The arson fire that recently damaged Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, the oldest synagogue in the southern state of Mississippi, caught my attention.
Jackson is not a common destination for Canadian tourists, but almost 16 years ago, my youngest daughter and I explored Mississippi during an intriguing one-week trip and spent a couple of days in its sleepy state capital.
We were both interested in Mississippi’s notoriety as a staunch bastion of Jim Crow segregation before the advent of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. And having toured apartheid South Africa in 1984, I was curious to visit a state that had blatantly oppressed its African American inhabitants under a virtually identical system.
I was also drawn to Mississippi’s history of Jewish settlement. Although it has been home to Jews since the early 19th century, its Jewish community remains exceedingly small, representing merely 0.10 percent of its population. Demographically speaking, the community has been in a steady decline for the past century.
Beth Israel Congregation, a Reform shul, was founded in 1860, a year before the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Apart from a synagogue in Hattiesburg, it is only Jewish place of worship with a full-time rabbi in the Magnolia state.
We drove into Mississippi from Memphis, Tennessee. Our first stop was in Oxford, the residence of the late novelist William Faulkner and the site of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), which was a flashpoint in the struggle for equal rights.
In the next few days, we visited Meridian, the largest city in Mississippi from 1890 to 1930; Vicksburg, a town next to the mighty Mississippi River known for its ornate antebellum mansions; Clarksdale, the biggest town in the Delta, a fertile alluvial plain where cotton, rice and sugar cane planters once employed slave labor on vast plantations, and Tupelo, the birthplace of rock n’ roll idol Elvis Presley.
Jackson, though, was the epicentre of our Mississippi idyl. There, one afternoon at Beth Israel, I interviewed a 92-year-old Jewish woman who remembered Mississippi when it was in the forefront of resistance to desegregation.
In 1967, when the Jim Crow period had practically ended, Perry Nussbaum, Beth Israel’s Canadian-born rabbi, denounced segregation. In response, the Ku Klux Klan firebombed Beth Israel, an unassuming one storey brick building. Two months later, the Klan bombed Nussbaum’s home, slightly injuring him and his wife. A year later, the Klan bombed the synagogue in Meridian, from where the murdered civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney set off in 1964.
Nearly six decades on, on January 10 to be precise, a masked 19-year-old college student named Stephen Spencer Pittman broke into Beth Israel, poured gasoline on the floor and set the building on fire. In the process, he burned himself. According to the FBI, he described Beth Israel as “the synagogue of Satan.”
The fire damaged administrative offices, a library and several Torah scrolls. It also destroyed two Torah scrolls, said Zach Shemper, the congregation’s president.
American synagogues were targeted before this incident. In 2018, a lone gunman killed 11 congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in the worst violent antisemitic incident in the United States. A year later, another assailant attacked a synagogue near San Diego.
Antisemitic attacks have skyrocketed since then. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 incidents in the United States in 2024, the highest in decades. Last year, the residence of Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, was set ablaze.
Pittman is scheduled to appear in federal court for a preliminary hearing on January 20. Prior to his antisemitic rampage, he posted antisemitic comments on his social media site. His friends told Mississippi Today that his site featured posts about fitness, masculinity and Christianity.
If convicted on the charges, Pittman faces five to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Jackson’s mayor, John Horhn, condemned the attack. “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. 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.”
Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, said, “This heinous act will never be tolerated. The perpetrator should face the full and solemn weight of his actions.”
Bennie Thompson, who represents this district of Mississippi in the U.S. House of Representatives, urged the FBI to investigate the incident as a federal hate crime.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, calling it a “disgusting act of antisemitic violence,” said, “I have directed my prosecutors to seek severe penalties for this heinous act and remain deeply committed to protecting Jewish Americans from hatred.”
Beth Israel’s spiritual leader, Benjamin Russell, said that the Jewish community will not only “survive, but thrive.”
As he put it, “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. 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.”
In the wake of the fire, churches in Jackson offered Beth Israel their sanctuaries as a temporary worship space while repairs are underway. Rebuilding could take up to a year.
Temple B’nai Israel, a synagogue in Hattiesburg, lent Beth Israel a Torah as well as 50 prayer books. A synagogue in Memphis sent 100 prayer books.
Beth Israel, the first synagogue in Mississippi, was founded in 1860 by immigrants from France and Germany. During the U.S. Civil War, Jewish men joined the Confederate army.
A local newspaper covered Beth Israel’s opening: “Last Friday, the bustling little city of Jackson showed unusual activity. The streets were actually thronged with people, all anxious to participate in the dedication of the temple, Beth Israel, lately erected by the Israelites of Jackson. A handful in number, Spartan-like, they have fought the battle, and now point to their handsome edifice with pride as evidence of their deserved success. The building is a model of its kind, and a monument to the untiring energy and undaunted perseverance with which the Israelites of Jackson, assisted by their friends, have pushed their work and dedication.”
Beth Israel hired its first rabbi, L. Winter, in 1870. He transformed Beth Israel from an Orthodox into a Reform synagogue and added English sermons and Friday night services.
When its wood frame building burned down in 1874, a new brick building on the old site was erected.
The community prospered, tacitly embracing the anti-black racism of most white Mississippians. In 1927, the Jewish population of Mississippi peaked, with a registered membership of 6,400.
Amid World War II, Beth Israel moved to its present location in 1942. During a festive ceremony that unfolded as a civic occasion, the mayor delivered a speech and the governor sent greetings. Representatives of Catholic and Protestant churches were in attendance.
By then, Jews could be found in more than 100 cities and villages in Mississippi. Their main streets were usually dominated by clothing, dry goods and jewelry stores owned by Jewish merchants.
Mississippi’s Jewish population has dwindled due to a number of factors, writes Stuart Rockoff, the director of the history department of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson.
“The decline of Mississippi’s rural economy and the rise of national retail chains have also pushed Mississippi Jews to large Southern cities such as Atlanta, Georgia, and the Texas cities of Dallas and Houston. In many Mississippi towns, empty storefronts now line the main business streets. Jewish names are visible in sidewalk tiles in front of old buildings or on faded signs, and stand as testament to Jewish retailers’ former prominence in the community.
“Today, there are thirteen Jewish congregations in the state … Despite their small size, most of the congregations continue to hold regular worship services (conducted by) lay leaders, student rabbis … or retired visiting rabbis. Though their congregations are small, Mississippi Jews continue to follow their religious traditions, and have kept Judaism alive in the Magnolia State.”
One cannot predict what the future holds, particularly after the latest antisemitic incident in Jackson. But if the past is any guide, the Jewish presence in Mississippi is likely to diminish even further as time goes on.