Mississippi’s Largest Synagogue Destroyed in Arson Attack

A fire heavily damaged Mississippi’s largest synagogue before dawn Saturday – the same house of worship in northeast Jackson that the Ku Klux Klan bombed in 1967 because the rabbi supported civil rights.

The Jackson Fire Department, the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested a suspect Saturday night in the latest blaze after the fire department ruled it arson, according to chief fire investigator Charles Felton. Investigators did not immediately release the name of the suspect or the charges the person could face.

The fire was reported shortly after 3 a.m. at Beth Israel Congregation on Old Canton Road. No congregants were injured.

The library and administrative offices of Jackson’s only synagogue were reduced to charred ruins. Two Torahs were destroyed and five were damaged in the flames that erupted during Shabbat, the weekly Jewish day of rest, according to temple leaders. One Torah that survived the Holocaust was in a glass case and was undamaged in the fire.

Beth Israel has suspended services indefinitely.

“We have already had outreach from other houses of worship in the Jackson area and greatly appreciate their support in this very difficult time,” the congregation president, Zach Shemper, said in a statement.

Arson is a criminal act of intentionally setting fire to a structure, Felton, the JFD division fire chief, told Mississippi Today.

Investigators did not immediately know a possible motive, such as whether it was a hate crime. Jewish congregations have been attacked in the U.S. in the past several years, including in Pittsburgh, the San Diego area and Colleyville, Texas.

The state Homeland Security Office is also assisting in the investigation, said Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bailey Martin Holloway.

Mayor John Horhn said he had spoken with Shemper and hoped for a “swift resolution as to the origin of these actions.”

“I would hope that all Mississippians and all Jacksonians would commit themselves toward moving beyond such behavior and activity and find a way where we can all get together and get along,” Horhn said.

Felton said firefighters had responded shortly after 3 a.m. in response to a report about a possible “church fire.” After they could not determine the origin of the flames, he said his arson investigators were called to the scene and began to collect video surveillance. He said he received calls Saturday morning from the FBI and the ATF, as a matter of course when a fire occurs at a religious institution.

On Saturday evening, reporters could smell soot outside the temple and observed a melted camera on the northeast wing of the building and six windows covered in plywood.

An FBI agent standing next to yellow caution tape began collecting pictures and videos from people in the parking lot. Congregants and synagogue leadership had been at the temple all day, assessing the damage.

Some had gone inside the building, stepping over ash-filled puddles of water to retrieve sacred religious objects from the temple, including Torahs. One of the holiest objects in the Jewish religion, the scrolls typically weigh dozens of pounds and stand a couple feet tall.

The fire also burned the synagogue’s Tree of Life, a plaque that honors and records special occasions for congregants such as bar and bat mitzvahs.

One congregant, David Edelstein, typically attends Saturday morning services. He did not know the synagogue had been burned when he arrived, but he immediately tried to figure out what had happened.

Initially, congregants believed lightning from thunderstorms the night before had started the fire, so Edelstein said he flew a drone over the top of the synagogue and determined that had not happened.

The hours moved by fast, he said. As Edelstein, wearing a protective breathing mask, helped measure one of the broken library windows, he looked inside and spotted a book lying face up. He stepped into the library to look closer.

It was open to the Shema, one of the most important prayers in the Jewish faith that reads, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

“Everything’s charred and stuff but one of the books was on top, opened up right to that,” he said.

Similar to Saturday’s blaze, the 1967 bombing and fire heavily damaged the synagogue’s administrative offices and library but injured no congregants. The rabbi at the time, Perry Nussbaum, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “bigots” were responsible for the fire, and he believed they might have been inspired by anti-Semitic campaign materials used extensively in that year’s Democratic primary for governor.

Mayor Horhn, 70, said he has some recollection of the 1967 attack, when he was 12.

“I do remember that the Jewish community and the African American community in those days formed alliances and partnerships to fight racism, to fight injustice, to fight mistreatment of citizens for whatever reason,” Horhn said.