JACKSON, Mississippi — The emotion was palpable within the pews Friday evening at Beth Israel Congregation’s first Shabbat service since its synagogue was focused by an arsonist final week.
“We won’t solely survive, we are going to thrive,” the congregation’s scholar rabbi and religious chief, Benjamin Russell, advised his group. He was draped in the one surviving tallit from the synagogue’s library, the place the arsonist lit the fireplace.
“A number of days in the past, somebody tried to wound us, somebody tried to destroy what we love, somebody tried to inform us that we don’t belong in our personal metropolis, that being visibly Jewish is harmful, that being proudly Jewish is a threat, that being a synagogue is an invite for hatred,” Russell mentioned. “What they failed to grasp is that we aren’t made from wooden and paper and cabinets. We’re made from Torah, reminiscence, group, cussed love and 3000 years of defiance.”
Roughly 170 Beth Israel congregants stuffed Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson on Friday evening, after the church lent its area to the displaced group.
Based in 1860, Beth Israel has at all times been the one synagogue in Mississippi’s capital. The arson assault final week, which burnt out the synagogue’s library and destroyed two of its Torahs, was not the primary time that Beth Israel’s congregants have been confronted with the duty of rebuilding. In 1967, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the synagogue, and, months later, additionally focused the house of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum after he advocated for civil rights and desegregation.
Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi, on Jan. 16, 2026. (Jewish Telegraphic Company)
Reflecting on the congregation’s 160-year-old roots in Jackson, Russell mentioned, “We’ve got prayed by way of wars, depressions, pandemics, demographic shifts and antisemitism in each decade, and each single time we did greater than survive, we tailored, we rebuilt, we confirmed up, and that’s precisely what we’re doing and can proceed to do now.”
All through the service, little point out was made from the suspect who confessed to the arson, Stephen Spencer Pittman, a 19-year-old resident of a suburb of Jackson who advised the FBI that he had focused Beth Israel as a result of it was a “synagogue of Devil.”
Standing exterior of the charred entrance to the synagogue earlier within the day Friday, Abram Orlansky, a lifelong Jackson resident and previous president of Beth Israel Congregation, mentioned that many of the conversations throughout the congregation had not revolved round Pittman.
“To the extent we’re speaking about him, we’re simply saying what he needed to do was interrupt or destroy Jewish life in Jackson, and all he’s going to succeed at is making it extra vibrant,” mentioned Orlansky. “All he’s executed is reaffirm the connection between this Jewish group and this metropolis.”
Beth Israel Congregation’s president, Zach Shemper, and scholar rabbi, Benjamin Russell exterior of the synagogue constructing on Jan. 16, 2026. (Jewish Telegraphic Company)
On Thursday, a number of Christian religion leaders and Jackson metropolis officers mentioned a prayer for the congregation throughout a citywide prayer service. Zach Shemper, the president of Beth Israel Congregation, mentioned greater than 10 church buildings had provided to host the synagogue for Shabbat.
“We’ve been persecuted for 1000’s of years, and similar to we survived that, we are going to survive this,” mentioned Shemper exterior of the synagogue. “All this atrocity did was relocate the place we’re having companies.”
Help from different Jewish congregations throughout the South was additionally seen all through the companies.
Temple B’Nai Israel, a Reform synagogue in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, lent the group a Torah in addition to 50 prayer books. A synagogue in Memphis, Tennessee, despatched one other 100 prayer books.
The oneg after companies was offered by Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, Louisiana, and included a pecan praline challah king cake, a Jewish twist on the normal Mardi Gras dessert.
The challah king cake loomed massive over the night. When Shemper introduced the pastry on the finish of the service, a number of youngsters within the viewers cheered and viewers members applauded.
On Friday morning, Orlansky confirmed a photograph of the cake on his telephone and mentioned, “That’s Jewish southern tradition,” including that there’s a retailer in New Orleans known as “Kosher Cajun.”
The pecan praline challah king cake on the Beth Israel Congregation’s oneg on Jan. 16, 2026. (Jewish Telegraphic Company)
In Jackson, a metropolis with no explicitly Jewish institutions or cultural facilities, Beth Israel has acted as a central hub of Jewish communal life. (The town’s solely Jewish restaurant, Olde-Tyme Deli, closed in 2000 after serving the Jewish group for 39 years.)
