Last week, members of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center gathered to remember the devastating wildfire that burned down the synagogue’s campus and much of the surrounding community of Altadena one year ago.
On Sunday, they felt another kind of grief when a member of the congregation drove by the site and discovered anti-Zionist graffiti scrawled on an exterior wall, synagogue leaders said Monday.
Rabbi Joshua Ratner said in an interview that the graffiti had rattled community members at an emotionally fragile time.
“It was devastating in many ways,” he said.
The vandalism was discovered a day after an arson attack at the oldest synagogue in Mississippi — an incident that had already weighed on the community, Rabbi Ratner said.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Monday that its Altadena station was investigating a report of a hate crime and vandalism on the block where the temple was located.
Last Tuesday, several hundred members of the Pasadena synagogue’s community had gathered to commemorate the first anniversary of the deadly Eaton fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses in Los Angeles County.
The temple community includes roughly 450 families in and around Pasadena, including some from Altadena. Among those families, 30 lost their homes in the blaze and another 45 were displaced because their homes were contaminated, Rabbi Ratner said. Many of those families have not been able to return.
The synagogue, which had been at the site since 1941, is still in the early phases of what is expected to be a yearslong rebuilding process. Its activities are still scattered: Services are held at a church, while religious school classes are held elsewhere. Last Tuesday’s event, on the eve of the blaze’s anniversary, was the first time many in the congregation had come back to the temple site.
Rabbi Ratner said a temple member drove past the campus site on Sunday morning and saw that an exterior wall of the campus had been vandalized using black paint.
In addition to denouncing Zionism, the graffiti said, “RIP Renee,” which Rabbi Ratner took as a reference to Renee Good, the woman who was shot and killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis last week. Rabbi Ratner said that he had mentioned Ms. Good, whose death he described as a tragedy, in the congregation’s recent prayer for the dead.
Photos of the graffiti viewed by The New York Times showed that the message was written in large letters across several feet of a white exterior wall of the campus, which is otherwise surrounded by a chain-link fence covered with green hedges. Congregation members said that there is no signage identifying the site as a synagogue or other Jewish community center.
In an email to temple members, Rabbi Ratner described the graffiti as “hateful and antisemitic.” He said that the temple was working with law enforcement agencies and Jewish organizations to investigate the episode and ensure the community’s safety.
Rabbi Ratner said that the temple has had private security since the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.
Clark Linstone, 67, the congregation’s president, said that he was baffled and hurt by the graffiti. He has been a member of the synagogue for decades and said he could not recall any other similar acts of vandalism at the facility.
But Mr. Linstone said that the congregation was resilient, and the commemoration last week underscored its determination to rebuild.
“The community is strong,” he said. “I think people are hopeful and looking forward.”
Jill Cowan is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering the forces shaping life in Southern California and throughout the state.
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