Pico-Robertson is full of talented people. We have compiled a list of 18 people in our community doing all kinds of amazing things, from helping the less fortunate to fighting antisemitism to teaching Torah and much, much more.
Here are the top people to watch and how to follow their journeys.
1. Rachelle Yadegar
Rachelle Yadegar Zarabian is a fashion blogger with almost 50k followers living in the Pico Robertson area. She regularly shares aesthetic snippets of her life as well as modest fashion ideas and inspirations with her followers. In the last couple of years, she opened her own modest fashion boutique, Cultear. You can find her on instagram @rachelleyadegar.
2. Jessica Hyam
Jessica Hyam is the owner of The Little Tichel Lady, which has been in business for eight years now – starting with tichels and expanding to clothing, Shabbos makeup, and jewelry. They had been operating the first few years out of their backhouse and always knew that they wanted to eventually open their storefront on Pico. Jessica’s favorite thing about the community is, “that we get to see our community friends and family on a daily basis when they come into the shop. It doesn’t feel like a business transaction, it feels like I’m hanging out with my friends and having a great time. I love that our business is on Pico.” You can support The Little Tichel Lady by visiting in person or going to @thelittletichellady on Instagram or their website thelittletichellady.com.
3. Saul Blinkoff
Saul Blinkoff is a keynote speaker and public figure in the Pico area known for his career in Disney animation filmmaking. He is also a well-known speaker in the Aish/Los Angeles kiruv world. His podcast, “Life of Awesome” has had well-known guests such as Kristina Kuzmic, Alan Menkin, and George Foreman. Saul also offers coaching as well including marriage, individual, and group coaching. You can find him on Instagram @SaulBlinkoff and www.saulblinkoff.com.
4 & 5. Yossi and Chaya Segelman
We also wanted to feature beautiful chessed organizations led by people in Pico. The first is OBKLA, the Pico branch, which was founded by Yossi and Chaya Segelman. As of 2024 OBKLA has served delicious, restaurant quality meals (cooked by the five rotating chefs they have — Segelman emphasizes that the food is all made to be very flavorful, feeding people in need high quality food with dignity). The Segelmans started OBKLA in August 2020, wanting to do something special in honor of an upcoming family wedding during the pandemic. Now they are a cornerstone of the community and have volunteers of all ages and backgrounds serving 5,000 meals each week to many organizations including Tomchei Shabbos, ETTA, and the soup kitchen on Pico. Segelman’s favorite part of Pico is the sense of community and unity and that he has had volunteers in OBKLA made of every type of Jewish person. You can find out more on Instagram @OBKLA or on their website www.obkla.org.
6. Tabby Refael
Tabby Refael is an award-winning writer and speaker. As an Iranian American writer, she often writes about her “fantastically vibrant, ancient and sometimes very quirky community.” She has won numerous awards for her writing, including most recently a first place Award for Excellence in Writing About Women, presented by the American Jewish Press Association. Tabby has written for various publications including Newsweek, Los Angeles Magazine, Aish, Moment Magazine and the Los Angeles Review of Books. But she is best known as a weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more information about Tabby, as well as find links to her articles by visiting her website at www.tabbyrefael.com. Her favorite thing about Pico? “I’ve traveled enough to appreciate that the spectrum of Jewish life and observance levels in this part of town is simply amazing. On any given Shabbat, you may see Jews wearing T-shirts and jeans who are walking to one synagogue, black-hatted Orthodox Jewish men leaving another synagogue, and women in colorful dresses driving to still another synagogue. And there’s little judgment regarding where one ‘holds’ in Jewish observance here. It’s wonderful.” Find out more about Tabby on her website or Instagram @tabbyrefael.
7. Leeat Omidfar of Jewish Womens Network
Jewish Womens Network is an Instagram page and WhatsApp community network for women’s learning and events started by Leeat Omidfar, who has lived in Pico for about eight years. It was started because there was a need for women in the community to learn and connect with each other. She has organized shiurim, including a four-part series on relationships, dating, and family purity. There are plans for upcoming shiurim and to bring Torah teachers to our community for shiurim. After she moved to LA, Leeat saw that there were so many opportunities for learning that women weren’t taking advantage of — so she wanted to change that. Her inspirational Instagram page is @Jewishwomensnetwork.
8. Barbara Heller
Barbara Heller is a performer and award-winning playwright, songwriter, podcaster, and filmmaker in the Pico-Robertson community since 2003. In addition to touring in her one-woman show, she leads healing meditation workshops. She currently has almost 9,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts funny reels and celebrity impressions. Barbara is currently touring internationally for her show, Messianic Moments and Cosmic Conversations, which started last year in Hollywood at the CA Fringe Fest. She is currently performing in London and would love to do a show in LA again. When asked her favorite things about Pico she said “I LOVE having so many amazing friends and community members just steps away from one another. I LOVE the HAPPY MINYAN sooo much and I love how KIND and generous and non-judgmental our community is. You can create your own flavor within Jewish life here. I’ve lived in several other communities and the warmth of ours is like NO OTHER! I think when Moshiach comes Pico will be the first stop!” You can follow her on instagram @barbieheller or visit her website, www.barbheller.com.
