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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s 80th anniversary remembered with daffodils, 3 presidents and an 11th commandment against ‘indifference’
WARSAW (JTA) — Exactly 80 years ago, a few hundred ragtag, half-starved Jews emerged from sewers in Warsaw to battle Nazis – and held them off for nearly a month rather than surrender themselves and their Jewish brethren to the Treblinka and Majdanek death camps.
On Wednesday, thousands of Poles and international visitors, including Polish President Andrzej Duda, Israeli President Issac Herzog and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, marked the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in a stirring Holocaust commemoration festooned with daffodils, the emergent symbol of the largest Jewish rebellion against the Nazis during World War II.
“As German federal president, I stand before you today and bow to the courageous fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto,” Steinmeier told a few hundred politicians, Jewish leaders and others at the Ghetto Heroes Monument, marking the first time a German president has joined in the annual commemoration. “I stand before you today and ask for your forgiveness for the crimes committed here by Germans.”
This was also the first time leaders from all three countries came together for the official uprising ceremony to commemorate the fighters, none of whom are alive today. The last surviving fighter, Simcha Rathajzer-Rotem, also known as Kazik, died in December 2018. A handful of Warsaw Ghetto survivors who were not old enough to join the fighting remain, according to Holocaust scholars.
In another first, the three heads of state attended a commemorative service led by Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schdurich at Warsaw’s Nozyk Synagogue. By the end of the ceremony, which was conducted mostly in Hebrew and featured Polish-Jewish children singing the Polish and Israeli national anthems, many attendees had tears in their eyes.
“I just thought, the leaders are here, this is something we should do, it’s part of building relationships and collective memory that partnerships are built on,” Schudrich told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Earlier in the day, Polish President Duda called the fighters “the heroes of the Jews all over the world” and “the heroes of Poland and the Poles.”
Herzog, a day after Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, praised the fighters for sparking hope during one of humanity’s most tragic times. “In a world falling apart, in the shadow of death, under conditions of humiliation, famine, and forced labor, in the ghettos… they succeeded — mothers, fathers, children, grandfathers, and grandmothers — in upholding human morality, mutual responsibility, faith and basic humanity,” he said.
From left to right: German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Israeli President Issac Herzog hold hands before the 80th anniversary commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in front of the city’s Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, April 19, 2023. (German Government Press Office/Getty Images)
Wednesday’s diplomatic tribute, which also included speeches by World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder and Marian Turski, a Lodz Ghetto survivor whose so-called 11th commandment — “Thou shalt not be indifferent” — became the slogan for programming by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews around the commemoration.
Eleven years ago, POLIN commissioned Jewish artist Helena Czernek to design a simple paper flower daffodil that has since been worn on the uprising’s anniversary to raise awareness of the day. The pin design was inspired by a commander of the uprising, Marek Edelman, who died in 2009. Each year he would receive a bouquet of daffodils to mark the anniversary date from an anonymous sender, and he would in turn place them on the city’s Monument to the Ghetto Heroes — a large sculpture standing at the site of the uprising’s first battle.
The daffodil marker has since changed the landscape of Holocaust memory in Poland, according to POLIN museum spokeswoman Marta Dziewulska.
“Our research shows that since we began our educational programs around this event, including handing out the daffodils, the rise in general public knowledge about the uprising has been enormous,” said Dziewulska.
This year, thanks in part to financial support from Lauder, a billionaire heir to the Estee Lauder fortune and a major Republican donor, the daffodil campaign reached far more people than ever, both in Poland and beyond. Throughout the center of Warsaw, the paper daffodil was ubiquitous among pedestrians and cafe dwellers across generations. All crew members on LOT Polish airline flights wore them.
For the first time, the daffodils were also distributed to 150,000 people in 100 Jewish communities around the world. More than 3,000 volunteers gave out 450,000 paper daffodils in six cities across Poland, and over 7,000 schools, libraries and cultural institutions participated in the museum’s daffodil campaign, which includes films and educational materials about the uprising.
Helena Czernek designed the paper daffodil over a decade ago. (Dinah Spritzer)
Krystyna Budnicka, who was 11 at the time of the uprising, told journalists about her story on Monday. The fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) were armed with home-made grenades and Molotov cocktails. In the end, roughly 13,000 Jews were were burnt alive or suffocated as the Nazis burnt down the ghetto to quell the rebellion, sending the remaining some 50,000 Jews to be murdered further east.
