Fires
Sermon Shabbat Vayechi 5785, Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
So let’s talk about fires… As a native of Los Angeles, where I lived for the first 25 years of my life and where my parents lived until five years ago and I visited, and still visit, often, the catastrophic firestorms that hit my hometown have been shocking. This is the single worst fire in terms of property loss in American history, and seeing images of neighborhoods and buildings I knew, completely annihilated, including Pasadena Jewish Center, a synagogue my dad served as cantor around 1950, and where I once sang in a concert, is terribly sad. My friend, Cantor Chayim Frenkel, has been Hazzan at Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades, where both rabbis’ homes burned down as did many of their congregants’ homes. We don’t yet know the full scope of the disaster, but it’s awful. At least 15 people have died.
It reminds me of two close calls I’ve had with fires, one just the summer before last on the island of Maui, where we missed being caught in the Lahaina fire by a couple of hours, and where Sophie and Ayelet—then just six months old—and I were marooned without power two miles from ground zero for several days. The other memory is much older, and goes back to Santa Barbara, California, when I was cantor in the synagogue, Congregation B’nai B’rith, back in 1990. That fire came within a mile or so of my condo, and it also swirled all around the temple and burned part of the outdoor chapel. About 20 of our congregants lost their homes in the conflagration that destroyed over 400 homes. To put it in proportion, the LA fires this week have destroyed over 10,000 homes. So that Santa Barbara fire, while not nearly as devastating as the LA fires have been, was still no small event.
The situation in Santa Barbara then was eerily similar to what happened this week, if not as apocalyptic. After a wet winter spurred the growth of heavy brush, unseasonably hot temperatures dried everything out. Then a ferocious sundowner wind started to blow—and in that fire, an arsonist started things off deliberately. The fire raced down from the mountains at terrific speed. It's easy to remember the feelings of fear and concern as the conflagration approached our neighborhood—I had my cat and my photographs and whatever fit into my car ready to flee. Then the wind shifted a little, and my home was spared, at my home.
Now the Santa Barbara temple building, in a lovely spot near San Marcos Pass, in the foothills overlooking a canyon with views of the mountains and out to the ocean, was going to be in the path of the fire and likely to burn. I tried to get back to the synagogue to save the Torahs and other sacred items, but the road was closed. Courageously, our Catholic caretaker and his wife, Marian and Wanda Grodel, loaded the Torahs into the temple van and drove through a literal wall of fire to safety. Eventually, the fire turned again, and we were able to get back up to the synagogue building by the next morning. Amid fears that the fire would return, a few of us elected to stay at the temple and climb up and hose down the roof to prevent flying embers from igniting the building. Fortunately, firefighters got the blaze under control before it came back to finish the destruction.
In the end, the fire ravaged San Antonio Creek Road, the road that the synagogue was on. Nearly all the lovely homes located there were gone, burned to the foundations. There is no comparable experience to discovering that all of your possessions, save the clothes on your back, have just gone up in smoke. Friends lost everything they owned, including pets and the tangible memories of their lives, family heirlooms, artworks and valuables. One friend lost his nearly completed dissertation in those pre-cloud storage days; I don’t believe he ever completed his Ph.D.
Besides their pets, what people really missed most turned out to be their photographs—their memories. It’s fascinating how tragedy can clarify your priorities that way.
There was one great surprise amid all the destruction. It was that while nearly all the homes on the temple’s road were totally burned, the four or five religious institutions on that same road were essentially undamaged: the synagogue, the Greek Orthodox Church, the other Christian churches. All had been in the path of the fire, and all survived intact with almost no destruction.
We concluded that perhaps the answer was simply that whatever you believed, you should keep on believing.
In this Los Angeles fire, of course, houses of worship have not been spared, including a temple, churches, and a mosque. Our prayers and thoughts are with the residents who have lost their homes and businesses, their memories and their livelihood. And we continue to be grateful to those who put their lives on the line to fight these fires, including the son-in-law one of our Beit Simcha families, who has been on the front lines since the fires began.
It should be clear to everyone by now that the impact of global warming, as predicted, is making all of these “natural disasters” far worse, increasing the severity of the wild weather swings that cause fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis to devastate more and more terribly. We can only hope that our species is able to take the corrective action essential to mitigate the awful consequences of events like these terrible fires.
My friends, I encourage you to support the Jewish charities in particular that are working to help those who have lost so much in these terrible fires; you can find the links on your Shabbat leaflet, and in the email we sent out today. We know that Los Angeles will rebuild, and the people impacted so destructively will come back from this awful tragedy.
Look, if there is one thing that we Jews know how to do, it is how to be resilient in the face of catastrophe, right? Jewish history, or at least about 1900 years of it, can be viewed as a series of calamities followed by an eventual rise from the ashes. In many ways, our experience has taught us that the best way to respond to destructive trauma is to begin again, drawing strength and courage from our own tradition.
The story of Joseph in Genesis, which we conclude this Shabbat, might be the first Jewish example of a person rising from the very depths to achieve his dreams, as he goes literally from slavery to prison to royal power. Our paradigmatic Jewish story is that of the Exodus from Egypt, which we begin to read next Shabbat, of a slave people liberated and eventually brought to the Promised Land. We have demonstrated again and again that we know how to emerge from destruction and rebuild.
In fact, we are seeing it in Israel even now, in the midst of war. Over 85% of all Israelis displaced from the south of Israel by the Hamas atrocities and the Gaza War have returned to their homes, some of them rebuilding on the same destroyed sites. It is likely that 70,000 Israelis displaced in the north of Israel will be able to return fairly soon; that is the goal.
Fire, of course, is not war. But the lessons we can learn from the resiliency of our people can help us understand that people have an innate ability to return from disaster and rebuild their lives, and their homes again.
I can tell you that it took time in Santa Barbara, but the houses were eventually rebuilt—this time out of less flammable materials and with more fire-resistant shrubbery. We each have the individual ability to come back from so much, if we have faith and work to do so. And we have the collective ability to help those struggling to do so now.
We are taught in the Talmud Kol Yisrael Areivim zeh Bazeh, all Israel is responsible for one another. In fact, all human beings share that responsibility.
Our prayer on this Shabbat is that the fires cease soon, so the long process of rebuilding can begin. And that we understand the mutual responsibility we all have to help one another in that process.