Thursday, April 2, 2026

Displaced by Fire, Two Pasadena Congregations Mark Passover With Borrowed Sanctuaries and Open Doors

When Jews around the world sat down Wednesday evening for the Passover Seder — the ritual meal that retells the story of the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt and their journey to freedom — two Pasadena congregations brought an uncommon weight to the ancient words.

For the Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center, whose 104-year-old synagogue was destroyed in the Eaton Fire on Jan. 8, the holiday’s central themes of exile, displacement, and deliverance are no longer abstractions read from a text. They are the lived experience of a congregation that has spent more than a year without a permanent home.

“Today, I feel much more viscerally the vulnerability and exposure of exile, the possibility yet also fragility of freedom, and the need for a strong, resilient, and nurturing community,” said Rabbi Josh Ratner, PJTC’s Senior Rabbi.

Across town, Rabbi Chaim Hanoka, Executive Director of Chabad of Pasadena, welcomed anyone who walked through the door — and brought Passover to those who couldn’t. Hanoka prepared to host public Seders, on the evenings of April 1 and April 2, and distribute Seder to-go kits to hundreds of individuals across the San Gabriel Valley who lack the means or the company to observe the holiday on their own.

“The doors open as long as you can breathe,” Hanoka said.

Passover, or Pesach, is one of Judaism’s most widely observed holidays — an eight-day festival that began this year at sundown on Wednesday, April 1, and concludes at nightfall on Thursday, April 9.

At its heart is the Seder, a carefully ordered meal conducted on the first two evenings, during which families and communities read from the Haggadah, the text that recounts how God delivered the Israelites from bondage under Pharaoh and led them toward the Promised Land.

The rituals are specific and sensory: unleavened matzah recalling the haste of departure, bitter herbs evoking the sting of slavery, a lamb shank bone representing the ancient paschal sacrifice. Each element is designed to make participants feel, as the Haggadah instructs, as though they themselves had gone forth from Egypt.

For PJTC, that instruction now carries a literalness its members could not have imagined two years ago.

The Eaton Fire, which ignited on Jan. 7, killed 19 people and burned approximately 14,000 acres across Altadena and Pasadena, destroying more than 9,400 structures. PJTC’s synagogue — a century-old landmark that had anchored the congregation’s life across generations — was among the structures lost.

Some members were forced to leave Pasadena entirely. Executive Director Melissa Levy told JNS that membership and attendance, however, have remained steady, with congregants turning to Zoom when they cannot attend in person.

Since the fire, First United Methodist Church in Pasadena has served as PJTC’s borrowed sanctuary. The arrangement goes beyond lending a room on Friday nights: Rabbi Jill Gold Wright’s temporary office is located on the second floor of the church, according to the Jewish Journal, and the congregation has relocated much of its operational life there.

Ratner said the church has worked to ensure the space functions for Jewish worship, “making it as warm and accessible as possible.” Cantor Ruth Berman Harris serves alongside Ratner as PJTC clergy leading services and holiday observances from the borrowed space.

Ratner said the displacement has not changed his theology so much as “personalized its resonance.” Passover, he said, is “grounded in exile as a necessary precondition to later redemption.” Each year the congregation recounts the Israelites’ deliverance and their long journey home — and now draws a direct parallel to its own circumstances.

“Just as our ancestors navigated myriad challenges and travails yet ultimately prevailed, so too can we,” he said.

The congregation’s resilience has expressed itself in ways both large and intimate. During Passover 2025 — the first after the fire — many congregants lacked dining rooms or kitchens for Seder meals. Members with intact homes opened their doors to host displaced families for the first-night Seder, Levy told Pasadena Now. A generous donor made PJTC’s Second Night Seder free for all congregants.

Ratner said what has inspired him most is not any single gesture but “the collective abundance of these acts of heed, of loving-kindness” — from financial generosity to “giving a hug to someone who seems lonely or offering a car ride to someone who otherwise couldn’t make it to their doctor’s appointment.”

The interfaith dimension of PJTC’s displacement has deepened the congregation’s ties to the broader Pasadena community. Other churches in the area have provided resources and support since the fires, Ratner said. The result, he said, is “a stronger sense of communal embrace and interfaith fellowship now than we did before the fires.”

