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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.”
The post ‘From a shtetl to a diaspora’: How a Palisades synagogue exiled by fire forged through appeared first on The Forward.
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Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in Etan Patz disappearance case
(JTA) — The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction for the man convicted of killing Etan Patz, the 6-year-old Jewish boy whose 1979 disappearance riveted the nation.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices reimposed the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, who was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Patz in 2017 and was serving a 25-year sentence until a New York federal appeals court ruled last year that he was entitled to a retrial.
The justices granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who urged them to overturn the decision last year, writing in an unsigned opinion that the lower court “exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief.”
“Today the Supreme Court agreed with the findings of multiple lower courts and upheld the trial conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the horrific murder of Etan Patz, which changed a generation of New Yorkers,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement Monday. “This office has remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family and will continue to stand by this important conviction.”
Harvey Fishbein, a lawyer for Hernandez, told the The New York Times Monday that the Supreme Court’s order meant Hernandez would not get a new trial, adding that his team was “terribly disappointed.”
“We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit,” Fishbein said.
Patz vanished in May 1979 while walking to his school bus stop in New York City for the first time. The 6-year-old became one of the first missing children whose photograph appeared on milk cartons nationwide, but despite years of searches and public appeals, he was never found.
Patz’s parents, Julie and Stan, spent decades seeking an arrest for his disappearance, helping to establish a national missing-children hotline. The anniversary of Etan’s disappearance, May 25, also became National Missing Children’s Day.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Some of Mamdani’s Jewish allies criticize his use of ‘monsters’ to describe AIPAC
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday defended his use of the word “monsters” to describe AIPAC at a rally Friday for progressive candidates, as some of his Jewish supporters expressed concern that the term may connote an antisemitic trope.
The war of words came as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is increasingly a target of the progressive movement — including in acts of attempted violence — and as progressive Jews have accused some Israeli right-wing figures of dehumanizing liberal pro-Israel lobbying groups.
“Calling AIPAC and its backers ‘monsters’ casts them as less than human, rather than as human beings who are one’s political opponents,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the progressive rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, wrote in a Substack post Monday.
“I was taken aback,” Rabbi Misha Shulman, a Mamdani supporter who leads the progressive Brooklyn synagogue The New Shul, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the mayor’s comments. “I didn’t like those remarks. It was a little bit of a flag for me.”
At a press conference, Mamdani said he had been quoting Italian anti-fascist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, whose quote ending “Now is the time of monsters” the mayor had cited at the top of his speech. The rally was intended to boost the mayor’s preferred progressive candidates, including Jewish congressional candidate Brad Lander, ahead of New York’s closely watched Tuesday primaries.
“I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world,” Mamdani told a reporter who asked about the word. He continued, “My use of the term is a broad use that speaks to the untenable nature of a status quo that is quite literally starving people in this city, all in the name of sustaining something that we simply cannot defend any longer.” He did not explain how he saw AIPAC as connected to poverty in New York.
Mamdani insisted he was referring to “not solely AIPAC,” but he singled out the organization again in his Monday remarks to reporters, saying the lobbying group was backing “a status quo for immorality.”
During the rally last week, Mamdani had stated that Gramsci’s “monsters take many forms today,” including “AIPAC, for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s wars.” He added that AIPAC’s “goal” is “to turn us against one another.”
For some of the progressive Jews who have supported the mayor, his comments sounded alarms about the use of dehumanizing or sinister rhetoric to describe Jewish groups.
But Shulman said it was actually Mamdani’s remarks in the same speech painting AIPAC as a “dark money” group that was most alarming to him. AIPAC, a lobbying organization that also operates a political spending arm, does not conceal its donors, unlike the traditional profile of a so-called “dark money” campaign finance operation.
“For me, the question of dark money was the tougher knot,” Shulman said, calling Mamdani’s remarks a “tactical mistake.” In the context of rising antisemitism, he added, “For a left-wing leader to use that phrase, and invite traditional antisemitism into this conversation in that way, was not smart.”
Shulman is a member of Israelis For Peace, a New York-based ad-hoc group of progressive Israelis who broadly back Mamdani. While not speaking on behalf of the group, he told JTA their internal group chat lit up with debates over the appropriateness of Mamdani’s speech.
Jacobs of T’ruah said Mamdani’s remarks were part of what she described as a “disturbing trend” of recent left-wing attacks on the lobbying group, including Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner accusing his GOP opponent of being “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu” because of AIPAC’s donations to her campaign.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who has aspirations of higher office, also recently became the first sitting member of Congress to sign a pledge from Track AIPAC, a purported AIPAC watchdog that also targets donations from more liberal pro-Israel groups, including J Street.
Over the weekend, a cafe posted on Instagram that it had rejected a payment from liberal Jewish New York Rep. Dan Goldman, whom Lander is challenging in the primary, because the money was “probably coming from AIPAC.” (Goldman has been endorsed by both AIPAC and J Street.)
While noting that AIPAC “absolutely deserves to be criticized, sidelined, and rejected for its decades of negative influence on American foreign policy,” Jacobs wrote that such critiques should be done “without dehumanizing language, and without hinting at a grand Jewish conspiracy.”
Such pushback from Jews who have worked with Mamdani is rare. JTA reached out to representatives for several of the mayor’s most visible Jewish allies on Monday, including Lander and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke at the same rally. Sanders also criticized AIPAC. Neither returned requests for comment by press time. On social media after the rally, Lander celebrated the event, calling it “a tremendous honor” to rally alongside Mamdani.
