Organizers say four funding entities will work on site with an estimated 200 underinsured homeowners and that recovery funding has been allocated for more than 100 residences

A displaced Altadena church and its rebuilding partners are set to launch a centralized recovery platform Sunday and connect underinsured Eaton Fire homeowners with funding and legal help, less than three weeks before a disaster case-management program that survivor advocates say serves more than 1,500 people is scheduled to shut down.

LIFT International Church, an Altadena congregation displaced by the January 2025 Eaton Fire, is hosting the event, which organizers call “Come Back Home.”

The planned two-hour press conference and community gathering is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1757 N. Lake Ave., near the Pasadena-Altadena boundary.

Organizers say the initiative targets the financial, administrative and technical barriers that continue to keep Eaton Fire households from rebuilding. Four funding entities are expected to work on site with at least 200 underinsured homeowners. Disaster-recovery funding has reportedly been allocated for more than 100 residences. More than 160 families previously supported by LIFT were invited, organizers said.

Organizers also say partner groups will launch a centralized platform linking survivors to state and municipal resources and grants that they now must track across multiple agencies and organizations.

Advertised services include gap-assistance grants, guidance on legal filing deadlines, consultations and pro bono referrals through the Altadena CDC’s ALLY platform, which is separate from the new centralized platform.

The event comes as the federally funded Disaster Case Management Program was scheduled to end Sept. 30. The state has said the closure is the result of FEMA not providing required funding. One local coalition said roughly 109 positions and more than 1,500 survivor case-management relationships are at risk.

Rebuilding in Altadena remains uneven. County data reported Sept. 8 showed that more than 2,300 of 5,858 Altadena parcels where homes were destroyed — about 40% — had no rebuilding application on file. The same data showed 1,535 single-family homes under construction and 140 residential parcels with a completed single-family home or accessory dwelling unit.

The press conference portion is expected to address recovery and advocacy. Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network — formerly the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, which says it now serves more than 10,000 fire survivors and allies — is scheduled to discuss what survivor groups describe as legislative gains.

The gathering follows federal disaster-tax legislation signed Sept. 11. President Donald Trump signed H.R. 5366, the Doug LaMalfa Federal Disaster Tax Relief Certainty Act, which codifies and extends an exclusion from gross income for qualifying wildfire-relief payments and addresses disaster casualty-loss rules. How the law applies to any individual settlement is a question for tax advisers.

Several state measures have passed the Legislature but are not yet law. AB 1795, the Smoke Damage Recovery Act, passed and was awaiting the governor as of Sept. 1, according to a California Department of Insurance release. Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena, said in an official release that SB 742, SB 877, SB 878, SB 1090, SB 1098 and other measures had reached Gov. Gavin Newsom by Sept. 1. The governor had until Sept. 30 to sign or veto them.

SB 492 did not pass. The measure, authored by Sen. Josh Becker, was introduced in February 2025 as a youth-housing bond act, and the Senate passed that earlier version 30-9 on Jan. 27. It was amended Aug. 29 into a wildfire package and ordered to third reading Aug. 30. The Assembly did not vote on the final text during a Sept. 1 voting window that followed the ordinary Aug. 31 passage deadline, and the bill died without reaching the governor.

Announced participants in Sunday’s gathering include Every Fire Survivor’s Network, Samaritan’s Purse, Hope Crisis Response Network, Mennonite Disaster Service, HPP Cares and San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity.

Pastor Anthony McFarland, an announced co-host who lost his home in the fire, according to organizers, founded the church with Micheline McFarland in 2000, when it was known as Abundant Harvest Christian Center, LIFT says. The church says it opened a crisis center after the fire providing food, clothing, toiletries and counseling.

The cause of the fire has not been finally adjudicated.

Organizers say four funding entities will meet with underinsured Altadena homeowners whose rebuilds have not started

Lift International Church, the Altadena congregation that lost its building in the Eaton Fire, plans to gather funders, gap-assistance grants and legal help in Pasadena on Sunday for households whose rebuilds have not started.

Organizers said four funding entities are expected on site to work with at least 200 underinsured homeowners, and that more than 160 families supported by the church during the past 20 months have been invited.

Recent assessments put the number of parcels without rebuilding applications on file at approximately 2,222, organizers said. Los Angeles County figures reported Sept. 8 put the total higher, at more than 2,300 of the 5,858 Altadena parcels where homes were destroyed, or about 40%.

