As We Recover from the LA Wildfires, It’s Our Job to Show Up
Jewish tradition offers us an option of how to respond to moments when words otherwise fail us, one which signals the most essential message at times filled with confusion, pain, or uncertainty — hineini, I am here.
I am here has been a constant refrain among Hillel professionals over the past 16 months, as the Jewish community around the world has experienced tremendous loss, grief, and fear. Yet in an unexpected blessing, the work we’ve done to show up for our students since the devastating attacks of October 7 gave us new insight when we needed to show up for a tragedy much closer to home.
As the Allen & Ruth Ziegler Executive Director at USC Hillel, I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve said those words, I am here, in the weeks since the outbreak of the Palisades and Eaton fires here in Southern California. We’ve said it to family, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and students — those witnessing the devastation playing out from the fires across Los Angeles, those weathering hours of power outages, those anxiously wondering if they’ll need to leave their homes, and above all, those who have tragically lost their homes to this destructive disaster.
Somehow, it’s been over a month since the wildfires consumed entire neighborhoods of our city of Los Angeles, forever altering it. At a time of upheaval that felt so much bigger than any one of us, we were reminded that it’s the small acts of kindness that stand out as most memorable, and the value of Hillel’s role in offering comfort and connection to Jewish students cannot be overstated.
“A Hillel cannot change the material reality of impacted families, destroyed property, or a city experiencing collective trauma,” our campus rabbi, Jocee Hudson, shared with me. “What we can continue to do is show up as the community of care that we are, wrap our arms around our students, provide a space of consistent and loving presence, refuse to shy away from asking about and listening to hard stories, and provide chances to give back and care for the larger LA community.”
Rabbi Hudson’s words were particularly relevant for all of us last month. The week the fires broke out, we had planned an immersive off-site professional development day for our team. Instead, we spent the day watching the news, checking on loved ones, and, of course, reaching out to our students across Los Angeles to ensure their physical and emotional safety. We messaged one another constantly with updates from the valley to the city. Students responded in droves — the majority, luckily, were okay, but a few reported that they’d lost their homes.
We quickly mobilized as a team, sharing updates about resources that students could utilize even before the spring semester officially got underway, such as the Jewish Federation Los Angeles’ resource hub, which offered reliable information on volunteering, food for marginalized communities, mental health services, and more. We made sure our community was aware of important updates about things like air quality alerts, as well as information about transitional housing offerings available through a partnership between AirBnB and 211.
The Welcome Week programs we already had planned for the spring semester took on new importance as we worked to adapt to what our students needed: we offered open office hours with our campus rabbi and wellness director, a cozy hot cocoa drop-in with our executive board, increased marketing of our free therapy opportunities, and began a collaboration with a local buy-sell-trade app to collect fire relief donations.
Reflecting on our first program of the year, our managing director, Rachael Cohen, shared, “Students and parents showed up disoriented, overwhelmed and restless. But as the room buzzed with new conversations and connections, a sense of calm settled in. Even as chaos dominated the outside world, it was all going to be okay.”
Our students had found a sukkat shalom — a safe haven — a place where they could make a new friend, eat a good snack, and have a real conversation. We remain their Jewish home away from home, even when home is something out of reach.
“We often say that Hillel is not an institution,” Rabbi Hudson recently told our community. “Rather, it is a community of people seeking to draw near and care for one another. Even when times are hard, indeed, especially when times are hard, we know just who we are and how we want to be.”
And sometimes, that starts with saying, hineini — I am here.
Dave Cohn is the Allen & Ruth Ziegler Executive Director at USC Hillel. To learn more about supporting the Jewish community in LA in the aftermath of the fires, please visit the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles’ Wildfire Crisis Relief resource.