On hatred, Mississippi, and having a dream

The story of the arson at Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson is horrifying. The arsonist said that he’d set the fire — he broke into the building, poured gasoline on the floor, and used a lighter to start it burning — because of its “Jewish ties.”

Let’s maybe spend a minute marveling at the perspicacity of this vandal. A synagogue has Jewish ties! Who knew?

And he went on. It was a “synagogue of Satan,” he said. Such a gift for words!

This creep, whose name we’re omitting because he probably wants publicity and we don’t want to give him any more of that drug, hurt no one but damaged the building and destroyed two of its sifrei Torah.

The story also is ironic. The synagogue is well known as the only one in Jackson, Mississippi’s capital. It’s old — it was built in 1860, just before the Civil War started. That makes it older than all of New Jersey’s shuls, most of which were built in the immediately post-World War II period. (New Jersey’s oldest shul seems to be Congregation Adas Emuno, which is now in Leonia but first opened in Hoboken, in 1871. Beth Israel was already almost ready for its bar mitzvah by then.)

The irony is in the timing.

Beth Israel Congregation was bombed in 1967. The bombers were members of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter; they were racists who paraded around shrouded in white sheets, looking ridiculous but acting out of malice and bigotry, causing real terror, real harm, often real death. Their main target was Black people, but a secondary one was Jews.

Two months later, Ku Klux Klan members bombed the rabbi’s home. Rabbi Perry Nussbaum and his wife, Arene, were home at the time; somehow, neither of them was hurt. The Nussbaums were targets because Rabbi Nussbaum had preached against the racism that was blatant and unavoidable all around him then. According to Beth Israel’s website, the horror of the attack against the Nussbaums, and the understanding that they might have been seriously injured, or even killed, galvanized many local leaders to rethink their opposition to segregation and their support for the KKK.

So when did the incompetent arsonist — note to aspiring criminals: if you want to remain at large, try to remember not to leave your cellphone at the scene of the crime — choose to try to burn down Beth Israel?

Just before Martin Luther King Day.

On Monday, we celebrate the life and mourn the death of Dr. King, who fought for an end to segregation, was a friend to the Jewish community, wrote and delivered soaringly beautiful speeches, and was cut down by a little man full of hate.

As we live through this time of fear and loathing in our beloved country, it is good to remember what Dr. King said on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington:

“I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

“I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.”

Many of us still have that dream, and we’re hanging onto it.

—JP

opinion

comments