Budnicka told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza that “as the ghetto was burning, the underground was like a bread oven.”
But Budnicka and some of her 10 immediate family members, none of whom survived the Holocaust, had one advantage. Her brothers and father were observant Jews who happened to be carpenters. They had constructed a bunker to lead to the sewers so that eventually, at least she and her brother, who later died of typhus, were able to make it out.
Budnicka was later taken in by a Catholic orphanage while the war was still raging and hid her Jewish identity, changing her last name to Kuczer. Until the 1990s, she told almost no one of her travels. But today she is the ambassador of POLIN Museum.
Her recollection of life at the time is limited, except that she had hope for survival. The fighters slept during the day in bunkers the Nazis couldn’t easily find, and came out of the sewers to fight at night. She remembers hunger, being the only girl among many boys and dreaming about what bread tasted like, a distant memory.
Many decades later, after the end of the Communist dictatorship, a “Children of the Holocaust” association was formed in Poland. For the first time, Budnicka and many others started telling their stories out loud, and at schools.
“Now I feel that I have to do it,” she told Gazeta Wyborcza. “When I mention my loved ones at meetings, it’s like I’m erecting a monument to my family. They live then. I see them. It’s in order: my mother Cyrla, father Josef Lejzor, brothers Izaak, Boruch, Szaja, Chaim, Rafał.”
Budnicka is not the only Warsaw Ghetto survivor to ask the world to remember what she endured. Helena Birnbaum, 93, who also survived by hiding in a bunker, participated in this year’s March of the Living — an annual Holocaust remembrance event that brings thousands of participants from around the world to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She told reporters at the march on Tuesday why she flew all the way to Poland from Israel to talk about her ordeal.
“The importance of knowing about the Holocaust is to know the person in all situations, on the brink of death,” she said. “The importance of knowing that the Holocaust was life within death and not everyone died at once. The individual stories matter.”
An iconic photo from the Warsaw Ghetto shows Jews being led by Nazis in 1943. (U.S. Holocaust Museum/Wikimedia Commons)
The act of international unity in display at the official uprising ceremony comes at a time when Poland’s right-wing government continues to espouse a nationalist narrative that international scholars say downplays Polish antisemitism and violence towards Jews before, during and after World War II. Multiple Polish laws connected to Holocaust rhetoric and restitution payments caused diplomatic tensions between Poland and Israel for years, and the two only resumed more full relations last month. The rapprochement came after Israel’s foreign minister announced the resumption of Israeli student trips to Holocaust sites in Poland, which now could include sites that explain Nazi violence against non-Jewish Poles.
Six years ago, some Polish Jews who rejected their government’s patriotic narrative launched their own uprising commemoration, which has grown from a group of hundreds to nearly a thousand. During the alternative commemoration on Wednesday, which featured Yiddish songs sung by school children and recitations of poetry by Polish-Jewish authors, participants laid paper and real daffodils at Warsaw Ghetto monuments such as Umschlagplatz, where the Nazis deportee 350,000 Jews by train to Treblinka.
Patrycja Dolowy, director of Warsaw’s Jewish community center, was an early supporter of what she called a grassroots alternative to the pomp and circumstance of the government’s ceremony, only a few hundred feet away.
“Jews were sentenced to death in the center of their own city and the majority of people outside the ghetto were doing nothing about this,” said Dolowy, who believes government focus on heroism should not erase inquiry into less heroic actions by Poles.
“If Jews were not treated before the war as strangers, it would have been much easier for everyone, Jews and non-Jews, to rise together and resist,” she theorized.
The counter-commemoration reflects the contrasting attitudes in Poland towards honoring Jewish and Holocaust memory. In 2017, the government passed a law that assured public schools taught history from a heroic, patriotic perspective, and in 2018 made it illegal to insult the Polish nation’s Holocaust record, condemning scholars who dared delve into historical Polish aggression against Jews.