“We’re the minority within the space, and so we don’t have the entire Jewish delis and JCC down the highway and all of these issues,” Russell mentioned. “Our synagogue is that place for us to fulfill.”
A few 45 minute drive from the synagogue is Jacobs Camp, a Jewish summer season camp run by the Union of Reform Judaism.
Sarah Thomas, the synagogue’s first vp, learn an deal with by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the URJ’s president, aloud in the course of the service.
“Beth Israel household, like our ancestors, who endured the plague of hate and nonetheless discovered mild, we consider all of you and know that there’s a lot mild in your midst,” Jacobs mentioned within the feedback. “We pray that you just proceed to bask within the mild of group and the sunshine of solidarity and the sunshine of hope for higher days forward.”
Within the absence of Jewish infrastructure in Jackson, Russell mentioned the congregants “make each area that we’re in Jewish by our personal presence there.”
Based on Russell, a few of the native spots which have change into surrogate Jewish areas embrace Myrtle Farms, a brewery, and Thai Tasty, a restaurant a brief stroll from Beth Israel.
Russell mentioned that Thai Tasty had change into so in style together with his congregants that he now pronounces throughout companies when its house owners make their annual monthlong journey to Thailand.
“One thing that we see throughout the South’s Jewish communities is that there’s a degree of satisfaction, as a result of it’s possible you’ll be the one Jewish individual in your highschool,” mentioned Russell. “I believe there’s just a bit little bit of allure in that resilience or that stubbornness that now we have that claims we’re going to be right here, we’re going to at all times be right here.”
In highschool, Orlansky recalled, there have been two different Jewish college students in his grade. Right this moment, he mentioned his two youngsters are the “solely Jewish child of their class, or both class on both facet of them.” That makes Beth Israel a haven, he mentioned.
“A shared expertise I’ve with my youngsters is having the ability to come to this constructing and never be the form of fixed consultant of the Jewish individuals to everybody you understand,” mentioned Orlansky.
Rachel Myers and Abram Orlansky pose on Beth Israel Congregation’s bimah on Jan. 16, 2026. (Jewish Telegraphic Company)
Orlansky mentioned that the duty of representing the Jewish group was each an “honor” and a “problem.”
“It’s an honor to stay in a spot like this the place individuals ask you about your faith, and other people sort of look to you for solutions about Judaism, however it may be a problem, and so having a house the place everybody round you can be Jewish is a respite,” he mentioned.
Thomas, who can be a lifelong Beth Israel congregant, mentioned rising up she was additionally the one Jewish scholar in her grade, however when she got here to Beth Israel Congregation on Wednesdays and Sundays she discovered a “secure area.”
“We talked about issues that have been taking place exterior of right here and, and the way we have been going to reply with our Jewishness to a world, or a group, that was simply totally different, and we knew that right here was our secure area,” mentioned Thomas.
Thomas mentioned the Beth Israel constructing was an “epicenter of life” for the group’s 140 households.
“What I need individuals to know in regards to the southern Jewish communities, particularly the smaller ones, or the one ones inside a 90 mile radius, is every part associated to Jewish life occurs right here,” mentioned Thomas.
The library inside Beth Israel Congregation on Jan. 16, 2026. (Jewish Telegraphic Company)
However whereas the constructing had served as a focus of the group, Thomas added that “the constructing is just not what makes up our group.”
“The constructing is just not what makes up our group, our group is made up of the individuals,” mentioned Thomas. “We’re going to be in different places, and we’ll make that our dwelling, however actually collectively, we the persons are going to be dwelling to 1 one other.”
Shari Rabin, an affiliate professor of Jewish research and faith at Oberlin Faculty and the writer of the 2025 ebook “The Jewish South: An American Historical past,” advised the Jewish Telegraphic Company that the sentiment was widespread in small Jewish communities within the area.
“Synagogues are such necessary establishments in these smaller Southern communities,” mentioned Rabin. “That is the middle of Jewish life, and it’s actually necessary for Jewish communities there to have a public deal with to indicate we’re right here, we’re a part of the panorama, different Jews can discover us right here.”
However Rabin mentioned that public visibility additionally has a possible darkish facet.
