Rabbi Abraham Cooper, a Los Angeles resident for the past 48 years, does not mince words about his city’s plight. He echoes the anger at the Los Angeles government — the sense of broken trust — and the despair and unfathomable pain of his neighbors.
“I know that the winds have had a lot to do with this,” says Cooper, “but the fact that the fire department had those big tankers — you can’t send people to fight a fire and then they can’t turn on the hose.
“On top of that is the worry that the top tier politicians in our city and state were not ready and did not show the leadership they needed to show.”
Rabbi Cooper and his wife Roz live in the Beverlywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, south of Beverly Hills, no more than five miles from the fire perimeter.
They have not evacuated their home — and there is no suggested evacuation in that area, as yet. Both do not know anyone whose home has been afflicted by the fires, but they are friends with a lot of Angelenos in the midst of high anxiety.
“We’ve been told that the fire hydrants had no water, which is pretty astounding,” says Roz Cooper.
“How do you have fire hydrants that aren’t connected to water or don’t have access to water? And all of this happened because they just were totally unprepared for it.”
“The angst level has not receded in Los Angeles,” said Rabbi Cooper. “Part of it is because of the weather and part of it is a broken trust.”
Fueling that angst level comes from those running Los Angeles’ emergency notification system, which has activated evacuation orders in some quadrants of the city that were not affected by the fires.
“There have been a series of computer glitches that have led to evacuation preparedness or notices to get up and leave the middle of the night from different places,” says Rabbi Cooper.
Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was away on business in Washington, DC, as the second week of the fires began.
Both the rabbi and his wife were in Denver during Chanukah, visiting their daughter and son-in-law, Raacheli and Shlomo Fried, and their grandchildren.
The entire family knows the occasional reality check in Los Angeles.
“We’ve had a couple of earthquakes in Los Angeles,” says Rabbi Cooper. “Those, and fires, are not unusual. There are times you wake up in the morning and you have two inches of ash on your windshield.
“But in this case, there is a lot of anger. Thank G-d that there are only a few temples and synagogues where you have scores or even more members who don’t have homes to come back to.
“Everyone is shaken. It’s like we’re looking like the day after a ceasefire in a war.”
Roz Cooper is trying to help heal. She leads a group of women who meet weekly on Zoom to recite Psalms. That may become of more importance since the onset of the wildfires.
“Everyone says their chapters, and there are prayers for Israel, and for people who are sick,” says Roz. “Now we have this, and we believe being together like this really helps.”
© IJN 2025
