A year after the 6.7 Richter-scale earthquake rocked Los Angeles, the Jewish community is still digging itself out of the financial and physical mess. But the reconstruction project has provided the Los Angeles Jewish Federation Council with a much-needed opportunity to polish up its tarnished image.

Since the recession of 1990, the Federation - L.A.'s central Jewish community body, in a city where three out of four Jews belong to no organization

at all - had suffered a dramatic fall both in its fundraising ability and its capacity to provide services. But much of that changed after the quake, when the Federation moved quickly to provide information and assistance. And on the Federation's annual "Super Sunday," February 6, 1994, Jews accustomed

to being hit for a contribution found themselves being asked if they needed help.

One sign of the Federation's improved standing was that its annual campaign, which ended on December 31, brought in $ 40.2 million - only $ 1.2 million less than 1993, when contributors didn't have their own quake damage to contend with. Collection of unpaid pledges from previous years pushed the total kitty up to $ 53 million.

Other institutions are just beginning to resume services. The Jewish Home for the Aged in Reseda, which had almost $ 5 million in damage, has completed 85 percent of repairs. The West Valley Jewish Community Center, hit by $ 6 million worth of damage, plans to resume full operations by summer. So does the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley, which had to move its adult retreat program to trailers and modular bungalows.

Despite the damage, most Jewish Angelenos - including tens of thousands of Israelis - have stayed put. Even Yehuda Sutker, interviewed in the February 1994 Jerusalem Report cover story on the quake, has abandoned the idea of moving to nearby Las Vegas. Sutker, still living in the North San Fernando Valley not far from the quake's epicenter, has gone into a new business - selling cost-assessment software to building contractors repairing earthquake damage.

Sheli Teitelbaum/Los Angeles