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A year after the LA fires, the lesson is clear: Our greatest disasters are often self-inflicted
LOS ANGELES — “The Palisades was this idyllic community,” Jeremy Padawer said. “People actually knew each other. They talked to one another. You knew your neighbors. It was exactly what I needed to provide for my children.”
Padawer, an entrepreneur, lost his home in the fire that tore through the Pacific Palisades, an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood, a year ago. That fire was not a natural disaster; instead, an arsonist lit the original fire in a brushy area beyond Palisades Drive. Then, after firefighters extinguished it, we know from a tireless Los Angeles Times investigation, their senior officials failed to order further monitoring of the burn area, which reignited.
Nature provided 80-mph winds on Jan. 8, 2025. But human incompetence and hubris fed the flames.
The result? 12 people died. More than 6,500 local homes were destroyed, 25,000 people were displaced, and 37 square miles were burned or covered in toxic ash. The economic loss is estimated at $250 billion.
A year after the fire, I visited one of the most iconic buildings affected by the fire: Villa Aurora, once owned by the German Jewish novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, who fled Nazi Germany after the Nazis declared him “enemy of the state number one.”
There, the lessons of this unnatural disaster became clear.
‘Everything you see now was burned’
It’s not an especially brilliant insight to point out that most of the tragedies that beset us, with the exception of the body’s natural decay and demise, are of our own making.
But that insight rang true to me as I stood on the balcony of Villa Aurora two weeks ago and looked out over the Palisades.
The sprawling, Spanish Revival hillside mansion was built in 1928 as a model home by a consortium of investors that included the Los Angeles Times, and came into Feuchtwanger’s hands after he fled southern France — where he had been in exile — in disguise as an old woman. Eventually, he reached Los Angeles as a refugee.
In his novel The Oppermans, published in 1933. Feuchtwanger detailed the persecution of a highly assimilated German Jewish family like his own. “The Oppermanns were clever people, they understood the world,” he wrote. “The world at large was indifferent.”
But in Villa Aurora, he and his wife Marta founded a refuge from indifference: a center of intellectual and cultural life for his fellow refugees, including the German Nobel laureate Thomas Mann, who found refuge in his own home, six miles east.
The 2025 fire came within a few feet of the villa, and while the flames didn’t claim the structure, they did infiltrate and pollute the precious books and furnishings with smoke and ash.
The fire torched the landscaping right up to the house. “Everything you see now was burned,” said Claudia Gordon, the director of Villa Aurora, which was bought by the German government in 1989 and eventually converted, along with the Thomas Mann House, into a retreat center for German artists.
Gordon let a group of us into the home last month. Industrial air purifiers were still churning, the last signs of an extensive year-long smoke remediation process.
The fire came so fast that Gordon was able to flee with only a few rare books and a Renaissance-era Purim scroll.
“It stopped there,” she pointed to a spot just a few feet from the balcony. “We were very lucky. This was all burned.” Houses on either side of the villa went up in smoke.
I stood on the balcony and looked down at the yard that a year earlier had been blackened. Now, I watched butterflies and hummingbirds flit over clusters of bright yellow and orange flowers, amid the deep green bushes that covered the hillside.
“The place is a monument to endurance in the face of exile and disaster,” wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano after his recent visit.
True, but it is also a reminder of the stubborn permanence of human folly.
Feuchtwanger’s refuge at Villa Aurora was marred by more inhumanity after the end of World War II. Because he had flirted with communism, he became a target of a new wave of American intolerance: that of McCarthyism. After the war, he couldn’t go abroad to take advantage of his best seller status, for fear of not being allowed to return.
Mann’s refuge was even more impermanent. Targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for his left-leaning associations, he left Los Angeles and moved to Switzerland, where he died.
“Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged ‘state of emergency.’ That is how it started in Germany,” Mann said in 1947.
None of these tragedies had to be, I reflected. Whether fleeing fascism, weathering McCarthyism, or watching a preventable fire consume a neighborhood, the human capacity for self-inflicted tragedy is as enduring as Villa Aurora itself.
The missing deputy mayor
Several hundred homeowners have filed a lawsuit against the state and city for negligence leading up to the fire. In a phone interview, Padawer, the entrepreneur who lost his home, outlined some of their claims.
A Palisades water reservoir was empty, he said; fire hydrants lacked pressure; state environmental regulations prevented adequate fire abatement measures in the initial burn area; and the city failed to field enough fire engines despite the imminent threat.
It didn’t help that a key city post was unfilled after a bizarre fake antisemitic bomb threat. On Oct. 3, 2024, Brian K. Williams, then Los Angeles deputy mayor of public safety, reported receiving a bomb threat against City Hall. It was the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and the caller said he was tired of the city’s support for Israel, according to Williams.
“In light of the Jewish holidays,” Williams’ memo to Mayor Karen Bass at the time read, “we are taking this a little more seriously. I will keep you posted.”
An investigation found that Williams himself made the threat. He was arrested by the FBI and removed from his position in December 2024. Williams, who said he acted out of “anxiety,” pleaded guilty to making a bomb threat and was sentenced to one year probation and a $5,000 fine. Bass left his position empty.