IfNotNow and Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, two Jewish activist groups that endorsed Mamdani, similarly did not respond to requests for comment by press time. A spokesperson for Rep. Jerry Nadler, the retiring liberal Jewish Democrat who had endorsed Mamdani’s mayoral bid, also did not respond by press time.
J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby that positions itself as a foil to AIPAC, declined to comment on Mamdani’s remarks. Last month, hundreds of Jewish leaders criticized Yehuda Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, after Leiter called J Street a “cancer within the Jewish community.” Nadler was among the signatories of an open letter that said Leiter “dehumanizes fellow Jews.”
Centrist Jewish groups and figures, already no fans of Mamdani, also bashed his AIPAC comments. “Referring to fellow New Yorkers as ‘monsters’ is outrageous and dangerous, and the impact of your words extends far beyond politics,” American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch wrote on X, addressing Mamdani.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat representing New Jersey, wrote, “Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books.”
Both posts were reposted by AIPAC, which otherwise did not comment.
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U.K. PM Starmer leaves behind mixed record on antisemitism
(JTA) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who resigned the premiership on Monday, leaves behind a mixed record on fighting antisemitism in the Labour Party that Jewish organizations say will help shape their expectations for his successor.
Starmer announced that he was stepping down outside 10 Downing Street in the morning local time. He made the decision in the wake of mounting pressure from Labour members of Parliament and waning political support after the party’s devastating losses in the May 7 local elections and the success of political rival Andy Burnham in Manchester’s parliamentary election last week.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, has emerged as the leading contender after winning a Manchester-area by-election on Friday with 55% of the vote. Burnham has sought to position himself prominently on antisemitism and relations with the Jewish community in his bid to take over from Starmer.
In a post on X, Burnham thanked Starmer for his leadership and said the PM’s decision to resign “marks the beginning of a transition and it is important that this process is conducted in an orderly and responsible way. I will put myself forward as part of this process.”
Starmer confirmed he would remain on as caretaker prime minister until a successor was chosen.
“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election,” he said. “I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”
The Jewish Labour Movement thanked Starmer in a post on X, noting that two years ago he inherited the party “at its lowest point” from former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, when it was “institutionally antisemitic.” It added, under Starmer, “our party has a clean bill of health on antisemitism.”
However, Starmer’s tenure was still met with plenty of criticism from the Jewish community over his handling of antisemitism, particularly in light of ongoing antisemitic attacks in the country. In recent months alone, four Hatzola ambulances were lit on fire; there were attempted attacks on three synagogues; two Jewish men in the Orthodox neighborhood of Golders Green were stabbed. Dozens of people have been arrested in connection with the incidents.
Starmer entered office in July 2024, leading his country’s thorny relationship with Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack against the Jewish and the Gaza war that followed. He angered Israel with steps such as recognizing Palestine as a state and promising to uphold the International Court of Justice’s arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.
With Starmer’s upcoming departure, focus has shifted to the contest to replace him, bringing renewed scrutiny to candidates’ positions on antisemitism, relations with the Jewish community, and Israel.
Starmer said he would give his successor his “full and unequivocal support,” adding that nominations would open on July 9 and conclude before the parliamentary summer recess on July 16.
Board of Deputies of British Jews President Phil Roseneberg posted on X, “When he took on the leadership of the Labour Party the first thing @Keir_Starmer said he would do is ‘tear out the poison of antisemitism by its roots’. His subsequent actions were transformative within the Party.”
He praised Starmer’s government for providing “unprecedented security funding,” and introducing legislation to proscribe the IRGC.
Burnham, for his part, has spoken out against antisemitism in the wake of violence attacks. Following the October 2025 Yom Kippur attack at the Heaton Park Congregation synagogue in Manchester, in which two people were killed, Burnham said in an official release, “Tonight, our first thoughts are with the families of those who have died, those injured and those traumatised by this – a horrific antisemitic attack on our Jewish friends and neighbours. We condemn it outright.”
He also wrote in a post on X on the same day, “Today we have witnessed a vile attack on our Jewish community on its holiest day. We condemn whoever is responsible and will do everything within our power to keep people safe.”
His positions on Israel and Gaza have also come under scrutiny. In a June 4 interview with The Guardian, Burnham did not invoke the term “genocide” in relation to the war in Gaza, but did say, “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester.”
He added, “But I do have concerns about the disproportionate nature of what has happened in terms of the destruction, and there has to be a full process of investigation and accountability.”
Additionally, 10 days after the Oct. 7 attacks, Burnham called for a ceasefire in a joint statement with 10 Greater Manchester leaders. The statement read in part, “We condemn unreservedly the appalling terror attacks on innocent civilians in Israel by Hamas on 7th October.”
The statement also noted that Israel has the right to take “targeted action within international law” to defend itself and to rescue its hostages, but added, “We also have profound concerns about the loss of thousands of innocent lives in Gaza, the displacement of many more and widespread suffering through the ongoing blockade of essential goods and services.”
Referencing his expected leadership bid, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the Jewish News on June 17 that Burnham had a few weeks earlier met with Jewish communal leaders in Greater Manchester.
When it comes to Israel, Nandy said Burnham “believes in justice, so he’s acutely aware of the need for a safe homeland for Jewish people, you know, and the particularly unique historical reasons why Israel came into existence.”
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