At least one synagogue destroyed as unprecedented wildfires rip through Los Angeles
Some local Jewish leaders wondered if their spiritual homes would still be standing in the morning
A California wildfire destroyed the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center on Jan. 7. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
By Louis Keene January 8, 2025
Louis Keene reported from Los Angeles, where he lives.
LOS ANGELES — The wildfires ripping through the Los Angeles area Tuesday destroyed at least one synagogue and had other local Jewish leaders wondering if their spiritual homes would still be standing in the morning.
The Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, a Conservative synagogue whose campus dates back to the 1920s, was among the hundreds of structures ravaged by the Eaton Fire overnight. The main sanctuary could be seen on live television engulfed in flames, stunning news reporters and onlookers.
Fueled by roaring winds, the fires began Tuesday morning in the Pacific Palisades, a tony coastal suburb that is home to a large Jewish population and at least two synagogues: Kehillat Israel, which is Reconstructionist, and Chabad of Pacific Palisades.
As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, the Palisades Fire had consumed nearly 3,000 acres, destroying swaths of the city’s residential areas. Rabbi Zushe Cunin, director of the Chabad, said he believed his complex was still intact, though many of his community members had lost homes. The status of Kehillat Israel — whose congregation moved into the building in 1997 — was unclear.
“Don’t know about the synagogue yet,” Cantor Chayim Frenkel wrote in an email just after midnight Wednesday. “It was built to stand a fire like this, but we’re not sure.”
Representatives of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, a congregation of 434-families, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The congregation’s executive director told The New York Times overnight that everyone employed by the synagogue was safe.
“We are devastated, but our staff are safe and we managed to get our Torahs out safely as well, while ash was coming down in our parking lot,” said Melissa Levy, who said she had been evacuated from her own home.
Even in a city where fire season is year-round, the scale of devastation to LA Jewish community institutions and homes seemed unlike anything since at least the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Tuesday’s fires were accelerated by the driest start to winter Southern California has had in decades, and gusts reaching up to 80 miles per hour eventually forced aircraft that were helping control the infernos to retreat.
The Los Angeles Fire Department recalled its reserve firefighters to join the efforts, and departments from the Bay Area were dispatched to assist the efforts, but the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire were both at 0% containment at midnight Wednesday with other fires breaking out. Large parts of the city’s Westside, a Jewish stronghold that includes Brentwood, Westwood and Santa Monica, had been evacuated or were under evacuation warning late Tuesday.
LA Jewish Federation CEO Joanna Mendelson said on the social platform X that the federation was “fielding calls from so many community members who have lost their homes. Our hearts go out to them tonight.”
Cunin said he ordered an evacuation of the more than 100 children from Chabad’s preschool Tuesday morning when he saw flames spreading on the hillside. But traffic jams caused by Palisades residents fleeing the fire en masse made getting to the building difficult for some parents. So Chabad employees walked with some of the children a few blocks closer to the ocean, where they awaited pickup in a grocery store parking lot.
Cunin and his fellow Chabad emissaries packed up the Torah scrolls when they left the complex at around 1 p.m. He didn’t take other valuables, he said, because he didn’t consider the possibility that the building was in serious danger.
CBS News / @kcalnews' Laurie Perez just reported that she saw Chabad of the Pacific Palisades on fire. No images of this at the moment but the Chabad did evacuate with their Torah scrolls a few hours ago. pic.twitter.com/6bGHM9F9vn
— Louis Keene (@thislouis) January 8, 2025
“Over 30 years that I’ve been here there’s never been that kind of a fire. So we didn’t think in those terms,” Cunin, 55, said in a phone interview from a hotel near the LA airport.
He said the Chabad lost two Chevrolet Suburbans and 16 menorahs that he places on display around the city each Hanukkah. A community member whose home overlooks the Chabad complex, and who had delayed evacuating until nightfall, had told him that the buildings looked secure when he left.
Cunin said his brother, who runs the Chabad of Malibu, reported that the synagogue there was also safe.
While his home and synagogue seemed to have survived for now, Cunin knew many in his community were not as lucky.
“We are going to survive and get through this,” was Cunin’s message to them. “From the ashes we will rebuild, bigger and better.”
ABC News’ Linsey Davis speaks with Rabbi Zushe Cunin about the damage to the Chabad Jewish Community Center of Pacific Palisades.
— Frum TikTok (@FrumTikTok) January 8, 2025
Some of the Menorahs that were in the parking lot were burned, as were some vehicles, but the building was heroically saved by the fire department. pic.twitter.com/6s7n94RKwo
JTA contributed to this report.
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