The initiative, called Come Back Home, is built to clear financial, administrative and technical obstacles to rebuilding, organizers said. Partners will also launch a centralized platform connecting survivors with state and municipal resources and grants, organizers said.

The event offers disaster recovery funding allocated for more than 100 residences, gap assistance grants, legal filing deadline advisories and consultations, pro bono referrals through the Altadena CDC’s ALLY platform, and recovery updates from the Altadena Coalition of Neighborhood Associations, organizers said. Partners include Samaritan’s Purse, Hope Crisis Response Network, Mennonite Disaster Service, HPP Cares and San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity, according to the organizers.

A separate press conference will address coalition recovery and advocacy, organizers said. Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, is scheduled to highlight legislative achievements protecting wildfire survivors, including utility accountability, organizers said.

Coalition representatives will state a neutral position on Senate Bill 492, which died in the Assembly without a vote on Sept. 1, the final day of the legislative session.

Pastor Anthony McFarland, who lost his Altadena Drive home in the fire, will co-host, organizers said.

Sunday, Sept. 13, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1757 N. Lake Ave., Pasadena. Complimentary refreshments will be served. For more call (626) 797-6056 or visit liftaltadena.org.

Rosh Hashanah 5787 begins at sundown Friday, Sept. 11, and for the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center it will be the second Jewish New Year the congregation observes without a building.

It will also be a quieter one than usual: the first day of the holiday falls on Shabbat this year, and the shofar is not sounded on Shabbat, so the ram’s horn will not be heard until Sunday, Sept. 13.

Two congregations anchor Jewish observance in Pasadena, and they arrive at 5787 from opposite ends of the same difficult year. Chabad of Pasadena, at 1090 E. Walnut St., publishes its holiday programming openly and takes anyone who walks in. PJTC, whose two-acre campus on North Altadena Drive burned in the Eaton Fire on Jan. 7, 2025, has asked that its High Holy Day schedule and locations not be published, citing security concerns.

The silence on the opening day is a matter of Jewish law, not local circumstance. “Well, in terms of how we lead the holiday, it’s led the same way with the exception of not blowing the shofar on Shabbat itself,” said Rabbi Chaim Hanoka, executive director of Chabad of Pasadena. “But short of that, the services and the foods and the like are pretty much all the same.”

Rabbi Joshua Ratner, PJTC’s senior rabbi, said the absence changes what is asked of worshippers. The shofar, he said, is “primal and deep and soulful,” and “its purpose in many ways is to be our spiritual alarm clock.” Without it on Saturday, “it means we have some extra work to do. Extra work, I don’t mean menial work, I mean spiritual work to do,” he said. “It means the onus is on us a little bit to fill that absence with our own intentionality.” He added that the second day carries the obligation instead: “The good thing is we have two days of Rosh Hashanah, so we get to hear it on Sunday on the second day.”

Ratner arrived at PJTC in August 2025, months after the fire, to lead a congregation that had no building to offer him. He has described the displaced congregation as “a mishkan,” a traveling tabernacle. Asked what has changed between last year’s High Holy Days and this one, he said the difference is evidence. “Last year we were in much more of an aspirational space. We thought we could do it, we hoped we could do it. But now we’ve actually lived it and succeeded in doing most of what we were able to do before,” he said. “We don’t have to put things on hold until the building is rebuilt.”

What a synagogue is, he said, has been the year’s lesson: “a synagogue or really any house of worship is defined principally by the people who make up the community. It’s not defined by the walls, it’s not defined by the architecture, it’s defined by the people.”

By that measure the congregation has grown. Membership rose to more than 430 families after the fire, even as 70 member families were displaced from their own homes, and First United Methodist Church of Pasadena has hosted PJTC’s Shabbat services since the fire. For the High Holy Days the congregation has not used Christian or Catholic space; its director of education, Rabbi Jill Gold Wright, has said the congregation has “purposely not used a Christian or Catholic space for the High Holidays.”

