{"id":318631,"date":"2026-05-16T08:22:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T08:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/318631\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T08:22:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T08:22:32","slug":"congregation-returns-to-los-angeles-synagogue-that-was-damaged-in-2025-wildfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/318631\/","title":{"rendered":"Congregation returns to Los Angeles synagogue that was damaged in 2025 wildfire"},"content":{"rendered":"

JTA\u00a0\u2014 Sixteen months after the fires that devastated the Pacific Palisades and uprooted hundreds of Jewish families, congregants of Kehillat Israel are returning to their synagogue.<\/p>\n

On Friday, hundreds of congregants carried their Torah scrolls back into the building that became a symbol of the Los Angeles neighborhood that was devastated by fire in January 2025.<\/p>\n

While the synagogue suffered significant smoke damage from the fires, the building, constructed in 1950, remained standing<\/a>, providing desperately needed continuity for the roughly 250 congregants who lost their homes and 250 others who were temporarily displaced.<\/p>\n

All three of the synagogue\u2019s clergy members, including Rabbi Daniel Sher, lost their homes in the fires, a tragedy that Sher said imbued Friday\u2019s reopening ceremony with mixed emotions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a mixed blessing. I\u2019m going to move back into my place of work before I break ground on my home,\u201d Sher told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. \u201cBut Judaism knows how to survive hardship, and so our job is to take this tradition and take thousands of years of understanding that and put it into action.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The reopening of the synagogue after months of repairs and renovations will also carry added weight as it coincides with a celebration honoring Cantor Chayim Frenkel and his wife, Marsi, for 40 years of service to the congregation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very honored and proud,\u201d Frenkel told JTA. \u201cThey\u2019re dedicating the new ark to me and my wife, so that\u2019ll be something in perpetuity that I\u2019m honored to \u2014 if I\u2019m blessed with grandchildren \u2014 to have them go in there and say, my daddy and my grandfather participated in working with others to create a very meaningful and a very loving and a very heimish shul filled with Yiddishkeit, a Zionistic, just a beautiful community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tA firefighting helicopter drops water as the Palisades fire grows near the Mandeville Canyon neighborhood and Encino, California, on January 11, 2025. (Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP)<\/p>\n

In the months after the fires, Kehillat Israel became what Frenkel jokingly called a \u201cwandering\u201d congregation, holding services in the Santa Monica mall while its religious school borrowed space from a Los Angeles public school. Clergy also held b\u2019nai mitzvah services in neighboring synagogues, homes, hotels and even a restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t help but feel like it was this strangely entrepreneurial, energetic space in which this initial point of grief and loss very quickly manifested into a communal excitement and connection and has changed the way we will forever operate as a community, even once we\u2019re back in our own sacred space,\u201d Sher said.<\/p>\n

Frenkel said that many of his congregants had told him that \u201cone of the main reasons they\u2019re coming back to the Palisades to rebuild is because the synagogue did not burn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a huge component for them to go through the rebuilding process, because they knew they had their synagogue,\u201d Frenkel said.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tCantor Chayim Frenkel will celebrate his 40th anniversary at Kehillat Israel in Los Angeles, California, on May 15, 2026. (Courtesy of Kehillat Israel)<\/p>\n

As some congregants prepare to move back to the area, Sher said he had received hundreds of donated mezuzahs that clergy plan to distribute to families returning to rebuilt homes, helping them rededicate their spaces after months of displacement.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the families, the home is a mikdash me\u2019at, it\u2019s a small sanctuary, and I always tell our kids that there is an invisible bridge that leads from the synagogue directly to their home,\u201d Frenkel said. \u201cAnd now that their homes have burned or are being rebuilt, those bridges are being rebuilt, and that mezuzah is helping create that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even as some of the congregation remain displaced around Los Angeles, Sher said the reopening ceremony was about much more than restoring a building. Instead, he said, it serves as a declaration that the community was \u201cstill here,\u201d and that they had \u201cnever actually left.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us as people who work there, but for congregants who have put a piece of their emotional connection into that building, they get something to still remain as home,\u201d Sher said. \u201cSo our reopening isn\u2019t just that statement, it\u2019s saying, if you want home to be there still, it is.\u201d<\/p>\n


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