January 11, 2025
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Vayechi
“May the Memory of Our House Be for a Blessing”
January 11, 2025 – 11 Tevet 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
There is a new form of loss in the world, and it is spreading like wildfire.
We know what it is like to lose a person we love. Our mother dies. Our father dies. Our grandparent or sibling or friend dies. There is a Hebrew word for that, and it comes from the Joseph story. After the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, older brother Reuben observes hayeled einenu, Joseph is no more.
And when that happens, the person we love dies and is no more, it is usually sad, sometimes tragic, and always a huge, paradigm-shifting change. The one we love is no more. How will we do life without the one we love? But we are set up for it. Our tradition has equipped us with the rituals that will help us get through it. We have shiva. We have sheloshim. We have minyan. We have kaddish. We have yahrtzeit. We have the words to say and the deeds to do in the comfort of a community that enable us both to mourn our loss and also affirm our life.
But now there is a new form of loss. We don’t have the rituals and traditions and know-how, because we have not seen this epic loss, on this epic scale, before. What happens when it is not a person who is no more, but a house, and all that it contains, that is no more?
The house we grew up in is no more. The house that we wake up in and go to sleep in and do life in is no more. The ketubah on the wall is no more. The artwork gathered over a lifetime of going to art galleries in special places is no more. The Judaica is no more. The challah trays and challah covers, the kiddush cups, the Shabbat candlesticks that are a family heirloom from a beloved departed grandmother is no more. The seder plates, the Elijah cups and Miriam cups, the haggadot are no more. The benchers, the kippot, the tallitot are no more. The kitchen table and the dining room table on which we had 1,000 beautiful meals with our loved ones is no more. The cards and letters and photographs and memories are no more. The relics of our children’s childhood—the macaroni-encrusted pencil holders spray-painted gold that they would give us for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, are no more. The home is gone. And with it the physical manifestation of the life we used to live is no more.
Multiply that by all the businesses that are no more.
Add to that the synagogue in Pacific Palisades where Elias’s friend and cantorial colleague Ruth works, a 100-year old congregation, that is no more. Thank God the Torah scroll was saved from the wreckage, but the rest of the House of the Lord is no more.
We have members who grew up in Pacific Palisades. They came to the special prayer service for LA we held in the Gann Chapel on Thursday night. Before the service, she showed me on her cell phone what einenu, what is no more, looks like when homes, businesses, and every structure that used to stand is no more. Where a city block used to be, it is no more. Apocalyptic emptiness.
The loss is so enormous. Where do people whose house is no more go to live? What clothes do they wear when their clothes are incinerated? What food do they eat? How do they go to work and do a day of life when their entire foundation has been so cruelly overturned? And that is not even dealing with the deep, deep, super scary, terrifying financial implications. From what I have read, and heard from my family in Los Angeles, most residents who lost their homes do not have insurance that covers a home destroyed by fire. They lost everything. There is no insurance. What happens now?
The loss is so new, so total, so earth-shaking for so many who have lost so much. Our question is: how do we make meaning out of Los Angeles on fire?
Rabbi Nicole Guzik of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles wrote a prayer for her devastated congregation. The heart of the prayer is a famous story from the First Book of Kings, Chapter The prophet Elijah is on the run from powerful people who have vowed to kill him. He is vulnerable. He is scared. He is sad. He is desperate. Where do you go, what do you do, when the life you used to live is no more? Is there a God who can help, and if so, how do we find that God? The story continues:
“Come out,” God called, “and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And lo, the Lord passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake—fire; but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire—kol demamah dakkah, the still small voice. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his mantle about his face and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.
What does this lyrical, mystical, evocative story mean? I think it means that God is found not in noise, and not in natural destruction. Rather, God is found in quiet acts of human decency.
God is found in the decency of the first responders and fire-fighters who risk their very lives. And here I want to say the quiet part out loud. I want to acknowledge what we all know. Temple Emanuel does not produce a lot of fire-fighters. We have produced a few fire-fighters over the years. But for the most part we tend to work in safer office jobs and indoor spaces, in business and law and finance and medicine and education. We tend to not put our very life on the line when we go to work. But fire-fighters and first responders do. The incredible decency of self-sacrifice that would impel somebody to risk their own life to put out somebody else’s fire—that is kol demamah dakkah, the still small voice of decency where we can find God. All we can do is to offer our deepest gratitude to these courageous heroes and pray that God will guard them and allow them to go home safely to their families at the end of their very long day fighting fires.
God is also found in the decency of the people in Los Angeles who are not in the path of the fire who offer their homes as a sanctuary to fellow citizens whose homes were destroyed or whose homes are in the path of the fire. Can you imagine welcoming in a family of frightened parents and children who are running from the fire, hosting them, feeding them, reassuring them, trying to provide a semblance of normalcy in the midst of trauma and fear? The still small voice of God is found in those generous hosts.
God is found in the decency, courage and resilience of those Los Angeles residents whose homes have been destroyed, whose homes are einenu, and yet they somehow summon the grace to say: Thank God we are still alive.
I was speaking on Thursday night to our members who grew up in Pacific Palisades whose childhood home was burnt to the ground. And, for an epic new loss, the wife offered a new prayer: May the memory of our house be for a blessing.
May the memory of our house be for a blessing. That is beautiful. But what does it mean?
The husband shared this story: They had been in that home just days before the fire. It turned out that they were there the last days of this home’s existence, though they did not know it at the time of course. He observed that his parents had left his childhood room undisturbed. It was in the exact same condition as it had always been since he had left home to go to college all those years ago.
So last weekend this husband and wife and their children were back in his childhood home, back in his childhood bedroom, just hanging out. And he shared that he and his now wife of many years fell in love when they were 18. His then girlfriend wrote him a love letter when they were 18. That love letter had remained attached to a wall in his bedroom ever since. Last weekend they read that love letter again, out loud. And this week, when the fire consumed their house, the fire also consumed the love letter. The love letter is no more. But the love is eternal.
May love and decency give all those affected by the wildfires the strength to live again.
Shabbat shalom.