The security caution has a documented history. Antisemitic graffiti appeared on a surviving wall at the former site in January 2026. A mural was painted over it in spring 2026 by scenic painter Miriam Hellmann with the group Art Over Hate, religious school students, youth members and volunteers, featuring a large orange California fire poppy, a peacock, a butterfly and Stars of David in the corners. That mural was found defaced on July 24, 2026 with multiple swastikas and a misspelled anti-Zionist phrase. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is investigating both incidents as hate crimes, and county Supervisor Kathryn Barger introduced a motion for a $20,000 reward for information. At a gathering at the site afterward, Ratner said the congregation “will not be intimidated by this or any other deplorable act of vandalism.”

Readers who want to attend PJTC services can do so. The congregation’s High Holy Day programming includes options for members and non-members, registration is requested of everyone, virtual attendance is offered, and information is available at www.pjtc.net. PJTC observes the full arc of the season: Rosh Hashanah Sept. 11-13, Yom Kippur Sept. 20-21, Sukkot Sept. 25 to Oct. 2, and Sh’mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah Oct. 2-4, closing with a community-wide Simchat Torah celebration with dancing, music and food.

Chabad of Pasadena, by contrast, publishes everything and charges nothing. “As mentioned, we don’t charge for tickets, which is different than many other temples,” Hanoka said. “So somebody wants to come in to pray, basically you don’t have to pay to pray, make it simple.” The programming, he said, draws a wide congregation, including people who do not attend synagogue the rest of the year. “It’s people from all walks of life, literally A to Z.”

The one moment the shofar will sound outdoors and in public in Pasadena is at the Caltech Turtle Pond. Chabad of Pasadena’s “A Moment by the Water” is set for Sunday, Sept. 13, at 5:45 p.m. at the Caltech Turtle Pond, a short shofar sounding followed by a brief Tashlich service, with Rosh Hashanah treats and prizes for children; information is at www.ChabadPasadena.com/highholidays2026 and by phone at (626) 564-8820. Tashlich, the symbolic casting of sins into flowing water, normally falls on the afternoon of the first day and moves to the second day when the first is Shabbat. Hanoka said students and faculty from Caltech have traditionally joined the walk. “We often will blow the shofar for people who want to hear the shofar,” he said.

Chabad also runs children’s programs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sept. 12, Sept. 13 and Sept. 21, with honey tasting on the first day, a caramel apple bar and a noon shofar blowing on the second, and a kosher snack and lunch each day. Asked why so much of the effort goes to the youngest attendees on the most serious days of the year, Hanoka was brief. “Because ultimately our future are today’s youth,” he said. “You don’t invest in the youth, then there’s no one to invest in at some point.”

On what a year of fire, litigation and rebuilding asks of a congregation at the New Year, the two rabbis answered differently. Hanoka placed it in the hands of God. “Why God does what he does, I don’t know the answer to. Only God knows,” he said. “How one sees that through the ashes and through the smoke is part of a person’s introspection and part of their faith and belief in God.” “When a person has God, a deep belief in God, that acts as an anchor to the person, no matter what happens their way throughout life.” Ratner framed the accounting as a response to circumstance. The reckoning, he said, “asks us to take stock of the reality of our lives and how we responded to that reality.” “Hope doesn’t have to mean glossing over the loss,” he said. He added that “hope doesn’t require us to cancel out the loss or skip over the loss and the emotional toil of that, but it gives us a way to find some resoluteness as we grapple with that loss in thinking of what comes next.”

Jews have lived in the Pasadena area since 1874, with organizing efforts in 1907 and 1912, and Temple B’nai Israel of Pasadena was incorporated in 1921. Albert Einstein visited the congregation in the 1930s during his periods at Caltech. The congregation bought the North Altadena Drive property in 1941 and completed the building in 1945, was renamed the Pasadena Jewish Community in 1949 and became the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center in 1956. Its archives, 47 linear feet spanning 1932 to 2019, were donated to the UCLA Library in 2019, before the fire, and are now publicly accessible. The campus was among more than 30 historic sites destroyed in the fire.

PJTC has committed to rebuilding on the original site, and its Rebuilding Committee includes president Clark Linstone, former Pasadena mayor Terry Tornek, Todd Levine, architect Jonathan Brier, general contractor Jonah Dicker, Michael Silver and Ratner. Pasadena’s City Council has approved fee exemptions for qualifying Eaton Fire rebuilds. Yom Kippur follows on Sept. 20 and 21.

