Rabbi Jill Gold Wright looked out at her congregation Friday night and uttered a simple statement, with a significant pause.
“I noticed that you are … here.”
That was because under the bright lights in the theater of the Mayfield Senior School, a Catholic school in Pasadena, members of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center had gathered for the first time in a borrowed space.
For the congregation, which lost its campus and home of over 80 years to the Eaton fire, it’s just the beginning of a period of borrowing and wandering. The prayer books and prayer shawls and yarmulkes were all loaners from nearby synagogues. One thing wasn’t: a Torah rescued from their burning building.
At least a dozen families in the congregation lost their homes in the Eaton fire. But on Friday night, Rabbi Gold Wright and Cantor Ruth Berman Harris led a celebration of the community that was still there. And for nearly 45 minutes, song washed over the exhausted and anxious families and friends who came together first for a potluck dinner, and then for familiar music and fellowship.
“Let’s borrow the melody from the Saturday version of this one,” Cantor Berman Harris said. It was the more upbeat version of Mi Chamocha, a prayer praising God for deliverance. “It’s the right one for tonight.”
Finally, when the rabbi began the Jewish prayer for the vulnerable, the Hashkiveinu, the mood turned. She faced her congregation, crying.
Perhaps because she didn’t think she could make it through a sermon, she invited another rabbi, Joshua Levine Grater, who once led this congregation and now runs a local interfaith nonprofit, to give a message. His house had burned down, but he didn’t talk a lot about it, focusing instead on what was still intact.
“Judaism is not about space,” he said. “It’s about people. It’s about community. The space is in service to something greater, and that can’t be taken away by fire.”
Meanwhile in Santa Monica, a displaced Catholic congregation is living through the same thing. St. Monica Catholic Church is sharing space with its neighboring parish, Corpus Christi Church, which lost its home to the fire in Pacific Palisades on Tuesday.
Both churches have hundreds of families whose homes burned. On Saturday, families were being matched to ensure that those in need had food, toiletries, school supplies and help finding shelter. On Sunday, first at 9:30 a.m., St. Monica’s Msgr. Lloyd Torgerson was scheduled to welcome his congregation for Mass. Then at 1 p.m. the Corpus Christi congregation was expected to gather in the same space for a Mass with their own pastor, Msgr. Liam Kidney.
“It’s complete devastation,” Monsignor Torgerson said. “We are just trying to be good neighbors. They need to gather and chat. They’ve lost their place of worship, and their homes, their own sacred spaces.” Monsignor Torgerson is opening his home, too: Corpus Christi’s Monsignor Kidney and his associate pastor, both homeless now, will move into St. Monica’s rectory temporarily.
Having shepherded his congregation in the aftermath of the Northridge, Calif., earthquake of 1994, Monsignor Torgerson felt he would never face a disaster of such magnitude again during his career. But after 37 years at St. Monica’s, he finds himself navigating another arduous path with his parishioners.
They are angry, upset, stunned. “It’s the whole spectrum of feeling,” the monsignor said, adding that he doesn’t have solutions. “All I can do is walk with them.”
