By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
Lauren Tarlow clearly remembers the Shabbat morning service she attended Saturday, Jan. 4. 
She was visiting a friend whose daughter was celebrating becoming bat mitzvah that weekend. Tarlow received an aliyah at that service, reciting the blessing before a section of the Torah portion was chanted to the congregation. Later in the service, she and her 6-year-old daughter ducked into a conference room at the synagogue to play. 
Tarlow recalls that service so clearly because it was at the Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center. Three days later the Conservative synagogue was destroyed by the Eaton Fire. 
“We flew home Sunday,” she said. “Tuesday night, it was gone.”
Since that Tuesday, a total of 31 wildfires have burned more than 40,000 acres in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, damaging more than 17,000 structures and killing 28 people. More than 200,000 people were evacuated. More than 40,000 remain evacuated from the areas around the two fires still active as of press time, the Eaton Fire in the San Gabriel Valley north of Los Angeles and the Palisades Fire in the Santa Monica Mountains along the coast in the northwestern portion of the city.
With a tragedy as mammoth as the Los Angeles-area fires, myriad connections like these reveal the breadth and depth of the hurt such devastation brings – especially considering the vibrancy of the Jewish community in Los Angeles. While Tarlow’s presence at PJTC on what proved to be the building’s final Shabbat morning service is far from the deepest of these hurts, it illustrates how easy it is to find the connections amongst Jewish communities – and how real even those faint connections are. 
“I keep thinking about being in this conference room with my daughter doing this puzzle and how I was crawling around under the table trying to find these missing puzzle pieces,” Tarlow recalled. “Now that rug that I was crawling on is just gone.”
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Shannon Rubenstone grew up attending Portland Jewish Academy, a school her mother led, and worked at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center during her college days. She has since moved to Pasadena, taking up residence with her husband and two daughters in a 1912 Craftsman-style house. It’s old, single-pane windows let in the scent of smoke that gave the family an indication that things were getting dangerous Wednesday morning, Jan. 8.
“That was really my indication by morning when our house smelled smoky. That’s why we got out before we ever were ordered to evacuate,” Rubenstone said. “It started to smell smoky inside and the smoke wasn’t just campfire smell anymore. It was  toxic smelling.”
The family decamped to Rubenstone’s grandmother’s house in Sherman Oaks – which ended up being evacuated as the Palisades Fire spread. They eventually went to the Bay Area where her parents live. Their home in Pasadena  is still standing, however it is covered in ash from the fire, which includes asbestos, lead and other toxins from burned buildings. To add insult to injury, a tree has fallen on the house. 
“The gut punch is both of my daughters’ schools burned down,” Rubenstone said. 
The daycare for their youngest has already announced that it will not rebuild. Rubenstone’s husband is currently back in the Los Angeles area trying to find a new daycare for her. There isn’t yet a timetable for the older daughter’s school to resume – nor is there a timetable for the Rubenstone family’s return to their home. 
“The cleanup of these neighborhoods, that is going to continue to stir up a lot of this toxic ash,” Rubenstone said. “Something that I’m wrapping my brain around is that this is a multi-year process now; to come back to some semblance of what this community used to feel and look like and what it’s going to mean for our family, too.”
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Many Portland Jews have family in the Los Angeles area who have been affected by the fires. Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Chief Development Officer Wendy Kahn grew up in the San Fernando Valley, attending high school in Los Angeles before college at the University of Southern California. Much of her family is still in the area – including three cousins who lost their homes. 
Kahn, like most of the Federation’s staff, was in Los Angeles on the day the fires sprung up for a regional conference  of staff from Jewish Federations along the West Coast – including a sizable contingent from the  Los Angeles Federation . As fires continued to pop up and grow, she watched as places that had been key settings of her formative years – like her favorite stretch of beach at Will Rodgers Park near Pacific Palisades – go up in flames. 
“It was like my childhood, my high school, everything I knew: Gone. Obliterated,” she said. “It’s like you never existed.”
Hayley Terris also grew up in Los Angeles – she’s one of the few people in her family that lives elsewhere. She, too, spent big parts of her childhood at Will Rodgers Park, which was close to her uncle’s house near Temescal Canyon. She lived there for a summer and would often sleep over while she was working her first job in television writing, which was based in a much ritzier portion of Pacific Palisades. Her uncle, a widower who was taking care of a severely disabled adult daughter, had owned his home for 41 years before the Palisades Fire destroyed it.
“It was kind of like a second home in LA for me,” Terris said of her uncle’s house. “He was a kid from the San Fernando Valley who used to bike over two hours to get to the beach when he was growing up, so having proximity to the beach was so awesome for him when he got the house in the early 80s.”
They’re staying with one of Terris’ sisters in Koreatown for the time being. Terris has another sister who works in special education at multiple school sites – she’s been wearing an N95 respirator mask to cope with the poor air quality – as well as other family and friends all over the area, many of whom have been evacuated or lost homes. But the loss of her uncle’s home is a singular devastation for her family. 
“My uncle is somebody who is not wealthy,” she said. “Everything was in that house for him.”
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While many with Portland connections are hurting in the wake of the fires, others with those same Portland connections have been able to step in and help. 
Rabbi Leibel Hanokah is Associate Rabbi and Youth Director of Chabad of Pasadena and a cousin to Rabbi Motti Wilhelm. Rabbi Wilhelm was living in Southern California at the time that the Pasadena Chabad was founded, and he remembers going there in its early days to help make a minyan. Now there’s a large center that was not damaged by the fire and has served as a base for support efforts in the area. 
“They have been checking in on people, helping people check in on their homes,” Rabbi Wilhelm explained. 
The first Friday after the Eaton Fire started, Chabad hosted around 100 people for a Shabbat dinner, and has been providing drop-in daycare for parents who are otherwise out of options. 
As Rabbi Wilhelm explains, Rabbi Hanokah was out checking in on homes with colleagues when he came upon a house that was starting to catch fire – its detached garage was already fully engulfed. There was no water on hand – water shortages have plagued fire suppression efforts throughout the area – so Rabbi Hanokah made do with what was at hand. 
“They ended up putting out the flames with dirt. They took these flowerpots, and they used the dirt to put out the fire,” Rabbi Wilhelm explained. “They were able to literally save two homes.”
It was a heroic effort – and entirely in keeping with Jewish tradition. 
“What is it about our people that makes us so adept at responding to a crisis,” Rabbi Noah Farkas, President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, wrote in a piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.com. “There’s something special about the Jewish soul that compels us to always help our neighbors in need.”
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The five people who spoke to The Jewish Review for this story all have one thing in common: All their friends, families and other loved ones in the Los Angeles area are physically safe. 
But, as Rubenstone mentioned, the clean up and recovery process is just beginning and will be a lengthy one. 
The Jewish Federation of Greater Portland is running a Los Angeles Wildfire Relief Campaign that has raised more than $54,000 thus far, all of which has been sent to communities in need in Southern California. Donations can be made online at jewishportland.org/lacountyfires