This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
Louis Keene is covering the fires in Los Angeles, where he is based. Follow him on X for live updates on the fire.
LOS ANGELES — When Rabbi Amy Bernstein fled her house in the Palisades Highlands Tuesday afternoon, she grabbed a few important family documents, her late grandmother’s rings and Luna, the German shepherd mix she adopted just four weeks ago. It wasn’t the first time the hilltop neighborhood had evacuated due to fire, and Bernstein had always returned. But later that day, Bernstein watched in horror as the TV news showed her own home burn to the ground.
Lost were her grandmother’s china, the art pieces that once decorated every corner of her house, and the cabinets of Japanese teak she had held onto when she learned how to walk. Her baby pictures.
“It’s a whole lifetime of memories, symbols of experiences, of people who are gone,”Bernstein, 59, said in an interview Thursday. “Everything I have from my whole childhood forward, that was important enough for me to save and keep as part of my home, is gone. And that means my daughter will never get it from me.”
Bernstein is the senior rabbi at Kehillat Israel, a Reconstructionist congregation whose roots in the Pacific Palisades date to 1950. Her solace was the miracle of the synagogue’s survival — the building was fully intact Thursday, even as the Presbyterian church two buildings over was flattened.
As Bernstein mourned her personal tragedy Thursday, she was also taking measure of her community’s losses. Bernstein said 300 families at KI — a third of the community — reported losing their homes in the Palisades Fire, including Bernstein’s predecessor, Rabbi Stephen Carr Reuben, and KI’s associate rabbi, Daniel Sher.
“It’s a heavy lift for all of us,” said Bernstein, who was sheltering with a friend in Venice. “When one person needs help, it’s easier to rally everybody to help in the different ways that they can. We have so many people needing help that it just feels incredibly overwhelming.”
The Palisades Fire was being called one of the most destructive in Los Angeles history, covering some 17,000 acres as of Thursday afternoon, when it remained at 0% containment. It was the largest burn in a catastrophe unfolding across Los Angeles this week, when roaring winds and record dry conditions fueled fires that killed at least five people and destroyed thousands of structures — including one synagogue — in several different areas.
The Palisades fire wreaked havoc on a Jewish community that has been instrumental in the development of the area into one of LA’s most desirable neighborhoods over the last 75 years. Between 5,000 and 10,000 Jews live in the Palisades, according to the Jewish Federation, among them Jewish Hollywood stars like Billy Crystal, Larry David and Eugene Levy. Crystal and Levy lost their homes, too.
The fire ravaged entire residential areas as well as landmark institutions like Palisades Charter High School and the local playhouse. Much of the Palisades’ popular retail district had been reduced to ash.
Yet Bernstein hoped that the same spirit of community that attracted people to the Palisades would power the town’s rebuilding. And the resilience of the synagogue gave her reason to believe the Jewish community would help lead the town’s reconstitution.
Visiting the scene of the disaster for the first time since the loss of her home, she was overcome with emotion when Kehillat Israel’s towering main sanctuary came into view.
“To drive through all that horror and to see that still there, that’s the home we have left, many of us,” Bernstein said. “And the one we’ll create together as a community.’
Kehillat Israel has set up a fund for its displaced community members that can be found here: https://www.ourki.org/firefund.
This story was originally published on the Forward.
