Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
~Scott Adams
The devastation started with a small malfunction in the plug conducting electricity to the kitchen refrigerator. Within minutes, the entire kitchen was engulfed in flames, destroying its stoves, ovens, and a storage closet filled with serving trays and table decorations used for bar mitzvahs and weddings.
The conflagration roared into the Social Hall, setting the walls aflame and leaping toward the rafters. The seventy-five-year-old certificate of the founding of the synagogue burned. The framed photos of all the temple presidents were consumed. The cabinet that contained the sound and recording equipment squawked, popped and died.
By the time the fire department arrived, minutes after it received the alarm, flames leaped toward the sanctuary, blistering its walls.
The last two rows of pews were burned, and the next four were scorched and blistered. The fire shattered the etched-glass entrance doors, obliterated the prayer books in their storage racks, and destroyed the classic chandeliers.
I had been the synagogue’s rabbi for two decades before I retired, so I was receiving calls from worried congregants. “How widespread is the fire?” “Was anyone hurt?” “Are the Torah scrolls safe?” “Are we having services next Friday night?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m on my way to the temple to find out. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” I jotted down their names and phone numbers and rushed off.
By the time I arrived, the firefighters had knocked down the fire. The kitchen was in ruins. The closets that contained all our banquet tables and chairs were charred beyond repair. A few sections of the Social Hall walls and ceiling were smoldering, and the firemen continued to hose them down.
Thank God, no one was hurt. The fire occurred in the dark of night before any of our employees arrived to work. A few hours later, hundreds of children and their parents might have been caught in the conflagration.
I saw the current rabbi and the temple president talking to the fire chief.
“We thoroughly examined the school building for any damage or possible hot spots. There were none — not among the trees and bushes around the school, not on the roof, not in the library and not in any of the classrooms.”
“So the fire was completely confined to the sanctuary building?” asked the rabbi.
“Yes. Unfortunately, the damage in this building was quite extensive.”
“How extensive?” asked the president.
“The kitchen, assembly hall, board room, and storage closets were severely burned. I doubt that any equipment in those areas is still useable. The fire penetrated the ceiling and singed the rafters. My men had to open the roof to hose down all the smoldering sections they couldn’t reach from inside,” said the fire chief.
“Flames penetrated the folding door between the sanctuary and the assembly hall, and scorched the ceiling, walls, floor and pews about ten feet into the temple. Water and smoke damaged most of the rest. The chandeliers, pews, sound room and prayer books are probably damaged beyond repair.”
“You’d be a better judge than I about damage to the Ark and the scrolls, but I do see some singe, water, and smoke damage.”
“Do you think we can use the sanctuary for services?” asked the president.
“Or for weddings and funerals?” echoed the rabbi.
“I doubt it. I think you’re going to have to remove all the pews, strip the walls and tear up the carpeting to discover all the damage — if only to figure your insurance claim and plan your remodeling.”
“How long do you think that will take?”
“That all depends on your remodeling goals,” answered the chief. “I’d make plans to use another facility for worship for at least twelve to eighteen months.”
This was bad.
The president immediately divided the temple leadership into four task forces — one to assess in detail the damage to our facilities, another to press our claim with the insurance company, a third to draw up suggested plans for remodeling, and a fourth to secure a new facility wherein we might worship every weekend for the next year and a half.
Local synagogues invited our members to join them in their worship services, but they could not offer their facilities for our use. They had worship services already scheduled for the same Sabbaths and holidays.
A neighborhood Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rescued us. The stake (the name of their administrative district) agreed to let us use their sanctuary for Jewish worship every Friday night and Saturday morning for eighteen months. They refused to accept any payment and assigned their own members to set up for and clean up after each worship service. They couldn’t have been more kind or cooperative.
Fourteen months later, we began to plan our return to our newly remodeled facilities. A new chapel had been added to our sacred space. The temple offices had been refurbished. The temple entrance now included a pleasant lobby in which congregants could gather after services or before meetings. The sanctuary walls and ceiling had been completely remodeled with recessed lighting and windows to the exterior. The Holy Ark was pristine again, awaiting the arrival of its six Torah scrolls.
We moved hundreds of boxes back into the temple and began to load their contents into shiny new filing cabinets. Some cartons, covered with dust, included files dated decades earlier — board resolutions from the 1940s and 1950s, correspondence from previous rabbis, and the scripts of former temple musicals.
In one file, bent and stained over time, was a series of letters between the president of the Orange Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and our temple president. The stake was building its first facility then, and the stake president indicated how grateful he was for the Jews’ willingness to house Mormon worship services and Bible study in the temple. The temple president refused to accept any fees and assigned the temple’s staff to provide the stake’s custodial needs. Amazingly, the very church that had been our temporary home had asked the temple decades ago for temporary housing. Jews had welcomed their Mormon neighbors to use their synagogue facilities and rejoiced with them when their own facility was dedicated.
Both Mormons and Jews marched the mile and a half from the church to the synagogue, carrying six Torah scrolls back to the Holy Ark in the newly refurbished temple sanctuary. Completely intermixed, members of both communities carried the sacred scrolls, walking a half block or so, and then handing a scroll to another person nearby. No one asked his neighbor’s religious affiliation; no one questioned his neighbor’s faith. We — temple and stake, Mormons and Jews — had discovered that a kind act is not a matter of belief. It is an expression of love from one human being to another.
~Frank Stern
