News

When fire spread to West Hollywood, a rabbi’s mom chose to grab candlesticks

“Physical things come and go, but the spiritual is what keeps us going,” her son says.

Mushka Lighstone’s Shabbat candlesticks are a prized possession, and a priority in her LaBrea, West Hollywood home Photo by Muksha Lighstone — Muksha Photography

By Samuel Eli Shepherd January 10, 2025

When the Los Angeles area fires spread near Mushka Lightstone’s West Hollywood house Wednesday night, Mushka grabbed her mother’s Shabbat candlesticks before evacuating her home.

“She called me, and we were going back and forth because she was nervous about the fires,”said Mushka’s son, Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, who spoke to Mushka when the fires neared on Wednesday. While Mushka, who lived in the neighborhood LaBrea, was far from immediate danger, smoke soon surrounded her home. “She showed me videos. When you stepped outside, you could see the Hollywood Hills aflame.”

Mordechai, the social media editor at Chabad who now lives in Crown Heights, grew up in the LA area. He ran in Runyon Canyon as a kid and ate kosher fish tacos in Malibu. Seeing videos on WhatsApp of the hills near his childhood being consumed by flames brought back memories of hikes and pink sunsets. “The idea of that burning was very upsetting to think about,” he said.

Mushka, who is a photographer, spent Wednesday night in her studio near the Los Angeles International Airport. She stayed there overnight after a mandatory evacuation order for all Hollywood Hills residents. By Thursday, the evacuation order was lifted, and Mushka’s home was luckily unaffected by the fire.

Mushka was not available for comment about the fire. But Mordecai took to social media about the spiritual symbolism of his mother’s choice. Of all the objects available in her home, such as family photos or her cameras, his mother chose the Shabbat candlesticks, which were a family heirloom from his grandmother: a Yiddish enthusiast and a daughter of Ukrainian immigrants.

My mother told me she left the house (She's fine, more to escape smoke from the Hollywood Hills) and didn't know what to take... So the one family heirloom she brought were my grandmother's Shabbos Candle Sticks... And now I feel deeply triggered thinking about the Shtetl motif…
— Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone (@Mottel) January 9, 2025

“Back in Eastern Europe, what were their most valuable possessions? Shtetlekh were built out of wood and burnt down all the time,” Mordechai told me. “There’s this famous, iconic motif of, ‘The shtetl is burning and you have to run out and go, and what do you do?’ You grab the Tallis, you grab the Tefillin and you grab the Shabbat candlesticks.”

Over a century and an ocean away, Mordechai said that he could see history repeating itself with the Los Angeles fires, where Jewish people have sometimes prioritized objects of sacred significance over material worth.

When the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center burnt down Tuesday night, the cantor worked to rescue the 100-year-old synagogue’s 13 Torah scrolls, including a scroll from Iran in the 1930s. The Chabad in Pacific Palisades, which only sustained minor damages from the fire, rescued Torah scrolls as well, although several menorahs in the center burnt down.

Over 9,000 structures have been destroyed in the Los Angeles fires, and over 180,00 people have been put on evacuation orders, according to a Thursday report from The Los Angeles Times. At least 10 people have died so far due to the fires, according to a release from the The County of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner.

Mordechai said he was grateful that his childhood home was spared. “There needs to be a real appreciation to all the first responders,” he said. Mordechai also credited Chabad emissaries for their quick work in delivering food to first responders, and for giving out care packages to Pasadena residents affected by the fire.

“Physical things come and go, but the spiritual is what keeps us going,” Mordechai said. He added that Mushka is back in her West Hollywood home for Shabbat this weekend. She plans to use those candlesticks tonight.

Samuel Eli Shepherd is a culture journalist and a digital reporting and editing intern at the Forward. He can be reached at [email protected].

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO