Even after their synagogue had burned to the ground, members of Congregation Beth El in Rutherford, N.J., gathered, as always, for Sabbath services on Saturday, grateful no one had been hurt and pledging to rebuild.
More than 100 people prayed outdoors under large white tents near the charred debris of the building, mindful of what had been lost — and who had been saved. Congregants dusted soot from their chairs. The service competed with the sound of backhoes removing rubble from the site, just yards away.
“Seven Torah scrolls are gone, with no remnants — this is very painful for us,” Rabbi Yitzchok Lerman told those assembled. “I want to say thank you, God, for sparing my life and sparing my family.”
The synagogue fire, in a residential neighborhood of Rutherford, a small community in Bergen County, started in the early hours of Friday morning. Rabbi Lerman, his wife and four of their children narrowly escaped without injuries. The cause of the fire was under investigation, but there was no indication that it was criminal in nature, John R. Russo, Rutherford’s police chief, said on Friday.
By the time firefighters arrived, the synagogue was already consumed by flames, and a part of the building was beginning to collapse.
“One minute later, and this would have been our funeral,” Rabbi Lerman said, his voice cracking, during the service. “But God wanted us to survive.”
He continued, “We mourn the building, but the community is the people, not a building. We are all one family, and as a family, we are going to rebuild.”
The rabbi, who also trains chaplains as a military reservist and works as a professor at the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, saw in the fire a lesson in resilience. “We’re not wallowing in sorrow,” he said in an interview. “This is a holy place for us. This is our home. We’re going to move on.”
On Saturday morning, congregants read from Hebrew prayer books, since those with English translations could not immediately be found in the aftermath of the fire. The Torah scroll used for the service was borrowed from a synagogue in the nearby city of Passaic.
David Swirnoff, 55, attended the service on Saturday. He was the president of his synagogue in Hoboken before moving to Rutherford. The loss of the Torahs at Congregation Beth El was a particularly emotional blow.
“Losing seven Torah scrolls is a bit like losing seven members of the congregation,” he said.
Penina Behar Klapper, 68, said her family had been part of Congregation Beth El for five generations, and she reflected on that long history with optimism about the future.
“I needed to come to this,” she said, enjoying homemade rugelach and other refreshments with her daughter and grandchildren after the service. “I went to Hebrew school here, and I had my bat mitzvah here. We’re going to rebuild, and we’re going to continue to thrive. You know what I’m looking forward to? When my grandsons have their bar mitzvah here.”
This was the second scary moment for the congregation in recent years.
The synagogue was attacked in January 2012 by a 19-year-old man on a bicycle who threw a Molotov cocktail at the building. He was also charged with firebombing a synagogue in Paramus.
Frank Wilson, 67, lives across the street from the now-gone synagogue. He opened his home to Rabbi Lerman after the fire and stored the borrowed Torah, prayer books, and prayer shawls in his home overnight before the Saturday morning service.
“If you worship at a place, it’s not just a piece of dirt — you have an attachment to it,” Mr. Wilson, who was raised Catholic, said from across the street. “It’s good that they’re here. It’s where they should go.”
“Look in their eyes,” he added, as both prayers and the cleanup effort continued. “You can see God.”