Attendees shown at an alternative Warsaw Ghetto Uprising commemoration, which has grown in recent years. (Dinah Spritzer)
Jerzy Warman, 76, a Polish-born Jew participating in the non-governmental commemoration whose parents survived the Warsaw Ghetto, said the Polish government wants to turn the uprising commemoration into an event where “they can do a roll call of Poles who they say helped the Jews.”
Warman noted that his father joined Edelman at the Warsaw Uprising, a major Polish resistance campaign that took place year after the Ghetto Uprising. “The Jews tried to join the Polish Home Army as a group but were rejected by them,” Warman recalled his father explaining.
Moshe Kis, 22, a Jewish political science student from Warsaw whose grandmother spent two years in the ghetto, echoed Warman’s view.
“So many people here still don’t understand their own history,” said Kis, who will immigrate to Israel next year. He added, fiddling with a daffodil over coffee, “when the sirens went off today in honor of the uprising, I heard people around me saying on the street, ‘what is this for, are we being invaded?’”
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Pakistan, Saudi in Talks on JF-17 Jets-for-Loans Deal, Sources Say
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meet in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 17, 2025. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are in talks to convert about $2 billion of Saudi loans into a JF–17 fighter jet deal, two Pakistani sources said, deepening military cooperation months after the two nations signed a mutual defense pact last year.
The talks underscore how the two allies are moving to operationalize defense cooperation at a time when Pakistan is facing acute financial strain and Saudi Arabia is reshaping its security partnerships to hedge against uncertainty about US commitments in the Middle East.
The mutual defense deal was signed following Israel’s strikes on what it said were Hamas targets in Doha, an attack that shook the Gulf region.
One of the sources said the discussions were limited to the provision of JF–17 Thunder fighter jets, the light combat aircraft jointly developed by Pakistan and China and produced in Pakistan, while the second said the jets were the primary option among others under discussion.
The first source said the total deal was worth $4 billion, with an additional $2 billion to be spent on equipment over and above the loan conversion. The sources close to the military with knowledge of the matter spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the deal.
Pakistan‘s Air Chief Zaheer Ahmed Baber Sidhu was in Saudi Arabia for bilateral talks including on “military cooperation between the two sides,” Saudi media outlet SaudiNews50 said on social media platform X on Monday.
TESTED IN COMBAT
Amir Masood, a retired Air Marshall and analyst, said Pakistan was in talks about or had finalized deals with six countries to provide equipment including JF–17s and electronic systems and weapons systems for the jets. He said those countries included Saudi Arabia, but could not confirm any details about the negotiations.
The JF–17s marketability has been increased because “it is tested and has been used in combat,” he told Reuters, adding that it’s also cost effective. Pakistan has said the aircraft was deployed during its conflict with India in May last year, the heaviest fighting between the neighbors in decades.
Pakistan‘s military and finance and defense ministries and military did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Saudi Arabia’s government media office also did not respond.
The mutual defence pact, signed in September, committed both sides to treat any aggression against either country as an attack on both, significantly deepening a decades-old security partnership.
Pakistan has long provided military support to the kingdom, including training and advisory deployments, while Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stepped in to support Pakistan financially during periods of economic stress.
In 2018, Riyadh announced a $6 billion support package for Pakistan, including a $3 billion deposit at the central bank and $3 billion worth of oil supplies on deferred payment.
Saudi Arabia has since rolled over deposits multiple times, including a $1.2 billion deferment last year, helping Islamabad stabilize its foreign exchange reserves amid chronic balance-of-payments pressures.
ARMS SALES OUTREACH
Pakistan has in recent months stepped up defense outreach as it seeks to expand arms exports and monetize its domestic defense industry.
Last month, Islamabad struck a weapons deal worth more than $4 billion with Libya’s eastern-based Libyan National Army, officials said, one of the country’s largest-ever arms sales, which includes JF–17 fighter jets and training aircraft.
Pakistan has also held talks with Bangladesh on the possible sale of JF–17s, as it widens its arms supply ambitions beyond South Asia and the Middle East.
On Tuesday, Pakistan‘s defense minister said the success of its weapons industry could transform the country’s economic outlook.
“Our aircraft have been tested, and we are receiving so many orders that Pakistan may not need the International Monetary Fund in six months,” Khawaja Asif told broadcaster Geo News.
