Kehillat Israel in the Pacific Palisades on Wednesday afternoon, as firefighters battled blazes on either side. Photo by Louis Keene
By Louis Keene
January 9, 2025
LOS ANGELES — When Rabbi Amy Bernstein fled her house in the Palisades Highlands Tuesday afternoon, she grabbed a few important family documents, her late grandmother’s rings and Luna, the German shepherd mix she adopted just four weeks ago. It wasn’t the first time the hilltop neighborhood had evacuated due to fire, and Bernstein had always returned. But later that day, Bernstein watched in horror as the TV news showed her own home burn to the ground.
Lost were her grandmother’s china, the art pieces that once decorated every corner of her house, and the cabinets of Japanese teak she had held onto when she learned how to walk. Her baby pictures.
“It’s a whole lifetime of memories, symbols of experiences, of people who are gone,”Bernstein, 59, said in an interview Thursday. “Everything I have from my whole childhood forward, that was important enough for me to save and keep as part of my home, is gone. And that means my daughter will never get it from me.”
Bernstein is the senior rabbi at Kehillat Israel, a Reconstructionist congregation whose roots in the Pacific Palisades date to 1950. Her solace was the miracle of the synagogue’s survival — the building was fully intact Thursday, even as the Presbyterian church two buildings over was flattened.
As Bernstein mourned her personal tragedy Thursday, she was also taking measure of her community’s losses. Bernstein said 300 families at KI — a third of the community — reported losing their homes in the Palisades Fire, including Bernstein’s predecessor, Rabbi Stephen Carr Reuben, and KI’s associate rabbi, Daniel Sher.
“It’s a heavy lift for all of us,” said Bernstein, who was sheltering with a friend in Venice. “When one person needs help, it’s easier to rally everybody to help in the different ways that they can. We have so many people needing help that it just feels incredibly overwhelming.”
The Palisades Fire was being called one of the most destructive in Los Angeles history, covering some 17,000 acres as of Thursday afternoon, when it remained at 0% containment. It was the largest burn in a catastrophe unfolding across Los Angeles this week, when roaring winds and record dry conditions fueled fires that killed at least five people and destroyed thousands of structures — including one synagogue — in several different areas.
The Palisades fire wreaked havoc on a Jewish community that has been instrumental in the development of the area into one of LA’s most desirable neighborhoods over the last 75 years. Between 5,000 and 10,000 Jews live in the Palisades, according to the Jewish Federation.
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