The Deputy Mayor for Public Safety specifically oversees crisis and disaster response, including wildfires, according to the city. Which meant that when the fires came in January, Los Angeles had no official overseeing the LAPD, LAFD, emergency management or disaster response. Bass didn’t appoint a replacement for Williams until April 2025, months after the city burned.
“These deputy mayors have real jobs,” said Padawer. “The mayor didn’t replace him.”
‘They Let Us Burn’
One year later, I drove down Radcliffe Ave., in the heart of the Palisades, where two dear friends once lived. I couldn’t figure where their houses had stood. It was all just empty land..
On many of the burned out buildings, someone had affixed posters with the words, “THEY LET US BURN,” in stark red and black.
The posters were part of a neighborhood movement, launched by Padawer, to hold officials accountable for the fire and the rebuilding.
“The damage is done. The city is gone,” reads an entry on the movement’s website. “Let’s keep politicians, builders, banks, insurance companies and all key stakeholders honest as we rebuild together. So that this NEVER happens in Los Angeles again.”
The motto for Padawer’s website? “News for Our Unnatural Disaster.”
“The first day after the fire, you have the mayor and the governor, saying, natural disaster, climate change,” said Padawer. “And why would they do that? They don’t want the liability associated with all of the failure. But everything about it was unnatural.”
Driving out of the Palisades, I thought back to Villa Aurora and the streets where my friends’ homes once stood. The exiles understood that while nature can be cruel, humans pose the greater threat. The empty lots prove them right.
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Israeli ambassador meets with France’s Marine Le Pen, extending outreach to Europe’s far-right
(JTA) — Israeli Ambassador to France Joshua Zarka held a meeting on Wednesday with far-right French leader Marine Le Pen, marking the latest instance in a recent trend of Israeli outreach to Europe’s nationalist right.
The meeting, which was not publicly announced by either leader, was confirmed by the Israeli embassy to the French outlet Le Parisien. It was unclear what the pair discussed.
The meeting between Zarka and Le Pen, who is the former president of France’s far-right National Rally party, comes over a year since Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that the country would lift its longstanding boycott of far-right parties in Sweden, France and Spain.
Israel continues not to engage with far-right parties in Germany, and Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, who has invited leaders of parties with a history of antisemitism to conferences he has organized in Israel, has cited the Alternative for Germany party as an example of one that had not adequately shed its antisemitic roots.
National Rally was founded as the National Front in 1972 by Le Pen’s father, Jean Marie le Pen, who frequently espoused racist and antisemitic rhetoric and was convicted of Holocaust denial in 1987.
The party has since tried to distance itself from its antisemitic history, with its current leader, Jordan Bardella, visiting Jerusalem last March for the country’s International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, where he delivered the keynote speech.
Diplomatic relations between Israel and France have soured in recent years, with French President Emmanuel Macron voicing public criticism of Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza and formally recognizing Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Last May, Le Pen shot back at Macron after he said during a television appearance that “what Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is doing today is unacceptable” and “a disgrace.”
“I find this statement unworthy of the President of the French Republic,” Le Pen responded. “He keeps increasing his criticism of Israel, perhaps because he is incapable of providing a solution to facilitate the fight against Islamist fundamentalism.”
While Le Pen has long voiced her support for Israel, last week she threw her support behind Macron’s proposal to include Lebanon in a regional ceasefire, which Israel has previously opposed.
“It is our country’s duty to protect Lebanon, its people, and its sovereignty,” wrote Le Pen in a post on X. “This country is once again a collateral victim of the tensions in the region, suffering massive bombings on its capital. I support France’s proposal to include Lebanon in the framework of the regional ceasefire.”
Israeli leaders have pushed back on Macron’s requests and refused to allow the country to be involved in direct talks between Israel and Lebanon, which was formerly a French mandate.
“We’d like to keep the French as far away as possible from pretty much everything, but particularly when it comes to peace negotiations,” Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, told reporters earlier this week following ceasefire talks between Israel and Lebanon on Tuesday.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a 10-day ceasefire.
Le Pen has also been critical of the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, telling Le Parisien last month that Trump “clearly did not fully appreciate the impact of his intervention.”
Le Pen is currently awaiting a July court ruling that will determine whether she can run in France’s presidential election next year, following her conviction last year for misusing European Parliament funds for political purposes.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Italian opposition leader Elly Schlein, whose father is Jewish, backs Giorgia Meloni in Trump split over Israel
(JTA) — Until this week, Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, was allies with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and adversaries with Elly Schlein, Italy’s opposition leader.
Now, Meloni is at odds with Trump and Netanyahu, her fellow conservatives in the United States and Israel, and getting a boost from Schlein, a liberal whose father is an American Jew.
The causes of the breach: the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, and the pope.
Schlein threw her support between Meloni after Trump attacked her for defending Pope Leo XIV, who said on Friday that “God does not bless any conflict” and that Christians should never be on the side of those who drop bombs. The criticism triggered a strong response from Trump, who said on Sunday that the Catholic leader was “terrible on foreign policy” and accused him of “catering to the radical left.”
