Shabbat Sermon: May the Memory of Our House Be for a Blessing with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

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?