FBI: Suspect in Mississippi synagogue fire targeted institution because of its ‘Jewish ties’

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — With just a few hundred people in the community, it was never particularly easy being Jewish in Mississippi’s capital city, but members of Beth Israel Congregation took a special pride in keeping their traditions alive in the heart of the Deep South.

An arson fire over the weekend that badly damaged the historic synagogue’s library and administrative offices made it much harder and harkened back to an era more than a half-century earlier when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Jackson, Mississippi, synagogue because of its rabbi’s support for civil rights.

Authorities early Monday hadn’t publicly named a suspect, who was in custody, but the FBI promised to release more information later in the day. The suspect confessed to lighting a fire inside the building “due to the building’s Jewish ties,” an F.B.I. special agent wrote in an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court on Monday.

The suspect’s father contacted the F.B.I. and said that his son confessed to setting the building on fire, the affidavit states. Data on the suspect’s cell phone corroborated that information, the agent wrote.

Yellow police tape on Monday blocked off the entrances to the synagogue building, which was surrounded by broken glass and soot. Bouquets of flowers were laid on the ground at the building’s entrance — including one with a note that said, “I’m so very sorry.”

Security camera footage released Monday by the synagogue showed a masked and hooded person using a gas can to pour a liquid on the floor and a couch in the building’s lobby.

The congregation’s president, Zach Shemper, vowed to rebuild the synagogue and said several churches had offered their spaces for worship during the rebuilding process.

“As Jackson’s only synagogue, Beth Israel is a beloved institution, and it is the fellowship of our neighbors and extended community that will see us through,” Shemper said.

With the exception of the cemetery, every aspect of Jewish life in Jackson was under Beth Israel’s roof. The midcentury modern building not only housed the congregation but also the Jewish Federation, a nonprofit provider of social services and philanthropy that is the hub of Jewish institutional life in most U.S. cities. The building also was home to the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, which provides resources to Jewish communities in 13 southern states. A Holocaust memorial was outdoors behind the synagogue building.

Because Jewish children throughout the South have attended summer camp for decades in Utica, Mississippi, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Jackson, many retain a fond connection to the state and its Jewish community.

“Jackson is the capital city, and that synagogue is the capital synagogue in Mississippi,” said Rabbi Gary Zola, a historian of American Jewry who taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. “I would call it the flagship, though when we talk about places like New York and Los Angeles, it probably seems like Hicksville.”

The congregation was so committed to maintaining Jewish life in Jackson that, when its fulltime rabbi departed recently, congregants decided to pay for the multiyear rabbinic schooling of its cantorial soloist, Benjamin Russell, so that Beth Israel could maintain a fulltime, seminary-trained religious leader.

Because of the tiny size of Jackson’s Jewish community, many congregants had interfaith marriages but still regularly attended Friday night services with their spouses in a commitment to their faith.

Beth Israel as a congregation was founded in 1860 and acquired its first property where it built Mississippi’s first synagogue after the Civil War. In 1967, the synagogue moved to its current location where it was bombed by local Ku Klux Klan members not long after relocating. Two months after that, the home of the synagogue’s leader, Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, was bombed because of his outspoken opposition to segregation and racism.

At a time when opposition to racial segregation could be dangerous in the Deep South, many Beth Israel congregants hoped the rabbi would just stay quiet, but Nussbaum was unshakable in believing he was doing the right thing by supporting civil rights, Zola said.

“He had this strong, strong sense of justice,” Zola said. “He was incapable of going along to get along.”

This weekend’s fire ripped through the Beth Israel Congregation shortly after 3 a.m. on Saturday, authorities said. No congregants or firefighters were injured in the blaze. Firefighters arrived to find flames billowing out of windows and all doors to the synagogue locked, according to the fire department.

One Torah that survived the Holocaust was behind glass and was not damaged in the fire, according to the congregation. Five Torahs — the sacred scrolls with the text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — located inside the sanctuary were being assessed for smoke damage. Two Torahs inside the library, where the most severe damage was done, were destroyed, according to a synagogue representative.

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Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Schneider reported from Orlando, Fla. Follow him on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

Sophie Bates And Mike Schneider, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

FBI: Suspect in Mississippi synagogue fire targeted institution because of its ‘Jewish ties’

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