Revisiting the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center site after the Eaton Fire

Growing up in Virginia, where Jewish people were a minority, I sometimes daydreamed about what it would be like to be Christian, like most of my schoolmates. Perhaps life would be simpler if I were observing Christmas and Easter, which everyone knew about, instead of trying to explain Passover and the High Holy Days.

I often felt a sense of being on the outside looking in to a world that didn’t include me.

And yet I would see my Orthodox Grandma Sarah sitting in her wheelchair, reading from her Hebrew prayer books, unyieldingly content with her place in the world. When, due to health problems, she had to leave her apartment in the Jewish section of the Bronx to live with my family in the suburbs, her world changed drastically. But she did not. I yearned to know why she was so deeply rooted in her faith, and, without her ever telling me, I began to understand as I searched for who I was.

Never have I been reminded more of who I was than on January 6, when I gathered with friends and members of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center on the site where it had stood before the fires destroyed the buildings.

The Remembering Together event held on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Eaton Fire was a warm and uplifting reminder that the Temple remains even without the buildings.

Religious services have continued at the very welcoming First United Church of Pasadena, and Hebrew School meets at the Frostig School in Pasadena. But the heart of PJTC is the family of congregants and how they take care of each other. During the evening of hugs, tears and shared memories, I heard many people say they had never been prouder to be Jewish. It was a rallying call, a reminder of how we survive. 

For many of us, it was the first time back on the site since the fire. Standing in the chill night air, we tried to pinpoint where the Bimah had been. The place where our children celebrated their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, where many of us had our own as adults, and where my husband, just weeks before he died, stood before the congregation and thanked them for being his family. 

Embraced by prayer, music, an impromptu Hora dance and unending hope, I said a final goodbye to the young girl who felt like she was on the outside looking in to a world that didn’t include her.  

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