A cantor who once served in Milwaukee, and now leads a Los Angeles-area synagogue, helped hustle Torahs from the shul to safety, before the facility burned down last month as fires swept across parts of Southern California.
Cantor Ruth Berman Harris, spiritual leader at The Pasadena Jewish Center and Temple, served as cantor for Congregation Sinai in Fox Point from 2001-2005.
“Here is pretty rough, but we have a very strong and loving community,” Berman Harris told the Chronicle. “What we need the most right now is financial support, not only for the families that have lost their homes, but also to equip ourselves and be able to run the life of synagogue.”
The Pasadena Jewish Center and Temple, with more than 100 years of history, burned for hours as fire spilled out of the Eaton Canyon, fueled by strong winds. The 434-family congregation had operated from the Mission-style building, which had a wooden Torah ark carved by the Jewish artist Peter Krasnow, and three outbuildings since the 1940s.
“It’s a massive center, it’s just crumbling with the intensity of the heat,” KTLA reporter Tracy Leong said while broadcasting from the scene. She added, as flames shot through the synagogue’s roof, “It looks like the concrete and the metal is just melting. … It’s just a total loss.”
A neighborhood resident who used to attend the synagogue told Leong he felt “numb to this. It’s like a bad bad horrific dream. To see that it’s not going to be here tomorrow … ” His voice broke.
Leong showed fire trucks driving past the synagogue but said she had not seen any attempt to quell its burning while she was on the scene. “It’s really hard to get a handle on this fire,” she said. “There are so many structures burning and they’re doing what they can, and there’s just not enough of them right now.”
The Forward published a moving account of how the cantor’s husband rescued the Torahs from the synagogue: “Cantor Ruth Berman Harris searched for her husband through the thick smoke that engulfed the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center. Laurence Harris had been beside her just moments before, but now, as flames closed in and the air grew heavier, he was nowhere in sight. ‘Do you have the Torahs?’ she shouted ….”
He emerged, according to The Forward, carrying one of the synagogue’s 13 Torahs — a Sephardic scroll that had been donated by a congregant who fled Iran.
The congregation’s executive director told The New York Times that everyone employed by the synagogue was safe.
“We are devastated, but our staff are safe and we managed to get our Torahs out safely as well, while ash was coming down in our parking lot,” said Melissa Levy, who had also evacuated from her nearby home.
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Berman Harris received her cantorial education at the Rabbinical Seminary of Latin America. In 1987, she became the first woman cantor in Argentina, according to The Pasadena Jewish Center and Temple site.
A GoFundMe page states that “the Eaton Fire tragically burned PJTC to the ground, destroying all the buildings on its campus. Fortunately, our staff and volunteers were able to save all of the Torahs, but everything else was lost to the flames.”
The page has raised more than $150,000.
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Cantor Ruth Berman Harris, spiritual leader at The Pasadena Jewish Center and Temple, served as cantor for Congregation Sinai in Fox Point from 2001-2005.
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