El Lay Pesach

In the spring of 2021 I traveled to Los Angeles to visit my recently college graduated daughter who had decided that LA was now going to be her “home forever!”.

It was Passover, so what does a mother do?

Make a seder (two).

I had last been in LA in 1990 or so.

Yes, it was sunny and yes, the topography, dramatic but to me, there was an overriding feeling of “temporariness” to LA.

Fast forward to 2021.

I landed in a city paralyzed by COVID politics.

Schools, museums and other public venues were closed.

We drove to Santa Monica Beach. It had always been portrayed as a place where joyful young Californians sat on blankets, listened to the latest music, played volleyball or worked out on exercise bars. Now, it was filled with mile after mile of blue tarped encampments and half-naked stumbling zombies fighting imaginary opponents. No one confronted them or stopped them. Overflowing garbage pails went unattended.

It was an end-of-the-world apocalyptic scene.

“I am not getting out of the car,” I told my daughter.

We drove in silence.

“How could they let this happen? Where are all the working class people without private pools going to go?” I asked.

We had lunch on a pier a few miles north.

Sailboats glided across the horizon. People walked along, leading their dogs.

Everyone seemed oblivious to the incremental destruction of their city.

I/we busied ourselves with Pesach preparation and visited the kosher market in West Hollywood. Fashionable and well made-up Persian Jewish women strolled the aisles. Ashkenazim could take a page from their book, I told myself. Huge, open burlap bags featured varied nuts. Exotic pastries abounded. Then, in the produce section I found the famous leeks. I had recently learned about the Persian custom of people beating themselves with leeks on Pesach. Or was that Rosh Hashonah?

So, we had our seder. We invited expatriate cousins, non-observant Jews and non-Jews. I felt like the first Patriarch and Matriarch and, at times, had tears in my eyes, knowing that despite the dispersion of Jews over the centuries, we could still get together and share our common faith and heritage.

(My Gallitzean chicken soup was a major success. I found my daughter’s roommate having some for breakfast the next day.)

Back in El Lay, the sense of ennui, fear, boredom continued.

Progressive handbills and newsletters were everywhere. I realized that conservatives would do well to keep their opinions to themselves or they might find themselves ostracized or fired.

What had happened to Los Angeles? Had it ever been the land of the Free Thinkers? Or was that just a false memory?

Yet, there were pockets of resistance.

A long-haired man, probably in his late thirties, came to the apartment to hang a mirror.

It would be easy to assume he was “one of them”.

He wasn’t.

Of course, we both spoke in code words until we sounded each other out. He was as conservative as they come.

Just before I left, I took my daughter to lunch at the rooftop restaurant of the Sunset Tower Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. It was an Art Deco (my favorite) building and if I closed my eyes I could just visualize the 1930’s executives of the major studios and celebrities dining in view of the same nearby Hollywood Hills.

Instead I saw Jeff Zucker, president of CNN surrounded by admiring, casually dressed young people.

I wanted to tell my daughter that at one time CNN had been one of the most admired networks, that its global news reach had been cutting edge and now…. but I didn’t.

Looking out of the window of my departing plane, the brown hills and overcast sky seemed to be silent witnesses to an impending doom.

The next year, Jeff Zucker abruptly resigned saying that he had failed to disclosure a romantic relationship with a senior CNN executive. CNN’s trajectory has continued downward.

My daughter left LA a few months later.

In recent days, Los Angeles has been struck by catastrophic wildfires. Thousands of homes have been destroyed. Food, utilities, roads and schools have been impacted. It may take years to recover.

Those who observed the mindless and in the end, mortally destructive policies of the left (DEI, “climate crisis”, failure to apply tried principles of fire prevention) should refrain from criticism and offer to pitch in to help speed recovery in affected areas.

Judaism teaches us a thing or two about nationhood and rebuilding. The torah is filled with stories of loss, devastation and renewal, especially the Book of Exodus which tells the story of Pesach.

Los Angeles, buttressed by the recognition and admission that we are one people, just like the ancients, will also survive.