Pakistan is currently under a $7 billion IMF program, its 24th, which followed a short-term $3 billion deal that helped avert a sovereign default in 2023. It secured the Fund’s support after Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies provided financial and deposit rollovers.
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Iran Judiciary Chief Warns No Leniency for Protesters ‘Helping Enemy’
People walk on a street as protests erupt over the collapse of the currency’s value in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 2, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran‘s top judge warned protesters on Wednesday there would be “no leniency for those who help the enemy against the Islamic Republic,” while accusing Israel and the US of pursuing hybrid methods to disrupt the country.
Tehran remains under international pressure with US President Donald Trump threatening to come to the aid of protesters if security forces fire on them, seven months after Israeli and US forces bombed Iranian nuclear sites in a 12-day war.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed not to “yield to the enemy.”
The current protests, the biggest wave of dissent in three years, began last month in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar by shopkeepers condemning the currency’s free fall. Unrest has since spread nationwide amid deepening distress over economic hardships, including rocketing inflation driven by mismanagement and Western sanctions, and curbs on political and social freedoms.
“Following announcements by Israel and the US president, there is no excuse for those coming to the streets for riots and unrest,” Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the head of Iran‘s judiciary, was quoted as saying by state media.
“From now on, there will be no leniency for whoever helps the enemy against the Islamic Republic and the calm of the people,” Ejei said.
At least 27 people have been killed and more than 1,500 arrested in Iran in the first 10 days of protests, with the west of the country seeing the highest number of casualties according to Kurdish-Iranian rights group Hengaw.
HRANA, a network of human rights activists, has reported a higher death toll of at least 36 people as well as the arrest of at least 2,076 people.
Reuters has not been able to independently verify the numbers of casualties or details of disturbances reported by Iranian media and rights groups.
Iranian authorities have not given a death toll for protesters, but have said at least two members of the security services have died and more than a dozen have been injured.
MOST KILLINGS IN SIX WESTERN PROVINCES
Iran‘s western provinces – which are economically marginalized and are heavily policed due to past outbreaks of unrest and their strategic location for national defense – have witnessed the most violent protests and repression lately.
Demonstrators took to the streets again overnight in the western province of Ilam and disturbances erupted, Hengaw said.
It has counted at least 20 demonstrators killed since late December in the provinces of Ilam, Lorestan, Kermanshah, Fars, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, and Hamedan.
“During the funeral of two people in Malekshahi on Tuesday, a number of attendees began chanting harsh, anti-system slogans,” said Fars, a news agency affiliated with Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards.
After the funeral, Fars said, “about 100 mourners went into the city and trashed three banks … Some started shooting at the police trying to disperse them.”
In Abdanan, a city in southwestern Ilam province, a large crowd gathered late on Tuesday and chanted slogans against Khamenei that could be heard in a video shared on a Telegram channel called Nistemanijoan with over 180,000 followers.
The semi-official Mehr news agency said protesters had stormed a food store and emptied bags of rice, which has been affected by galloping inflation that has made ordinary staples increasingly unaffordable for many Iranians.
SON OF LATE SHAH CALLS FOR MORE PROTESTS
Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of Iran‘s late Shah toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has urged Iranian security forces to side with the people and called for more protests.
“In these decisive moments, I expect you to return to the embrace of the nation and to use your weapons not to fire at people, but to protect them,” the last heir to Iran‘s defunct monarchy said in a video posted on X.
Pahlavi, 65, has lived abroad for over four decades since the US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in an uprising.
Opposition to Iran’s clerical establishment is atomized, with no broadly recognized leader. It remains unclear how much support Pahlavi has on the ground, but there have been some pro-Pahlavi slogans in demonstrations.
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‘From a shtetl to a diaspora’: How a Palisades synagogue exiled by fire forged through
Jewish tradition carves grief into discrete periods of time. Shiva lasts a week. Shloshim — the post-funeral period when one does not receive a haircut — is 30 days. For the death of a parent, one says kaddish for 11 months. After a year, mourning officially concludes.
But what of the destruction of a home — or a whole neighborhood? At Kehillat Israel, some 250 families lost theirs in the Palisades fire that ignited last Jan. 7, including three members of the synagogue’s clergy team. Another 250 or so families were displaced. And as the first anniversary of the fire arrives, the vast majority remain dispersed across Los Angeles County and beyond, unsure if or when they will return to the place they call home.