Lift International Church, the Altadena congregation that lost its building in the Eaton Fire, plans to gather funders, gap-assistance grants and legal help in Pasadena on Sunday for households whose rebuilds have not started.

Organizers said four funding entities are expected on site to work with at least 200 underinsured homeowners, and that more than 160 families supported by the church during the past 19 months have been invited. Recent assessments put the number of parcels without rebuilding applications on file at approximately 2,222, organizers said.

The initiative, called Come Back Home, is built to clear financial, administrative and technical obstacles to rebuilding, organizers said. Partners will also launch a centralized platform connecting survivors with state and municipal resources and grants.

The event offers disaster recovery funding allocated for more than 100 residences, gap assistance grants, legal filing deadline advisories and consultations, pro bono referrals through the Altadena CDC’s ALLY platform, and recovery updates from the Altadena Coalition of Neighborhood Associations, organizers said. Partners include Samaritan’s Purse, Hope Crisis Response Network, Mennonite Disaster Service, HPP Cares and San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity.

A separate press conference will address coalition recovery and advocacy. Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, is scheduled to highlight legislative achievements protecting wildfire survivors, including utility accountability, organizers said. Coalition representatives will state a neutral position on Senate Bill 492, which died without a vote on the session’s final day.

Pastor Anthony McFarland, who lost his Altadena Drive home in the fire, will co-host.

If you go: the Come Back Home press conference and community gathering takes place Sunday, September 13, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1757 N. Lake Ave., Pasadena. Complimentary refreshments will be served. For more, call LIFT International at (626) 797-6056 or visit liftaltadena.org.

Interfaith congregations will gather at 10 a.m. Sunday at All Saints Church in Pasadena for a National Day of Prayer for Disaster Survivors, an observance meant to stand in solidarity with wildfire survivors and to call for federal funding for long-term disaster recovery, organizers LA Voice and Rebuild.Us said in announcing the event.

The gathering falls 600 days after the Jan. 7, 2025, fires, with more than $15 billion in federal long-term recovery funds reported as still unappropriated for Eaton and Palisades survivors.

All Saints has taken part in Eaton Fire recovery since the night the fire started. More than 180 people sheltered at the church overnight on Jan. 7, 2025, and it remained open the next day as an emergency shelter. Seventy-two families in the congregation lost everything.

LA Voice, a multi-racial, multi-faith community organization, says the wildfires displaced 16 of its member or partner congregations and that its Just Restoration campaign provides direct cash assistance to survivors. Rebuild.Us says it delivers money to vetted frontline groups within 48 hours of a disaster.

The National Day of Prayer for Disaster Survivors is set for 10 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 30, at All Saints Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave., Pasadena, just east of Pasadena City Hall.

For more, call the church at (626) 796-1172 or visit allsaints-pas.org, or call LA Voice at (213) 384-7404 or visit lavoice.org.

[Courtesy images]

Speakers ranging from a member of Congress to high school seniors who helped fund and create the mural pledged the artwork would be restored

Congregants, elected officials and neighbors gathered Thursday evening at the fire-scarred campus of the Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center, six days after swastikas and an antisemitic message were discovered on a community mural that had itself been created to cover earlier antisemitic graffiti.

The July 30 gathering at 1434 N. Altadena Drive drew civic leaders, clergy and community partners to the site where the Eaton Fire destroyed the synagogue in January 2025, leaving just the last major exterior wall standing.

It was the second time in roughly six months that the surviving wall had been defaced with antisemitic graffiti. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is investigating both incidents as hate crimes.

Rabbi Joshua Ratner, PJTC’s senior rabbi, told those assembled that the congregation had “marked one week since our spiritual home was desecrated by a despicable act of antisemitic graffiti,” and said the community “will not be intimidated by this or any other deplorable act of vandalism.”

Los Angeles County Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger said an attack motivated by hate against one community is an attack against everyone present.

“That is why I introduced the motion for $20,000 reward for information to help us find whoever is responsible for these horrific acts of vandalism,” she said.

Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo, who attended along with councilmembers Gene Masuda and Rick Cole and school board member Scott Harden, recalled going to look at the synagogue’s damage the morning after the Eaton Fire and stopping at the temple site.

“But at that moment in time, we made very clear that the impact was not just to Altadena and Pasadena, not just to structures, but to people,” Gordo said. “When we see hate, it’s a human emergency.”

