KSP x BHB: Rabbi Steve Leder Reflects on Loss and Resilience After Wildfires

Rabbi Emeritus Steve Leder of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple held up a photo of himself with his parents before his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. “Things matter,” Rabbi Leder said. “You shouldn’t brush off the fact that material objects burned. Things matter as keepsakes or artifacts.” It’s just a photo, but he adds, “It’s more important than a piece of paper.”

The Palisades Fire was not the first crisis during Rabbi Leder's tenure that drove people to seek help from the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Having worked at the Temple for nearly 40 years, Leder has helped his congregants through the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest, the 9/11 attacks, COVID-19, and the October 7th attack on Israel.

Wilshire Boulevard Temple has been located in Koreatown since 1928. Immediately after the wildfires, the Temple created a spreadsheet with the zip codes of the congregants possibly affected and reached out to them. Then, “[The Temple] sent an email and said, ‘Hey, we're starting the Wilshire Boulevard Temple Wildfire Fund.’ It [came out to] a little north of $100,000,” Leder said. 

The crisis differed from previous crises the Temple’s congregants have experienced. “The anti-Semitism — the Jew hatred — after October 7th, from people we thought were our friends, really got people to move closer together,” Leder explained. The fires did the opposite. Those who lost their homes scattered and went to live with family elsewhere. The Temple couldn’t provide much community for them. Leder, however, talked with many over Zoom.

Leder told us the Temple is — and essentially always has been — “generically prepared.” They have people who know how to help, but it can be difficult to predict what kind of crisis may happen next. 

A Religious Job

Rabbi Leder grew up in a Jewish family in Minnesota. His dad owned a junkyard. Most of the five kids were expected to “go to law school and take over the junkyard, or ... not go to law school and take over the junkyard.” That did not appeal to Leder, who, inclined towards religion and creative pursuits, was almost expected to become a rabbi. He never felt wholly comfortable in the Gentile world and, as a kid, loved how the synagogue was the one place where he could meet people from all over the city. It was metropolitan, supportive, and offered greater exposure to the outside world. Religion was also an “age-appropriate way we talked about the human condition.”

After rabbinical school, Leder received job offers from synagogues nationwide. Rather than taking the real estate motto of “Location, location, location,”  Leder stressed that he cared most about who he would be working with. (“Senior rabbi, senior rabbi, senior rabbi.”) He landed at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. 

Leder felt that the Palisades Fires were bound to happen, even if people go to synagogue or love their neighbors … or don’t. “Expecting that being a good person will protect you from a fire is like expecting a bull not to charge you because you're a vegetarian. This is nature.”

What about those with survivor’s guilt? Leder likened whose house stands to a lottery. Few would have a winner’s guilt. He cited the Jewish bracha—the blessings over food before eating and drinking. Saying blessings is an act of thankfulness, and we should remember to be thankful for things we may take for granted, like water or housing. The Talmud, Leder said, would have offered an antidote rather than a solution to the Palisades Fire.

It is important to tend to your spiritual life, help others, and reach out to the community. But you shouldn’t give a blanket offer of help to those in need. “I have now given homework to someone already suffering,” Leder said. Instead, you should take the lead to offer tangible help. “The prisoner can’t free himself,” Leder recited. “No one suffers pain better alone.”