“The Table” January 17, 2025

A Facebook post inspired by my dear friend Rabbi Roz Gold

Our house is safe. Thank you to everyone who showed so much love, support, and concern for us. Your outpouring of care helped get us through a difficult time. Time…what a difference a week makes. Last week, we were frantically throwing things in suitcases on Friday night, and this week we will sit at our Virginia Shabbat table and thank God.
The refrain as we anticipated losing everything was “they are just things.” But I am thankful that those things are still there. One dear friend wrote how awful it would be for the dining room table to be destroyed by fire and how glad she was that it was safe. They say a REAL friend knows things about you that few people know.

That table is one of the oldest, if not the oldest thing, other than our antiques, that we own. It was a wedding I present for Gary’s parents in the 1940’s. They gave it to us when we moved to NY in 1978, so I could go to rabbinical school. They had bought a new modern, glass table and had no need for it anymore. I raised my children on that table. My Confirmation classes came for Shabbat on that table for most of my career. I had it refinished in southern Virginia about 20 years ago. When we moved into the house in LA in 2017, we shipped the table there so that Jacob’s kids could grow up with the table Pop and Abba grew up with. Yes, it is just a thing with six original Duncan Fife chairs, but is it?
For the nine years that Temple B’nai Shalom had no building, I rolled the Torah on that table every week. Eventually, I ruined the table pads and had to buy new ones. Just a table. Thanksgivings and Passovers, and a table full of latkes for Chanukah… just a table. During Covid, the kids did puzzles on that table, and the older ones played Legos and put those fusion beads in molds … that table made life feel normal. For me, it was a symbol that wherever we reside, we bring our memories with us.

Sadly, there are too many who do not have their homes or treasures anymore. My heart breaks for each one this Shabbat. My kids say that the air is filled with ash and so many are finding it hard to breathe. Fires are contained but not out yet. How grateful we are to those who have worked day and night to save our precious city of LA from even more destruction. How thankful I am for MY LA rabbis who reached out to us, even as they reached out to care for all the members of our three congregations and beloved seminary HUC-JIR.

And so, we will sit at our table in Virginia this Shabbat, so very thankful that we are safe. We will light the candles, and I fear that I will still see those burning hills in the distance from my grocery store on Ventura Blvd. And we will thank God for the family and friends who sustained us with their loving care during a very scary and traumatic week of our lives.