Gordo said the perpetrators had actually brought the community together.

“We’re going to rebuild not just a center, but we’re going to build a beacon of hope for all,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Judy Chu also attended, along with PJTC Cantor Ruth Berman Harris, temple President Clark Linstone and Elizabeth Goldhirsh-Yellin of the Sparks of Kindness Youth Fund.

Altadena Sheriff’s Station Capt. Ethan Marques said detectives “are conducting a thorough investigation.” He added: “We will follow every lead, utilize every available investigative resource, and are working diligently to bring those who are responsible to justice.”

The mural was painted in spring 2026 by scenic painter Miriam Hellmann, working with the group Art Over Hate, after antisemitic graffiti attacking Zionism appeared on the wall in January 2026. Religious school students, youth members, volunteers and other community members painted sections of the work under Hellmann’s direction.

High school seniors Caleb Yellin and Audrey Farahnik helped initiate the project and raised roughly $30,000 through the nonprofit Sparks of Kindness Youth Fund.

The design featured a large, bright orange California fire poppy for regrowth, along with a peacock, a butterfly and other floral and animal symbols. It was divided like stained glass, with Stars of David in the corners and a border incorporating animal symbols associated with the tribes of Israel. Across it ran the message “We are all responsible for each other,” described in some accounts as a rendering of the Hebrew phrase “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh” — all Israel is responsible for one another.

That mural was found defaced on July 24, 2026, with multiple swastikas and the phrase “Zionzim [sic] is not welcome,” misspelled in the original.

The Sheriff’s Department’s Altadena Station and its Major Crimes Bureau Hate Crimes Task Force opened the investigation and asked the public for information, listing Detective Hodaya Doherty among the investigators assigned to the case. Anonymous tips may be submitted to Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-TIPS (8477) or at lacrimestoppers.org.

Jewish communal organizations and interfaith and civil-rights groups, including CAIR-LA, publicly condemned the vandalism and described it as part of a wider rise in antisemitic incidents.

The congregation, now worshiping at First United Methodist Church, says it plans to rebuild on the North Altadena Drive site.

Among those who spoke were the teenagers who helped bring the mural into being.

“Storms are terrible, but rainbows only come after them,” Yellin said. “Whether we get knocked down once, twice, or a hundred times, this community’s going to rise back 101 times.”

Pasadena’s First United Methodist Church will host Los Angeles organizer Katy Hickman for a discussion on empowering and protecting voters of color, according to an announcement from the church. The church’s Church and Society group has scheduled the talk for Sunday, July 26, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. in the Church Lounge.

Hickman is described in the announcement as a Los Angeles–based organizer and volunteer working in electoral empowerment, immigrant rights, and climate legislation. The church says she serves as a regional organizer for the Reclaim Our Vote campaign of the Center for Common Ground, which the announcement characterizes as a Black-woman-led voting rights organization. In that role, according to the church, she helps mobilize voters of color in states the campaign identifies as having prevalent voter-suppression tactics.

The Center for Common Ground, founded in 2018, describes itself as a nonpartisan, Black- and women-led voting rights organization. According to the organization, it runs Reclaim Our Vote — a grassroots, largely volunteer campaign to increase turnout among voters of color — through postcarding, texting, and phone banking, and concentrates its work in states it identifies as having histories of voter suppression, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. The organization says it also operates year-round community “Democracy Centers” and a paid college internship program focused on voting rights.

The announcement notes that Hickman has worked as a playwright, actor, and public school teacher. Her stage work includes the play “Bright Boy: The Passion of Robert McNamara,” which premiered in Los Angeles in 2006, and “Meteor Girl,” which was recognized with Dramalogue and Bay Area Critics Circle honors.

For more information visit fumcpasadena.org.

A Sunday session at All Saints will trace the rehabilitation ministry born from one physical therapist’s calling to Eldoret

More than three decades ago, a physical therapist from Los Angeles answered a call from an Anglican bishop in western Kenya. What grew from that encounter — a community-based rehabilitation program serving people with disabilities across the North Rift Valley — is still going. On Sunday, Pasadena parishioners will hear where it stands.