“The pace of healing is different in a situation in which we haven’t been able to fully move on,” Rabbi Daniel Sher, Kehillat Israel’s associate rabbi, said in an interview. “When you add infrastructure and city conditions and all the different nuances and circumstances, a year becomes very short.”
One of the few Pacific Palisades institutions spared by the flames was the synagogue, a fixture of the seaside community since the 1950s. But that, too, has been inaccessible to the congregation; with the building closed anyway for smoke damage remediation, Kehillat Israel — formerly Reconstructionist, now unaffiliated — broke ground on a planned interior renovation that is expected to be complete in March.
So for the last year, as hundreds of congregants wrangle with insurance companies and homeowner associations, await construction permits or weigh rebuilding, they have met in smaller, often makeshift settings. Weekly services are held in a children’s museum in nearby Santa Monica; a synagogue close by has been hosting KI’s religious school. Sher and senior rabbi Amy Bernstein, both of whom are still living with their families in temporary housing, have traveled around town to serve — and preserve — their community.
“We went from a shtetl to a diaspora,” Sher said. “So our members are still members, but our gathering points feel different.”
An unimaginable disaster
The blaze, one of the largest in the history of L.A., killed 12, destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and left the Pacific Palisades, an upscale town known for its coziness and exclusivity, virtually unrecognizable. Whole neighborhoods were wiped out, with countless iconic local landmarks badly damaged or reduced to rubble. KI members who lost their homes will never recover the ketubahs, menorahs and kiddush cups that infused their Jewish lives with meaning.
Yet the people whose homes were damaged, but not destroyed, have struggled as well. Thousands of Palisades residents had their insurance policies canceled months before the fire after the California insurance commissioner blocked an attempted rate hike; In lieu of private insurance, those homes were covered under the California FAIR Plan, the state’s last-resort insurer, which covers physical damage but not smoke damage, debris removal or alternative living expenses.
“Almost everybody was underinsured,” said Matt Ross, the president of KI’s board of trustees. “It’s a much more expensive process to rebuild than I think almost anybody realized.”
In the first days following the fire, the synagogue was able to help cover incidentals for congregants who were struggling to get money from their insurers. And with the support of members and the local Jewish federation, KI covered membership dues this year for everyone displaced by the fire.
Still, the months that followed have been an ongoing nightmare for many congregants. People described fighting with their insurance adjusters, navigating inscrutable municipal bureaucracy and being at the mercy of their neighbors — who hold the power to block new construction in some HOAs.
While Kehillat Israel escaped the flames, it did not dodge insurance trouble. Ross said that last summer, with remediation ongoing — and with the synagogue’s claim still open — the building’s insurer informed KI that it would not renew its policy. When they finally found replacement coverage, it was many times more expensive — taking a five-figure annual premium well into the six figures.
“It’s absolutely outrageous. It is really stunning,” said Ross, who also lost his home in the fire. “These are the kinds of challenges that not only individuals, but a synagogue or other house of worship faces.”
Community in exile
With congregants spread out across the Southland, the synagogue’s programming has moved to meet them, often in far-flung or esoteric locations.
A congregant hosted a Sukkot gathering in Hermosa Beach — nearly 20 miles away (and a lifetime in traffic) from KI’s main sanctuary — and other events as far east as Hollywood and north in the San Fernando Valley. The synagogue threw a Purim party at a bowling alley and celebrated Hanukkah at a brewery. It didn’t hide from joy.
“There are moments where you’re laughing,” Bernstein said, “and actually for a second forget that you’ve been through this horrible, horrible ordeal.”
The most emotionally fraught Jewish event on the calendar was Passover. “I think for a lot of our folks, they had hosted Seder in the past, and they weren’t quite ready to figure out how to host not in their home,” Sher said. The synagogue hosted a Seder at a Bel Air hotel, where 300 people ate matzo and maror and shared the story of Jewish redemption.
And while no family heirloom can ever be replaced, new ones were being created. A national Judaica drive allowed L.A. wildfire victims to pick out ritual items from a veritable trove of donated candlesticks, prayer shawls and mezuzahs. Separately, KI organized a ketubah-and-vow-renewal ceremony, in which around 20 couples who had lost their Jewish marriage contracts in the fire signed new ones — and bore witness to each other’s marital vows.
