Having drifted off to sleep on his living-room couch while preparing his sermons Thursday night for Tisha B�Av and Shabbat, Rabbi Raleigh Resnick was awakened at 1 a.m by a phone call from the police. A fire that started outside of Chabad of the Tri-Valley in Pleasanton, Calif., had incinerated the back half of the building, he was told.

�I had been in the building just a few hours earlier, so I knew that no one was there or in any danger,� said Resnick, who co-directs the center with his wife, Fruma. �But when you hear that the building is on fire at one in the morning, the only thing I was thinking about were the Torah scrolls.�

Racing over in his car to the Chabad House, Resnick found emergency workers already at work. The Torah scrolls, along with structure of building, were safe.

�Afterwards, some of the firefighters approached me and asked what were these scrolls that I so urgently wanted to save,� he related. �I shared with them some of the history of the Torah.�

The damage was largely relegated to the rear wall and the roof of the building. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

�Our sages teach that wanton destruction of a sacred space can only come about if it�s in order for a greater structure be raised in its place,� said Resnick. �The community will come together not only to rebuild the destruction, but to construct an even more beautiful edifice in its place.�

(Source: Chabad.org)