All Saints Church will host “Faith & Formation: A Story Still Being Written: All Saints, Kenya, and the Power of Partnership” on July 12, from 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. in the Guild Room. Grace Dyrness and members of the Hutcherson Rehabilitation Center Committee will lead a conversation about the ministry connecting the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles to the people of Eldoret, Kenya, according to the church’s event listing.

The partnership traces its origins to 1990, when the late Canon Percia Hutcherson, a physical therapist who had provided more than 45,000 treatments to children and adults with disabilities over her career, traveled to the Diocese of Eldoret at the invitation of the late Anglican Bishop Alexander Muge. Hutcherson, born in rural Mississippi, developed and implemented the North Rift Rehabilitation Centre’s community-based rehabilitation project in rural areas of the region, according to accounts from the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and the NORIREC website.

Hutcherson continued that work for nearly two decades. She also founded Changing Lives International, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people with disabilities in East Africa through community-based rehabilitation, according to the organization’s website. Bishop Frederick Borsch named her a lay canon of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in 1997, according to the diocese.

Hutcherson died on January 9, 2018, at age 95 at her home in Los Angeles. The diocese’s Program Group on Global Partnerships took up her ministry to the disabled in Eldoret after her death, according to the Episcopal News.

The Sunday session will include stories from the field and reflections on recent travels, and will explore how lives have been transformed on both sides of the partnership, according to the event description posted by All Saints. Presenters will also consider what the next chapter might hold for those seeking to put faith into action. The church describes the effort as one built on “relationships of trust, solidarity, and hope.”

Dyrness, an Altadena resident with a background in community development research, will lead the session alongside members of the committee that carries Hutcherson’s name.

The event falls at a notable moment for All Saints and the broader diocese. The day before, on Saturday, July 11, the church will host the consecration and ordination of the Rev. Dr. Antonio José Gallardo Lucena as the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, according to the diocese and the church’s calendar. That ceremony, officiated by Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, will draw attendees from across the region to the Pasadena church, one of the largest Episcopal parishes in the country.

“Faith & Formation: A Story Still Being Written: All Saints, Kenya, and the Power of Partnership” takes place Sunday, July 12, from 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. in the Guild Room at All Saints Church, 132 North Euclid Avenue. Admission is free and open to all. Validated parking is available at Plaza Las Fuentes, with the underground garage entrance on Union Street between Los Robles and Euclid avenues; Sunday validation is good until 1:00 p.m. Free parking is also available at the Kaiser Parking Structure at Euclid Avenue and Walnut Street, open until 4:00 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, call (626) 796-1172 or visit allsaints-pas.org.

The community-based rehabilitation center Hutcherson built in Eldoret still operates today, now serving multiple counties across Kenya’s Rift Valley and western regions.

Terry Madigan [photo credit: Tournament of Roses]

A displaced Jewish congregation will mark its second Pride Shabbat at First United Methodist Church on the 11th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling

The Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center will hold its second annual Pride Shabbat on Friday, June 26, in the borrowed sanctuary of First United Methodist Church — the same evening that marks the 11th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The guest speaker at the post-service reception, called the oneg, will be Terry Madigan, the first openly gay president of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses in the organization’s 136-year history. Madigan also serves as treasurer of the San Gabriel Valley LGBTQ Center, according to JEDI Committee Chair Diane Burr.

The service, organized by PJTC’s JEDI (Jewish Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Committee, begins at 7:30 p.m., preceded by Shirah with Cantor Ruth Berman Harris at 7:20 p.m. First United Methodist Church is at 500 E. Colorado Blvd. The event is open to the public.

PJTC has been without its own building since January 7, 2025, when the Eaton Fire destroyed its 1941 Mission Revival campus at 1434 N. Altadena Drive. The synagogue’s entire two-acre site was lost; the congregation has held Shabbat services and gatherings at First UMC since the fire. First UMC voted to become a Reconciling Congregation in 2011, committing to the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in church life, and voted in 2015 to permit same-gender weddings in its sanctuary.

“We’re really honored to be in a space of interfaith harmony,” Burr said in an interview. “We grieved that community, and there are challenges when you’re using someone else’s sacred space, but FUMC has been so very kind and accommodating and helpful to us. It’s been very nourishing.”

Last year was PJTC’s first Pride Shabbat, Burr said, and the congregation plans to hold it annually.

“Pride Shabbat is a reaffirmation that PJTC is a community that supports everyone and celebrates each of our unique identities,” she said.

