After synagogue arson, Mississippi mayor decries bias based on faith, race, ethnicity, sexual identity

John Horhn, mayor of Jackson, Miss., stated on Sunday that a fire had “occurred” at Beth Israel Congregation, a Reform synagogue, and the city’s lone Jewish house of worship, which traces its origin to 1860.

The city’s fire department responded “quickly” to the fire, which broke out at about 3 a.m., and “contained the blaze and extinguished the fire,” the mayor said, describing the attack on a Jewish house of worship in broad terms.

No one was injured in the fire, reportedly.

“Acts of antisemitism, racism and religious hatred are attacks on Jackson as a whole and will be treated as acts of terror against residents’ safety and freedom to worship,” the mayor stated. “Targeting people because of their faith, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation is morally wrong, un-American and completely incompatible with the values of this city.”

The mayor added that the city stands with “Beth Israel and the Jewish community, and we’ll do everything we can to support them and hold accountable anyone who tries to spread fear and hate here.”

The work of the fire department, including its arson investigation division, and local representatives from federal agencies, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “led to the swift arrest of a suspect,” the mayor said.

The city’s fire department echoed the mayor’s remarks. Tyree Jones, chief of the Jackson Police Department and sheriff of Hinds County, stated that “what happened at Beth Israel is unacceptable.”

“When a place of worship is targeted, it affects more than one congregation. It shakes the entire community,” he said.

The American Jewish Committee stated that it is “outraged by the arson attack that severely damaged Beth Israel Congregation, the largest synagogue in Mississippi.”

“While no one was hurt, the synagogue was extensively damaged, several Torah scrolls were destroyed, and the congregation—the only synagogue in Jackson—was forced to cancel services indefinitely,” the AJC said. “This hateful act is only the most recent symptom of the dangerous rising antisemitism facing Jewish communities across the country and around the world.”

‘Unusable at this time’

In an email to the congregation on Saturday morning, Zach Shemper, president of the synagogue, wrote that there was “significant” soot and smoke throughout much of the building.

Some two hours before the unnamed suspect was arrested on Saturday evening, the synagogue sent an email to its congregation urging that everyone refrain from speculating about the cause of the fire. After the announcement of the arrest, Beth Israel wrote to congregants that the “building has been secured but is unusable at this time and will have to have extensive assessment, clean up and repair.”

Beth Israel also houses the offices of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, which provides services to Jewish communities in 13 states, with a focus on smaller communities.

Michele Schipper, CEO of the institute and a past Beth Israel president, said the institute’s offices and the sanctuary were not damaged, and the Torah scrolls were removed for safekeeping.

Two Torah scrolls, which were in the library’s ark, were destroyed. A Torah that was saved during the Holocaust and displayed in a glass case in a hallway was not damaged.

According to reports, a drone flown over the building during the investigation determined that the source of the fire wasn’t a lightning strike during thunderstorms that night.

On Friday night, the congregation held its board installation at the 6:15 p.m. service, with a reception following. There is usually a service and Torah study on Shabbat morning at the synagogue, but the one scheduled for that day had been canceled ahead of time. The congregation also holds Sunday school classes.

Next Shabbat, the congregation has an adult bat mitzvah scheduled for Tamar Sharp.

The building, dedicated in March 1967, has a diamond-shaped layout with offices and a library on one end, classrooms and other rooms along the sides, and the sanctuary and social hall in the center of the building, with a movable wall in between.

The lobby area near the library and office, one of the points of the diamond, was completely burned out.

Ben Russell, a congregant serving as student rabbi while attending rabbinical school, said that “words cannot adequately express the grief and anguish we feel.”

He cited the community’s strength. “This is a moment for our entire community,” he said, “to come together in mutual love and support.”

Russell reported a “profound outpouring” of care from the wider Jewish world, with donations, gifts of books, and “words of prayer and encouragement” that “remind us that we do not stand alone.”

Beth Israel was the site of a Klan bombing on Sept. 18, 1967, damaging the office of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum and part of the library.

In April 2020, Gates of Prayer in New Iberia, La., had a fire after a lightning strike.

By coincidence, the next day, in nearby Lafayette, the former Yeshurun Synagogue building burned down. That congregation had merged and closed that building in the 1990s, and the church that took over the building moved out in 2016. The building had been abandoned since then and often attracted squatters.

© JNS