I have a feeling that Angelenos have met more tzadikim, more righteous people, this week than perhaps, ever before. Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, teaches that any human being can strive to be as righteous as Moses. We have within each one of us the capacity to be wise, merciful, and generous. It isn’t a matter of finding the righteous. It is a matter of choosing to be righteous.
This week, we celebrated our daughter’s bat mitzvah and had a tremendous amount of fresh, leftover, untouched food. We immediately thought the fire stations would be the best place to offer the meals. We went to three different stations, a YMCA, and an evacuation area. The people that greeted us came with smiles, gratitude, and love. They laughed with tears in their eyes, pointing to the piles of food and clothing around them, turning our food away because so many righteous souls had already offered so much. The innate goodness of this city feels unmeasurable.
The firefighters explained they were substitutes coming in from other cities outside of evacuation zones to help our resident firefighters reach the fires in the Palisades and Altadena. I asked these replacement firefighters when they last slept or had seen their own families. One kindly answered, “When our friends come home here, then we’ll go home, too.” As we say, they are a mensch.
And even though my Jewish mother genes were in full gear, the firefighters would not accept the food. One could see the donations piled around the station. As we started to walk away, one firefighter called out to me. “Wait! I have something for you!” I was hoping he’d at least take one tray but instead, I saw him holding a sweet bouquet of flowers. He said that someone had given him the flowers, but he wouldn’t be able to take them home to enjoy them. It would be a gift for him to know I would give the flowers a place on my dining room table.
And here they are: A testament to the righteousness of this city; the people that do not wake up declaring themselves heroes but who make split second decisions to rise to the occasion and allow love define who they are.
Through this tragedy of loss and destruction, the righteous have come forward. Los Angeles, the city of angels, human angels. As it says in Psalms, “May the righteous flourish in his time, and peace abound until the moon is no more.”
Let our goodness and kindness know no bounds.
Amen.
Rabbi Nicole Guzik is senior rabbi at Sinai Temple. She can be reached at her Facebook page at Rabbi Nicole Guzik or on Instagram @rabbiguzik. For more writings, visit Rabbi Guzik’s blog section from Sinai Temple’s website.
