fancy department stores catered to 80-year-olds, and you couldn’t breathe the air without risking lung cancer on any day of the week.
We can’t take credit for cleaning up the air, but with everything else, the sudden rush of a largely educated, well-off, and worldly people was a spark that lit up the region with much needed verve and color. The Muslims, who far outnumbered other Iranian immigrants, scattered across the state, from San Diego to Irvine to Palo Alto, from JPL to Google. The Armenians rebuilt Glendale. But, as for the Jews…
Not that the Ashkenazim see it this way, but Iranian Jews just about saved Jewish LA from the slow, quiet decline into which it had been pushed by increasing assimilation and growing indifference on the part of younger generations. In the early and mid-1970s in LA, the major synagogues on the West Side and in the Valley were beset by shrinking memberships, their day schools half full; Shabbat dinner was something you ate at Junior’s Deli on Pico or Nate ’n’ Al’s on Beverly Drive, and you had to be seriously observant to fast on Yom Kippur or eschew leavened bread on Passover. I exaggerate, of course, though not by much. And I generalize, but only to make a point.
Iranian Jews are the oldest population in the Diaspora. Neither Sephardic nor Ashkenazi, they’re correctly referred to as Mizrahi, or easterner
Read more: forward.com/articles/208173/how-iranian-jews-shaped-modern-los-angeles/