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.

When I worked for a reconciliation organization and lived in the small, largely Palestinian Christian town of Beit Sahour last summer, there were multiple aspects of Palestinian society that disturbed me.

Yet, what I found to be most discomforting was its overwhelming celebration of martyrdom, or of glorifying those Palestinians who sacrificed themselves and died in the name of “Palestine.”

Shortly after witnessing a large crowd of young children (Christian and Muslim) chanting “we will die to make Palestine live” at a summer camp that I volunteered at, I had a conversation with a Palestinian teenager.

At one point, she asked me: “What have we [the Palestinians] ever done wrong?” I responded by mentioning the dozens of suicide bombings that took place in Israeli civilian areas during the Second Intifada. She replied: “But, those are acts of resistance.” Similarly, during a conversation that I had about Beit Sahour’s role in the Intifadas with a Palestinian colleague, she told me: “Our martyrs died here [in the Old City of Beit Sahour].”

Living in the West Bank taught me that most Palestinians, regardless of religion, have long bought into the Islamist celebration of martyrdom, which represents a portion of their largely omnipresent and extremist attitude of rejectionism.

The unique and celebrated Palestinian mindset of rejectionism, or a “resistance to all things Jewish and Zionist,” is sustained by various factors, including religion (Islamism), the global Left’s anti-Zionism, the Palestinian portrayal of Israel as a Crusader state, the Palestinian claim to a “right of return,” conspiracy theories, and so on.

According to a 2023 poll, over 80% of Palestinians believe that the armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad play somewhat to a very positive role, while 79% of Palestinians possess the same feelings about Fatah’s armed wing.

A 2025 poll found that 69% of Palestinians (87% in the West Bank and 55% in Gaza) are opposed to disarming Hamas to permanently end Israel’s war in Gaza, and 60% of Palestinians (66% in the West Bank and 51% in Gaza) are satisfied with Hamas. These surveys reflect the overwhelming extremism and rejectionism that remain regnant within Palestinian culture.

While Palestinian society’s (and especially Hamas’) extremism and fetishization of death are commonly criticized, it’s important to underscore the fact that these pernicious cultural features are encouraged (or mandated) by the Palestinian leadership. As the Middle East Forum’s Dexter Van Zile expressed to me: “Islamist leaders are consigning a generation of impressionable young men to death.” Accordingly, radical beliefs continually spill over into Palestinian society, starting with the school curriculum.

And this mindset is shared by both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. As a result, the PA has continued its repugnant “Pay-for-Slay” program, which pays imprisoned terrorists and grants stipends to the families of “martyrs.”

In Gaza, Hamas prevented (through scare tactics and by force) civilians from fleeing Gaza City in September 2025. Recently, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza-born analyst, exposed that Hamas deliberately hid infant formula and nutritional shakes for children. In order to achieve its own goals, Hamas has perpetually mandated the martyrdom of Gazan civilians.

Even worse, Hamas’ celebration of martyrdom casts doubt on the prospect of lasting peace.

For example, Hamas has repeatedly rejected calls for disarmament. When I asked Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, who played a central role in manufacturing the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, about Hamas’ ideology around two months ago, he told me that because Hamas’ “political-religious philosophy […] is based on the sanctification of death,” they’re more than happy to never surrender.

Rather, Hamas is willing to sacrifice civilian life in Gaza and fight to death: “Even yesterday, the Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad — who has been my primary interlocutor over 18 years — said: ‘To free Palestine, we are more than willing to have 20,000 dead or 100,000 dead.’ He meant it with total sincerity … The death and destruction of Gaza served their [Hamas’] interests as they perceived them.”

However, the radical beliefs dominant within Palestinian society are not guaranteed.

Since extremism is sustained by the Palestinian leadership, either a new Palestinian leadership needs to emerge, or Israel can make sure to destroy any regimes that wish its destruction, and then partner with true moderate Palestinians to create a new government.

There has always existed a noticeable sliver of Palestinians who have cooperated with Zionism, such as through supplying labor, selling land/arms, providing intelligence, and so on. Even during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, many Palestinians not only didn’t offensively fight against Jews, but also prevented foreigners and locals from mounting attacks.

The potential for working directly with Palestinian moderates is even more relevant today, especially because local Palestinian elections are scheduled for April 2026. One party that will participate in these elections is filled with moderates, who allegedly accept Israel’s existence and advocate for demilitarization and deradicalization.

The nearly universal celebration of martyrdom across different cleavages of Palestinian society, including among Muslims and non-Muslims, demonstrates that extremism is deeply entrenched within Palestinian culture. Consequently, Israel will never exist comfortably unless it changes course and strategically tackles this Palestinian issue.

Israel must not only work to obliterate Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, but also cooperate directly with moderate Palestinians to create a new government that will lead the Palestinians to forsake their extremist beliefs.

Richard McDaniel is an undergraduate political science student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Despite notable holdouts, in particular Harvard University, university administrations continue to quietly settle Federal lawsuits regarding their treatment of Jewish students and faculty, and to limit the ability of pro-Hamas groups to harass and intimidate others.

University action against extremist faculty members also expanded in December:

• The University of California at Berkeley suspended a physics lecturer who had made anti-Israel comments during a class, which was completely unrelated to the subject matter;
• A tenured faculty member at San Jose State University was fired on the basis of her participation in a 2024 pro-Hamas encampment and involvement in a physical altercation between faculty and students;
• A lecturer at the University of Sydney, Rose Nakad, was arrested and indicted after an October incident where she called Jewish students and staff “parasites” and “depraved,” spat at them, and stated a “Zionist is the lowest form of rubbish.” The university terminated Nakad, stating, “Hate speech, antisemitism, and harassment have no place at our university and when our codes of conduct are breached we do not hesitate to take disciplinary action.” Nakad’s firing came only after the Bondi Beach massacre;
• At the University of Arkansas, Shirin Saeidi was removed as head of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies after it was discovered she had used official letterhead to appeal for the release of an Iranian regime figure jailed in Sweden for mass murder in Iran. Saeidi had also repeatedly praised the Iranian regime and condemned Israel. A subsequent report indicated that she was also reportedly under investigation for plagiarism. The Middle East Studies Association defended Saeidi and complained about her dismissal.

