A Prayerful Invocation for Calabasas: Celebrating Leadership and Community

For the Calabasas City Council Reorganization MeetingAnd the Installation of Peter Kraut as Mayor

Eternal One, Makor HaBrachot, Source of all blessing, We gather tonight in this sacred space of service, this chamber of courage, to celebrate the leaders of Calabasas— a city of vision, vitality, and values; a community of compassion, creativity, and care. We lift up our prayers for this City Council, leaders who daily lift up the burden of paving our city’s path forward. And we offer special prayers too for Peter Kraut, our new mayor— a dreamer, a doer, an engineer, who regularly builds stellar structures out there, and once helped build out right here, in our beloved city of Calabasas, a sanctuary for our synagogue, for Calabasas’ Congregation Or Ami.

Now our new mayor Peter knows that we need safe spaces, where our bodies and souls might find places, to connect and to rest. Like in the midst of the covid pandemic, when isolation swept through our streets, Peter built for Congregation Or Ami, and for this community, a drive-through Sukkah. For the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, he built a shelter of connection and hope. That temporary hut, open to the heavens, made us supremely aware during the pandemic beyond compare, that even the simplest structures can shield us from the winds of fear, and offer shelter filled with compassion and care. Oh Calabasas… In this week's Torah portion, the selection of the Bible that Jews around the world read, called Vayishlach, the Biblical ancestor Jacob wrestled with the Divine. Similarly, every one, and every city, must wrestle with the question of who it is and who it dares to become. So dear leaders - Peter our new Mayor, and outgoing Mayor Alicia, and City Councilors Ed, David, and James, and our City Manager Kindon, and all our blessed City staff - wrestle daily with what this city is and what it can yet be. Wrestle with choices that demand courage and hold courageous conversations that require compassion. Listen with attentiveness and guide Calabasas with self-awareness, so that Calabasas may become its best self - a city where justice flows like the waters, and kindness grows like the stunning trees on our sunlit hills. Holy One of Blessing, we beseech you, grant this City Council insight and resolve, grant this mayor the boldness to involve the people within and outside of this City Hall in a governance process that builds unity, safety, and peace. And speaking of safety, in this time of destructive fires, watch over our people, our pets, and our homes, protect the protectors, first responders who protect us, and grant solace and support to those who lost that which they hold dear. And as for the people of Calabasas, of this complex community Calabasas - may we have patience with one another and gentleness in the words we choose, and may we always, always refuse, to use words that lead to abuse, but instead never, never fail, in the way we speak, text, listen, and email, to have generosity with one another. Calabasas, you are a city of miracles, a mosaic of people who care— In a world of indifference, you craft beauty from challenge and community from difference. For a city’s greatness is measured not only by what it builds or accomplishes, but by how its people care for each other in good times and bad— with chesed, anavah, v’ahavah, with kindness, humility, and love. May we all - all of us - be vessels of kindness, humility, and love. And let us say, Amen.