Senior Rabbi Joshua Ratner, who joined PJTC in 2025, wrote in responses provided to Pasadena Now that Conservative Judaism reads its commitment to inclusion out of Genesis and Leviticus.

“Conservative Judaism believes that these, and other foundational biblical texts, create an imperative to preserve the human dignity of all people,” he wrote. “Pride Shabbat serves as a way to live out this value by ensuring that LGBTQ+ individuals are not only welcomed but also celebrated.”

The Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards formally permitted the ordination of openly LGBTQ+ clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions in December 2006. PJTC drew national attention in 2014 when it hired Rabbi Becky Silverstein as Director of Education — reported in the Jewish press at the time as the first U.S. Conservative synagogue to employ an openly transgender rabbi.

The oneg will include rainbow challah prepared by JEDI Committee members, alongside the customary refreshments. “When you braid it, it’s the idea of different concepts coming together, different ideas coming together within this bread,” Burr said.

Ratner said the experience of displacement has sharpened the congregation’s focus. “Since the fire, we have seen first-hand how crucial it is for our members to have the opportunity to come together, to support one another, and to feel a sense of solidarity through community,” he wrote. “This applies to all facets of our programming, from services to social events.”

The service will draw on the Kabbalat Shabbat liturgy — the welcoming of the Sabbath — with what Burr described as “an increased emphasis on diversity and inclusion.” Saturday morning services the following day will read the double portion Chukat-Balak.

The event’s tagline, drawn from PJTC’s standing inclusion statement, is “All Are Welcome! Come As You Are!”

The PJTC office can be reached at (626) 798-1161; the JEDI Committee is at jedi@pjtc.net.

“Our guiding thought is come as you are,” Burr said. “And so I think that’s important if people want to come to just know — come as you are.”

The Rosemead Boulevard nonprofit will host a free Vedic ceremony on May 17 combining group chanting, sacred fire offerings, and a communal dinner

Thirty-two devotees will sit together inside the Pasadena Hindu Temple on Sunday afternoon and chant sacred mantras 108 times — the opening act of a multi-part Vedic ceremony the temple says it has never held before.

The ceremony combines four elements: group Shanti Path chanting, a Maha Yagya fire ritual involving Vedic mantras and offerings, Navagraha blessings invoking the nine planetary deities of Hindu tradition, and a concluding Aarti followed by Maharprasad — a communal dinner of food considered blessed.

The event, known as a Shanti Path and Navgrah Maha Yagya, begins at 4:00 p.m. on May 17 at the temple’s home on Rosemead Boulevard. It is free and open to all, according to the event’s organizers.

The Pasadena Hindu Temple, operated by the Hindu Temple and Heritage Foundation, is a nonprofit that traces its origins to a living room gathering in 1986, according to a May 2025 Pasadena Now report. The foundation was incorporated in 1998 and the temple was established at its current Rosemead Boulevard location by a group of 10 Southern California devotees, according to the temple’s website. For more than two decades, it has served as both a house of worship and a cultural center, hosting weekly classes in Hindi, North Indian classical music, and traditional Indian dance, along with annual health fairs and yoga workshops.

In a Navagraha ceremony, mantras are chanted for each of the nine celestial bodies recognized in Hindu astrology — the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and the lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu — followed by offerings into a sacred fire. The number 108 holds particular significance in Hindu devotional practice and is a standard count for mantra repetition.

Head priest Pandit Jagdish Rajgor has described the temple’s reach as extending well beyond Pasadena. “Every Sunday we have people drive from over forty miles to come here,” Rajgor told Pasadena Now in May 2025. He has also emphasized the institution’s open-door philosophy: “Anybody can come and everybody is welcome,” he said at that time.

The temple’s programming extends into secular community engagement. Its youth association conducts volunteer projects including sandwich drives for the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles. Rima Madan, the temple’s events coordinator, said in 2025 that the institution works with the Pasadena Boys and Girls Club and is “very well assimilated with the local community, not just the Indian American community.”

The event will be held at the Pasadena Hindu Temple, 676 South Rosemead Boulevard. For more information, call Dr. Manju Kumar at (626) 533-9709 or Pandit Jagdish Rajgor at (626) 679-8777, or visit PasadenaHinduTemple.org.