In an unusual response to Columbia University’s crackdown on pro-Hamas protestors, five United Nations “special rapporteurs” warned about the university’s “human rights violations.” Their letter to the administration complained about “alleged arbitrary arrest and physical assault” and “surveillance, detention and attempted removal of noncitizen students and scholars.”

The letter also complained about the university’s adoption of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism and stated that while they “strongly denounce anti-Semitism,” they are “disturbed by the vague and overly broad use of the term ‘antisemitism’ to label, denounce and repress peaceful protests and other legitimate forms of expression of solidarity with Palestinian victims, calls for a ceasefire in Gaza or the legitimate criticisms of the Government of Israel’s policies and practices, including its conduct of the conflict in Gaza and allegations of genocide.”

Despite various lawsuits and settlements, anti-Israel bias continues to be deeply rooted within university hiring and appointment practices. Harvard recently hired a graduate who had been convicted of assaulting an Israeli student, according to National Review, during a 2023 protest, but had not been expelled. A Federal judge also dismissed the lawsuit by the Israeli student against the university. Another example is Northwestern’s appointment of a faculty member who supported the pro-Hamas encampment to the presidential search committee.

University complaints regarding the Trump administration’s continued, if slowed, crackdown on research funding also continued through the media. In one case, allegations were made that the Department of Justice had illegally pressured legal staff to find evidence of antisemitism at UCLA, where an encampment had disrupted campus and restricted the movement of Jewish students. Universities also complained that the Federal government’s expanded travel ban on 39 countries and the Palestinian Authority would constrict the flow of foreign students.

Overall it appears that universities are prepared to wait out the Trump administration by negotiating financial settlements when demanded in order to restore research funding and instituting minimal procedural changes to maintain campus stability. Changes in ideology, which can only be implemented in the longer term by creating balance in faculty through hiring and retention practices, such as those recommended in the fourth and final report on antisemitism at Columbia, remain difficult to conceive and are not being considered.

Policies regarding Jewish students appear designed to contain and minimize mistreatment without addressing fundamental structures, especially student and faculty demographics.

Faculty and Students

Reports continue to show that Israeli academics are being boycotted by European and American colleagues. While European Union funding remains available, opportunities for collaboration and publication continue to be withdrawn.

Ritualized abuse of Israeli and Jewish faculty has also continued. One example was the demand made of an Israeli mental health researcher that she read a prepared condemnation of Israel and “genocide” as a condition of her participation in an international conference in South Africa.

Individual boycotts also continue to expand. In one case, the University of East Anglia is investigating a faculty member who refused to facilitate the visit of an Israeli-Arab academic to campus. The justification given was that “Palestinian colleagues asked staff not to work with Israeli institutions.”

In another case, California State University, Los Angeles faculty member and BLM activist Melina Abdullah is being investigated after video emerged of her coaching students in her “Race, Activism and Emotions” class to oppose legislation that would mandate antisemitism instruction in California schools. She was also recorded making a litany of horrific anti-Israel comments.

Faculty use of university imprimatur to support the Palestinian cause was also displayed at New York University, at a conference entitled, “The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement and Transcultural Solidarity,” which celebrated Hamas and other terrorists imprisoned by Israel. Participants, including at least one associated with the Palestinian Youth Movement, had defended the Hamas massacres of October 7^..

A recent interview with Columbia professor Mahmoud Mamdani, father of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, typified individual faculty members. Mamdani alleged that pro-Palestinian students were “terrified” and “terrorized” by the university’s crackdown on pro-Hamas protests, and that his son’s election was an indication that American attitudes towards Israel were changing and were a key electoral issue.

Despite the apparent downswing in large-scale pro-Hamas protests and takeovers, Jewish students continue to report low level harassment and intimidation. Jewish students at schools with large Jewish populations, such as Rutgers and the University of Pennsylvania, have reported increases in antisemitic incidents.

K-12  

Reports also continue to show that teachers unions are directly supporting anti-American and anti-Zionist groups with contributions and participation in interlocking boards. The Massachusetts branch of the American Federation of Teachers, for example, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to National Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Within Our Lifetime though Resist Inc., which is the fiscal sponsor of the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance.

Similarly, the presidents of the Chicago Teachers Union, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and the United Teachers of Los Angeles are all members of the Action Center on Race and the Economy’s (ACRE) activist arm,

New reports have noted the presence of CAIR members on school boards as well as a national strategy by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) to identify opportunities to place candidates on school boards. The goal is to center “Arab history” from the kindergarten level onward and to teach”Palestine,” with the goal of “a better informed electorate that’s more likely to support and advocate for human rights of Arabs in and outside of the U.S.”

The strategy specifically recommends inserting “Palestine” into the English curriculum where it will avoid scrutiny.

A similarly subversive strategy is evident in “antisemitism training” conducted by PARCEO, whose curriculum, “Antisemitism from a framework of Collective Liberation,” is deliberately designed to detach Israel from Judaism and antisemitism by showing how “antisemitism is misused to serve an anti-liberatory political agenda” and denying Jews the right to sovereignty.

Overall teachers and unions continue direct organizing in schools, such as through student walkouts. And politics like that should have no place in the classroom.

The author is a contributor to SPME, where a different version of this article appeared.