“It could additionally make these establishments a goal for many who are poisoned by numerous ideologies and resolve that they need to make Jews a goal,” mentioned Rabin.
Following the assault final Saturday, many of the synagogue’s leaders mentioned that they had initially assumed the fireplace had been attributable to {an electrical} malfunction or one other accident.
Whereas antisemitism has risen throughout the nation, in lots of Southern states, together with Mississippi, the pattern has felt much less pervasive. From 2022 to 2024, the variety of antisemitic incidents within the state rose from 7 to twenty, in line with the Anti-Defamation League’s annual antisemitism audit.
“To know that somebody might do that in your personal group is scary, nevertheless it’s additionally eye-opening,” mentioned Russell. “We at all times say, not me, not me, not me, not us, not our group, and I believe what I’ve discovered, and my message for everybody, is that you just by no means know.”
The day after the arson assault, Rachel Myers, the second vp and co-director of the spiritual college at Beth Israel, hosted the synagogue’s Sunday college on the Mississippi Kids’s Museum, the place she works because the director of reveals.
There, Myers confirmed the category of 14 youngsters a slideshow of the harm contained in the synagogue and helped them brainstorm methods to rebuild it. She mentioned one baby imagined a cotton sweet machine whereas one other mentioned, Llet’s do a mural of all of the rabbis on the wall.”
Smoke harm inside a classroom in Beth Israel Congregation on Jan. 16, 2025. (Jewish Telegraphic Company)
“I simply was attempting to deal with: this factor occurred to us, all of those grown-ups round you’re the ones that work so onerous to make Jewish life occur, and we’re going to proceed to make Jewish life occur,” mentioned Myers.
For the kids within the synagogue, Myers mentioned the principle query that was requested was “why.”
Whereas Myers mentioned she hadn’t but deliberate her lesson for the kids, she mentioned she would lead with explaining that “when persons are dangerous and offended, they search for anyone in charge, and on this case, this younger individual determined in charge Jewish individuals.”
After being part of the congregation for nearly 20 years, Myers mentioned she had by no means earlier than skilled antisemitism in Jackson.
“I believe I do know that there’s an increase of antisemitism, and I believe I do know that there’s an increase of mis- and disinformation on the web,” mentioned Myers. “I do know there’s crazies on the web, I don’t learn the feedback, however the truth that somebody, that loopy, left the web and got here and did a bodily act of hurt to us — it’s shocking.”
Russell mentioned that he was involved for the kids of Jackson.
“I believe the most important factor is now we have to observe our children and our teenagers, the truth that they’re being radicalized so shortly on-line by social media and different issues on the web,” mentioned Russell, later including, “In fact, now we have to observe, however the actual antidote is simply to cease breathe and love one another, even after we disagree.”
Benjamin Russell speaks with congregants on the Northminster Baptist Church on Jan. 16, 2026. (Jewish Telegraphic Company)
Because the congregation mingled over the challah king cake following the service, Joshua Wiener, a Beth Israel Congregation member since 1981, mentioned he believed that Russell and Shemper had represented the group nicely.
“As [Russell] mentioned, antisemitism has been round since even earlier than Pharaoh, nevertheless it hasn’t touched us right here, and so I believe there’s simply shock at what occurred, perhaps a bit of aid that it wasn’t worse, and perhaps some aid that it was not an organized effort,” Wiener mentioned.
He described Jackson’s Jewish inhabitants as a “drop within the bucket,” however mentioned that they had at all times had an “outsize presence and affect, and numerous that’s simply due to how welcomed now we have been locally.”
On the finish of his sermon, Russell provided an instruction to the worshippers, a number of of whom have been visibly emotional.
“That is the time to say, out loud, I’m Jewish, I’m proud, that is my group, and I belong right here,” he mentioned.
“I need to say one thing clearly. Beth Israel continues to be right here, Jewish life in Jackson continues to be right here, and we aren’t going anyplace, as a result of the alternative of concern is just not bravery, it’s presence,” Russell continued. “Each time we collect, each time we pray, each time we train a baby to learn aleph guess, each time we placed on a tallis, each time we have fun a bat mitzvah or mourn with the household, we’re secure. We belong, we matter, we are going to outlive each Pharaoh historical past produces.”
