A predawn fire reduced Mississippi’s largest synagogue to charred ruins Saturday morning, the second time in the congregation’s 165-year history that arsonists have targeted the house of worship. The Jackson Fire Department, FBI, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives arrested a suspect Saturday night after investigators ruled the blaze at Beth Israel Congregation was intentionally set.
The fire was reported shortly after 3 a.m. at the synagogue on Old Canton Road in northeast Jackson. Firefighters arrived to find flames rising from the windows of the locked building. The library and administrative offices were destroyed. Two Torah scrolls burned in the flames that erupted during Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. Five additional Torah scrolls were damaged. One Torah that survived the Holocaust, stored in a glass case, remained intact.
Beth Israel has suspended services indefinitely. The building is unusable and will require extensive cleanup and repairs, according to the congregation president, Zach Shemper. The synagogue is the only one in Jackson and serves a Jewish community of approximately 3,000 people statewide—0.1 percent of Mississippi’s 3 million residents.
“We have already had outreach from other houses of worship in the Jackson area and greatly appreciate their support in this very difficult time,” Shemper said in a statement.
Chief fire investigator Charles Felton of the Jackson Fire Department confirmed the fire was arson—a criminal act of intentionally setting fire to a structure. Investigators have not released the suspect’s name or the charges they face. They have not determined a motive or whether the attack was a hate crime.
The FBI and ATF joined the investigation as standard procedure when fires occur at religious institutions. The state Homeland Security Office is also assisting in the investigation, according to Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bailey Martin Holloway.
The Reform temple was established in 1860 as Mississippi’s first synagogue. In 1967, the Ku Klux Klan bombed Beth Israel because Rabbi Perry Nussbaum supported civil rights. That attack heavily damaged the synagogue’s administrative offices and library but injured no congregants. Nussbaum told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “bigots” were responsible and believed they were inspired by antisemitic campaign materials used in that year’s Democratic primary for governor.
Jackson Mayor John Horhn, 70, was 12 years old during the 1967 attack. He recalled the alliance between the Jewish and African American communities at that time.
“I do remember that the Jewish community and the African American community in those days formed alliances and partnerships to fight racism, to fight injustice, to fight mistreatment of citizens for whatever reason,” Horhn said.
The mayor called for unity following Saturday’s attack. “I would hope that all Mississippians and all Jacksonians would commit themselves toward moving beyond such behavior and activity and find a way where we can all get together and get along,” Horhn said.
Congregant David Edelstein typically attends Saturday morning services. When he arrived and found the synagogue burned, he flew a drone over the building to investigate. Congregants initially believed lightning from thunderstorms the night before had started the fire, but that theory was quickly disproven.
Wearing a protective breathing mask, Edelstein helped measure broken library windows. He looked inside and saw a book lying face up among the charred debris. He stepped into the library for a closer look.
The book was open to the Shema, one of Judaism’s most important prayers. “Everything’s charred and stuff, but one of the books was on top, opened up right to that,” Edelstein said.
The deliberate burning of a synagogue carries weight far beyond the destruction of a building. Jewish law views the synagogue as a mikdash me’at—a miniature sanctuary—modeled after the Temple in Jerusalem. When arsonists set fire to Beth Israel, they attacked a place where the divine presence dwells among the people.
The Bible records King David’s anguish when enemies destroyed the First Temple: “O God, the nations have come into Your inheritance, they have defiled Your holy temple, they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.” (Psalms 79:1)
The Sages teach that when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the divine presence rested there in full measure. After its destruction, that presence spread to synagogues worldwide. Each synagogue functions as a point of connection between heaven and earth. To burn a synagogue is to assault that connection.
But the Shema found open amid the ashes speaks to something the arsonists cannot destroy. “Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad“—Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. This declaration has survived the fires of the Spanish Inquisition, the ovens of the Holocaust, and every pogrom in between. The words outlast the flames because they express an indestructible truth: God’s unity and the Jewish people’s commitment to that unity.
Recent years have seen multiple hate attacks on American synagogues. In 2018, a white supremacist gunman killed 11 people and wounded six others during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh—the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. In 2019, a gunman killed one person and injured three at Chabad of Poway in California. In 2022, a terrorist took hostages at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, where all congregants escaped safely.
Since the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, when the terrorist organization murdered 1,200 people in Israel, antisemitism has surged worldwide. Synagogues across the United States face increased bomb threats, vandalism, and attacks. In Australia, arsonists have targeted multiple synagogues, including a December 2024 attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne.
Beth Israel’s Tree of Life plaque, which honored and recorded special occasions for congregants such as bar and bat mitzvahs, burned in the fire. But the congregation that has stood for 165 years will not be extinguished by an arsonist’s match. The Jewish people have rebuilt from ruins before. They will rebuild again.
The Torah that survived the Holocaust and remained undamaged in its glass case stands as testimony: what could not be destroyed in Europe will not be destroyed in Mississippi.