That did not go over well in Italy, where about three-quarters of people are Catholic. In a statement Monday, Meloni came to Pope Leo’s defense, calling Trump’s remarks “unacceptable,” and adding, “The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and proper that he call for peace and condemn all forms of war.”
The break between Trump and Meloni marked a notable public rift between the two leaders, as Meloni has long been one of Trump’s closest political allies in Europe. The rift deepened the next day, when Meloni announced that Italy had ended its defense agreement with Israel, marking another significant shift in the right-wing government’s international relations.
“In light of the current situation, the government has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of the defense agreement with Israel,” Meloni told reporters in Verona, adding, “When there are things we don’t agree with, we act accordingly.”
Trump wasn’t happy that Meloni had rebuffed his pressure to join the Iran conflict and said as much on Wednesday on Fox News.
“She’s been negative,” Trump said. “Anybody that turned us down to helping with this Iran situation, we do not have the same relationship.”
Enter Schlein and a rare moment of cross-party unity in Italy.
Schlein has led Italy’s Democratic Party since 2023. She has said she is “very proudly the daughter of a Jewish father,” the American-Italian scholar Melvin Schlein, and that she has faced antisemitism even though she herself is not Jewish.
Her father grew up in New Jersey and lived on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, one of the communities ravaged on Oct. 7, 2023, during the 1960s. He has joined his daughter in criticizing Netanyahu but told an Italian paper that while she believes in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he does not. The relative of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, he also has said he is concerned about rising antisemitism in Europe — and that while he generally shares his daughter’s politics, he is concerned that some on the left have joined with the right in adopting antisemitic ideas.
On Wednesday, speaking in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Schlein, said she wished to express her “strongest condemnation” of Trump’s “attack on Meloni for having dutifully expressed solidarity with Pope Leo.”
She also emphasized her own opposition to the Iran war.
“I want to reiterate that Italy is a free and sovereign country, and our Constitution is clear: Italy repudiates war.” Schlein said during her speech to a standing ovation. “No foreign head of state can allow himself to attack, threaten, or disrespect our country and our government. We are adversaries in this chamber, but we are all Italian citizens and representatives of Italians, and we will not accept attacks or threats against the government and our country.”
Schlein had welcomed the suspension of the defense agreement and called on Italy to “stop obstructing” the suspension of the Association Agreement between Israel and the European Union, which governs trade and political relations between the entities.
This week, a petition by the European Citizens’ Initiative to end the agreement reached the required 1 million signatures needed to trigger a formal review by the European Commission.
“We, along with other progressive forces, have been calling for this for some time, because the dignity of this country is also measured by its respect for international law,” Schlein said.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry dismissed the suspension. While Italy is the third-biggest arms exporter to Israel, following the United States and Germany, it only accounted for 1.3% of Israeli arms imports between 2021 and 2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“We have no security agreement with Italy. We have a memorandum of understanding from many years ago that has never contained any substantive content,” the ministry said in a statement. “This will not affect Israel’s security.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Our pioneering Reform synagogue has shrunk, but remains as vibrant as ever
To the editors:
As President of Temple Beth-El of Great Neck, I read Lauren Hakimi’s recent article “A pioneering Reform synagogue makes way for a booming Iranian Jewish community,” with both appreciation and concern. While the piece captures certain facts, it presents our congregation primarily through the lens of decline and demographic change. In doing so, it misses an important story.
Yes, we are preparing to sell the building that has been our home for decades, and our membership is smaller than it once was. But Temple Beth-El today is a vibrant, diverse, and deeply engaged congregation. Even a cursory look at our calendar would have shown the depth and breadth of the activities — worship, study, Israel engagement, social action and adult education — taking place at TBE.
Size is one measure of a synagogue’s success, but it is far from the only one. Even on that front, this story is incomplete. The sale of our building is not simply a response to changing numbers; it is a strategic step that will allow us to align our physical space with our mission and ensure long-term sustainability. This is a story not of retreat, but of reinvention. Further, after the sale, Temple Beth-El will be one of, if not the, most financially secure synagogues on Long Island.
We are proud of our role in the larger Great Neck community, and we cherish our values more than any building. Temple Beth-El has long been a strong voice for social justice, as Hakimi notes in mentioning our past hosting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Today, we carry that legacy forward in our current work with interfaith food pantries and supporting undocumented immigrants.
These aren’t just social activities; they are religious imperatives. Hakimi notes that she herself received her COVID vaccine at TBE. When we opened our doors as a vaccine hub, we were not just providing a service — we were advancing our values by practicing the preservation of life for the benefit of our entire Great Neck family.
Finally, we are concerned that the reporter’s conclusion — “This is the most compelling thing anyone has told me for this story: that even Orthodox Jews benefit from having a Reform synagogue for a neighbor” — is misleading. We are proud to be good neighbors in a diverse community. But our purpose is not to justify our existence to others — it is to serve our congregants and all who seek a Judaism that is liberal, inclusive and engaged with the world.
Great Neck is not a zero-sum game of demographics, but a rich mosaic. Our synagogue’s commitment to a liberal, inclusive, and socially active Judaism is as essential to our town today as it was at our founding in 1928.
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