While PJTC marks Passover from a borrowed sanctuary, Chabad of Pasadena is extending its own form of welcome — one aimed at any Jew who might otherwise observe the holiday alone or not at all.

Hanoka described Chabad’s Seders as “a home away from home” for Jews “from all over the world who either are not home, don’t live anywhere near their families, can’t make it to their families, or frankly speaking, want to celebrate Pesach in a communal setting with a bunch of other people.” The gatherings are open regardless of observance or belief. “It’s not specific to any particular level of religiosity,” he said.

The Seders are conducted in a combination of Hebrew and English “with explanations and tidbits, a little extrapolation here and there, and a little bit of humor also to keep things flowing well,” Hanoka said. Both evenings include a traditional Haggadah reading, hand-baked Shmurah Matzah, four cups of wine, and a catered holiday dinner, with advance reservations required through Chabad’s website. Hanoka leads the Seders alongside Chani Hanoka and Rabbi Zushi Rivkin.

Beyond the Seders, Chabad of Pasadena facilitates several traditional Passover preparations for the broader community: Maos Chittim, a dedicated charity fund collecting donations to ensure individuals in need have food, matzah, and wine for the holiday; an online chametz sale allowing community members to delegate the Rabbi to sell their leavened products before Passover; handmade round Shmurah Matzah available for purchase and pickup; and a Meal of Moshiach on the final day of Passover, April 9, featuring matzah and four cups of wine dedicated to the theme of future redemption.

Chabad’s Seder to-go kits — self-contained packages with everything needed to conduct a Seder at home — serve a population Hanoka described as “a mixed bag”: students, young adults, families, seniors, and people who simply do not have another Seder to attend. During Passover 2025, Chabad distributed hundreds of the kits to fire-affected families across the San Gabriel Valley and waived programming fees for those impacted by the disaster, Pasadena Now reported. This year, Hanoka said, the effort continues at the same scale.

Passover, Hanoka said, carries “a universal message which runs across the board” — one that connects children to the memories of their parents and grandparents and to “the importance of celebrating liberation, and ultimately peace.”

In his closing remarks, Hanoka reached beyond the Haggadah’s four sons — the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask — to invoke a fifth.

“There’s a fifth son who’s the unmentioned son,” he said, “and he or she, so to speak, are the ones who don’t even know that it’s the Passover and that there’s a Seder.” He urged Jews who know someone unaware of the holiday to reach out: “Encourage them to come to our Seder, to connect or reconnect with the roots and celebrate liberation, not just of a story from thousands of years ago, but celebrating liberation of today.”

Hanoka acknowledged the broader climate, referencing “tumultuous times” in both Israel and the United States. The Seder, he said, offers people a chance to “bond with each other and strengthen each other” in “a safe and wholesome manner.”

The road to rebuilding is long. PJTC has stated its intent to rebuild on its original site rather than relocate. Rabbi Jill Gold Wright told the Jewish Journal in July that the process would likely take “many years.” Architects were hired later that summer, JNS reported. As of January 2026, PJTC had formed a dedicated Rebuilding Committee and issued a congregational survey to determine the vision for the new facility. On the municipal side, the Pasadena City Council approved fee exemptions for qualifying Eaton Fire rebuilds on Sept. 29.

Ratner said the congregation is already looking beyond its own recovery. When the new synagogue rises, he said, he wants it to serve “in part, as a medium for community-building for other faith communities who might need their own help” — repaying the hospitality that sustained PJTC through its displacement.

The Passover Seder ends, as it has for centuries, with the same declaration of hope: “Next year in Jerusalem.” For two Pasadena congregations — one worshiping in a borrowed church, the other throwing its doors open to strangers — the words carry the particular weight of people who know what it means to lose a home and to find, in the searching, something they did not expect.

Ratner put it plainly: “We believe in a better future, and that each of us has an active role to play in bringing that future to fruition.”

Chabad of Pasadena, 1090 E. Walnut St., Pasadena. For more visit chabadpasadena.com. PJTC event information is available at pjtc.net.