That event was hosted at Leo Baeck Temple, one of countless local synagogues that have lent support to KI and other affected congregations in the past year. Sher said he and Bernstein had helped lead bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies in more than a dozen different sanctuaries in the last year.
“Anyone who’s going to pretend that this year hasn’t been weird, they’re being inauthentic,” Sher said. “But the fact that I still get to see that same bar and bat mitzvah family — just a different location, in a different venue, at a different moment — shows that we’re not going to be held back from these limitations. We’re still going to find ways to be together.”
Grieving alone, together
For the rabbis of Kehillat Israel, the scale of the tragedy could be hard to wrap one’s head around. On the one hand, no congregants perished in the fire — a clear blessing, or even a miracle. But there were well over a thousand who needed comforting — as did the rabbis themselves, who had been rendered homeless.
Bernstein, the synagogue’s senior rabbi, said that at first, she was just happy there was something she could do.
But days turned to weeks turned to months and she had barely been able to grieve her own losses: generations of family photos and correspondence; a lifetime of fine art collected from all over the world; a pair of shoes for every occasion and mood; and, of course, the home where she had raised her daughter.
When she finally took time off last August — seven months after the fire — she realized she had waited too long.
“When we’re being of service, that alleviates some anxieties and sense of vulnerability,” Bernstein said, “but it masks other ways that you’re exhausting what few resources you have left.”
For the last year, Bernstein, her daughter and their German shepherd have been living in Santa Monica, in the home of a generous congregant. The insurance money for her former home went to her HOA, which is approaching a vote on whether to rebuild it; Bernstein said even she wasn’t sure it made financial sense.
Like many congregants in the Palisades diaspora, she’s stuck in a holding pattern, wanting to buy new things but having nowhere to put them, as the rest of the world has seemingly moved on. The only people who get it are going through it themselves.
“There is this sense of belonging to a club no one wants to belong to,” she said. “But also it’s a real sense that we’ve been through something together, and we feel a little different than others who have no clue about what’s happened to us.”
Sher’s family, which has been living in Brentwood for the past year, is currently debating whether to rebuild on the lot that previously held their home, or find a different one.
He wasn’t sure how he’d be feeling on Wednesday, the first anniversary of the day he, Bernstein and so many others lost their homes.
Sher planned to take the day off work — attending a community gathering in the morning and spending the afternoon with his wife and three children.
“I’m going to give myself space for the fact that I’m not entirely sure where my head’s gonna be,” he said. “Again, this is a slow process, and it’s not over yet, but being gracious and kind to yourself along the way has been one of the main messages that we’ve really leaned on in order to have the wherewithal to do all of this.”
Plotting a comeback
Even as efforts to rebuild homes drag on, there is excitement about the future. Turnout at events has been strong all year, with more than 1,000 joining their High Holiday livestream, in addition to the hundreds who attended in person. In late May, Kehillat Israel will be marching their Torah scrolls back into the main sanctuary for the first time, honoring Cantor Chayim Frenkel’s 40th year at the synagogue.
No synagogue wants to be displaced from its sanctuary. But silver linings abound if you know where to look. The renovation was long overdue, and congregants who enter Kehillat Israel this spring will find a larger Torah ark and an entryway that, according to Sher, “really says you’re stepping into something special.”
Reopening their building will also afford KI another privilege — that of welcoming in Palisades faith communities whose buildings did not survive the fire.
To this day, it remains unclear how much of the congregation will eventually return to the Palisades. One longtime member estimated 80% would be back — another guessed closer to three-fifths. Considering the members who had moved away but wanted to remain part of KI, Bernstein said satellite events and Zoom offerings would likely become a fixture.
Having endured this trauma together, the congregation will benefit from a perspective they could not have gained otherwise. Bernstein and Sher both brought up the resilience they had seen develop in their children over the past year. And the community, pressed into action by their circumstance, had been brought closer to each other and, maybe, to something holy.
Sher joked that he used to see more congregants in line at the farmer’s market than in prayer services. Now, he said, “We’ve had people come to our big events more excited than ever before, because they want to spend that time together and because we understand each other’s hardship. And that is really profound.”
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