JACKSON, Mississippi (JTA) — The emotion was palpable in the pews Friday night at Beth Israel Congregation’s first Shabbat service since its synagogue was targeted by an arsonist last week.

“We will not only survive, we will thrive,” the congregation’s student rabbi and spiritual leader, Benjamin Russell, told his community. He was draped in the only surviving tallit from the synagogue’s library, where the arsonist lit the fire.

“A few days ago, someone tried to wound us, someone tried to destroy what we love, someone tried to tell us that we do not belong in our own city, that being visibly Jewish is dangerous, that being proudly Jewish is a risk, that being a synagogue is an invitation for hatred,” Russell said. “What they failed to understand is that we are not made of wood and paper and shelves. We are made of Torah, memory, community, stubborn love and 3000 years of defiance.”

Roughly 170 Beth Israel congregants filled Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson on Friday night, after the church lent its space to the displaced community.

Founded in 1860, Beth Israel has always been the only synagogue in Mississippi’s capital. The arson attack last week, which burnt out the synagogue’s library and destroyed two of its Torahs, was not the first time that Beth Israel’s congregants were faced with the task of rebuilding. In 1967, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the synagogue, and, months later, also targeted the home of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum after he advocated for civil rights and desegregation.

Reflecting on the congregation’s 160-year-old roots in Jackson, Russell said, “We have prayed through wars, depressions, pandemics, demographic shifts and antisemitism in every decade, and every single time we did more than survive, we adapted, we rebuilt, we showed up, and that is exactly what we are doing and will continue to do now.”

Throughout the service, little mention was made of the suspect who confessed to the arson, Stephen Spencer Pittman, a 19-year-old resident of a suburb of Jackson who told the FBI that he had targeted Beth Israel because it was a “synagogue of Satan.”

Standing outside of the charred entrance to the synagogue earlier in the day Friday, Abram Orlansky, a lifelong Jackson resident and past president of Beth Israel Congregation, said that most of the conversations within the congregation had not revolved around Pittman.

“To the extent we’re talking about him, we’re just saying what he wanted to do was interrupt or destroy Jewish life in Jackson, and all he’s going to succeed at is making it more vibrant,” said Orlansky. “All he’s done is reaffirm the connection between this Jewish community and this city.”

On Thursday, a host of Christian faith leaders and Jackson city officials said a prayer for the congregation during a citywide prayer service. Zach Shemper, the president of Beth Israel Congregation, said more than 10 churches had offered to host the synagogue for Shabbat.

“We’ve been persecuted for thousands of years, and just like we survived that, we will survive this,” said Shemper outside of the synagogue. “All this atrocity did was relocate where we’re having services.”

Support from other Jewish congregations across the South was also visible throughout the........

© The Times of Israel