9. David Sacks
Although David Sacks is not an ordained rabbi, he is a very popular Torah teacher in the Pico Robertson community and often speaks at the Happy Minyan, where he is very active in the modern Chasidic shul knows for its lively Friday Night kabbalat Shabbat services. In addition to working in Hollywood as an award-winning writer and producer, he has a podcast called Spiritual Tools for an Outrageous World, along with a WhatsApp group of the same name where he posts his weekly podcast along with other inspirational messages. Listen to his podcast here.
10. Chava Floryn Tombosky
Chava Floryn Tombosky is a singer, author, somatic healer, and filmmaker who has lived in Pico Robertson for 10 years. Her favorite thing about the community is her husband, Rabbi Robbie Tombosky’s weekly Shabbat Young Professionals Minyan at Beth Jacob. Chava’s book “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay: How to Nurture Youself Through A Storm” is available on Amazon. Her current project is “Resilient,” an extremely timely and important documentary exploring the resiliency of Israelis, both citizens and those on the frontlines, following the October 7th massacre and ongoing war. If you would like to make a donation towards the making of the documentary, here’s a link: https://chavafloryn.com/resilientdocumentary/
11. Jackie Glaser
Jackie Glaser is a dating coach living in the Pico Robertson community who helps young women all over the world virtually through her Instagram page, coaching sessions, workshops, and speeches that she gives. Formerly a teacher at Neve Yerushalayim and a Today Show psychologist, she is skillful at helping women work on themselves and heal in order to date as their healthiest and best selves possible. Women can work with her by doing one on one coaching or online workshops – she has lots of content available on her Instagram page as well. A couple of the benefits of following her on Instagram are regular question and answer sessions as well as Instagram lives discussing anything related to dating. You can find more about her services at www.jackieglaser.com or follow her on Instagram @datingbyjackieg.
12. Elisheva Rishon
Elisheva Rishon is a born & raised Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn. She founded Eli7 Designs, a cultural empowerment apparel brand. She is an artist, a writer, a designer & a speaker. She has been published by Aish, Jew in the City and featured in Refinery29, Allure Magazine, VoyageLA, Hey Alma, The Times of Israel, Jewish Link, I24 News, Jubilee Middle Ground, and more. She frequently discusses Orthodox Judaism, Jewish Empowerment, Modest Fashion & Antisemitism. She is also a content creator who can be found on both Instagram (@therealeli7designs) and Tiktok (@eli7jaap). You can find her fun Jewish themed apparel at https://eli7designs.com.
13 & 14. Rabbi Avrohom Wagshul and Devorah Leah Wagshul
Yad Menachem is another beautiful chesed organization in the community founded five years ago to help give children who may not otherwise have the ability receive a Jewish education. It was started after Rabbi Wagshul and his wife were running a program to help children learn basic Jewish ideas. A mother came to them saying she really wanted her children in Jewish school full time, but she could not afford tuition. They sent out a mass text and one child’s full tuition was able to be sponsored after being in public school. They eventually officially started with $50k and getting 18 kids into Jewish day schools. Each year they have been able to support more and more children getting a Jewish education by connecting them with any of the many Jewish day schools thanks to a combination of donations and the schools’ scholarship programs. When asked for any advice to someone who wants to start their own chesed organization, Rabbi Wagshal said just to get started by reaching out; when there is a need people in the community want to help, but the main thing is to get started and just reach out to your own network. If you know anyone in the community who would benefit, you can send them to www.yadmenachem.org.
15. Nina Safar
Nina Safar is a kosher recipe developer and food blogger living in Pico Robertson. She has been blogging and sharing recipes since the mid 2000’s and continues to share her traditional recipes with fun, modern twists on both her website and Instagram. You can follow her for new recipe ideas and see snippets of her day to day life @kosherinthekitch or visit her website www.kosherinthekitch.com.
16. Lenny Nourafchan
Lenny Nourafchan, a Persian-Italian Jew opened Lenny’s Casita as a pop up takeout restaurant outside of Western Kosher at the height of the pandemic. While restaurants were mostly all closed or doing takeout only, Lenny brought some much needed kosher Mexican food to Pico fused with tastes from his Israeli background as well as kosher takes on popular non kosher foods like Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap supreme and more recently, a kosher version of McDonald’s Big Mac. Now they have a weekly Shabbat Shuk with traditional Israeli fare available for Shabbat takeout. The Pico culinary community is very fortunate to have his innovation. Follow Lenny’s on Instagram @lennyscasita.
17 & 18. Daniel and Kylie Ora Lobell
Daniel and Kylie Ora Lobell moved to Pico-Robertson in 2012 and started PicoRobertson.com as a way to give back to the community following their robbery in 2023, when everyone stepped up to help them. Kylie does marketing/PR at her company, KOL Digital Marketing, where she represents Jewish organizations, business owners, and authors, and she is a Community Editor at the Jewish Journal of LA. Daniel is a standup comedian, host of the “We Think It’s Funny” podcast with another Pico legend, Mark Schiff, and owner of The Podcast Bus, a podcast production studio on wheels. They are so honored to be part of the Pico-Robertson community, which is out of the box, warm, and so giving. They can’t wait to see what the future has in store for it. You can find them on Instagram @kylieorawriter and @daniellobell, or follow @picorobertson.