Synagogue congregation grieves in new home after LA wildfires

LOS ANGELES – Rabbi Jill Gold Wright looked out at her congregation on the night of Jan 10 and uttered a simple statement, with a significant pause.

“I noticed that you are... here.”

That was because under the bright lights in the theatre of the Mayfield Senior School, a Catholic school in Pasadena, California, members of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Centre had gathered for the first time in a borrowed space.

For the congregation, which lost its campus and home of more than 80 years to the Eaton fire, it is just the beginning of a period of borrowing and wandering. The prayer books and prayer shawls and yarmulkes were all loaners from nearby synagogues. One thing was not: a Torah rescued from their burning building.

At least a dozen families in the congregation lost their homes in the Eaton fire. But on the night of Jan 10, Rabbi Gold Wright and Cantor Ruth Berman Harris led a celebration of the community that was still there.

For nearly 45 minutes, song washed over the exhausted and anxious families and friends who came together first for a pot luck dinner and then for familiar music and fellowship.

“Let’s borrow the melody from the Saturday version of this one,” Cantor Berman Harris said. It was the more upbeat version of Mi Chamocha, a prayer praising God for deliverance. “It’s the right one for tonight.”

Finally, when the rabbi began the Jewish prayer for the vulnerable, the Hashkiveinu, the mood turned. She faced her congregation, crying.

Perhaps because she did not think she could make it through a sermon, she invited another rabbi, Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater, who once led this congregation and now runs a local interfaith non-profit, to give a message. His house had burned down, but he did not talk a lot about it, focusing instead on what was still intact.

“Judaism is not about space,” he said. “It’s about people. It’s about community. The space is in service to something greater, and that can’t be taken away by fire.”

Meanwhile, in Santa Monica, a displaced Catholic congregation is living through the same thing. St Monica Catholic Church is sharing space with its neighbouring parish, Corpus Christi Church, which lost its home to the fire in Pacific Palisades on Jan 7.

Both churches have hundreds of families whose homes burned. On Jan 11, families were being matched to ensure that those in need had food, toiletries, school supplies and help finding shelter.

On the morning of Jan 12, St Monica’s Monsignor Lloyd Torgerson was scheduled to welcome his congregation for mass.

Later, the Corpus Christi congregation was expected to gather in the same space for a mass with their own pastor, Monsignor Liam Kidney.

“It’s complete devastation,” Monsignor Torgerson said. “We are just trying to be good neighbours. They need to gather and chat. They’ve lost their place of worship, and their homes, their own sacred spaces.”

The monsignor is opening his home, too: pastor Kidney and his associate pastor, both homeless now, will move into St Monica’s rectory temporarily.

Having shepherded his congregation in the aftermath of the Northridge, California, earthquake of 1994, Monsignor Torgerson felt he would never face a disaster of such magnitude again during his career. But after 37 years at St Monica’s, he finds himself navigating another arduous path with his parishioners.

They are angry, upset, stunned. “It’s the whole spectrum of feeling,” he said, adding that he doesn’t have solutions. “All I can do is walk with them.” NYTIMES