{"id":414947,"date":"2026-01-18T13:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/414947\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T13:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:16:13","slug":"mississippi-synagogue-prayer-books-moses-sculpture-and-a-holy-horn-are-among-items-ruined-or-last-after-alleged-arson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/414947\/","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi synagogue prayer books, Moses sculpture and a holy horn are among items ruined or last after alleged arson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jackson, Mississippi
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n What was once a place of worship filled with precious objects packed with meaning now sits in heavy layers of dark soot, burdened by the pungent smell of smoke after someone set fire to Mississippi\u2019s largest and oldest<\/a> synagogue.\n <\/p>\n

\n A 19-year-old suspect<\/a> confessed just hours after last weekend\u2019s blaze to attacking the historic temple \u201cdue to (the) building\u2019s Jewish ties,\u201d the FBI said. He faces federal and state charges and, if convicted, could serve up to 60 years in prison.\n <\/p>\n

\n Now, the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson \u2013 founded before the Civil War and bombed<\/a> in 1967 amid the Civil Rights Movement \u2013 is closed indefinitely as restoration and recovery begin inside its historical walls.\n <\/p>\n

\n Part of that hard work includes finding important religious artifacts, some dating back decades, that were damaged or destroyed in the alleged arson and trying to revive them or to retire them respectfully.\n <\/p>\n

\n On the outside of the Beth Israel synagogue, which serves some 150 families, boards cover windows that stretch nearly from floor to ceiling, and soot stains concrete.\n <\/p>\n

\n Inside, the fire\u2019s wrath spared nothing, marking nearly every surface with smoke residue.\n <\/p>\n

\"Boards<\/p>\n

\n When Zach Shemper, the congregation\u2019s president, arrived at the temple after the fire, he went straight to the sanctuary, where the Torahs \u2013 heavy scrolls of the Jewish holy books \u2013 were kept.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cFirst thing I did when I got here after the fire was remove our Torahs and wrapped them up and put them in my truck for safekeeping,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\"Torah<\/p>\n

\n The holy texts were moved to a church, Shemper said, where they\u2019ve been unrolled to air out from the smoke.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Torahs will be stored until a master sofer \u2013 a highly skilled scribe qualified to repair Torahs \u2013 can evaluate and return them to kosher status, explained Sheila Hailey, the congregation\u2019s executive director.\n <\/p>\n

\n To be kosher, a Torah cannot have any damage and its letters must all be legible, Hailey said, adding it also must be on parchment sewn together and rolled onto wooden spindles.\n <\/p>\n

\n The fire ignited in the synagogue\u2019s library \u2013 where religious texts had filled wooden, built-in bookshelves highly susceptible to fire \u2013 and left extensive damage, Charles Felton, chief of investigations for the Jackson Fire Department\u2019s arson division said.\n <\/p>\n

\n It made the space nearly unrecognizable: those same shelves were left bare as charred, decades-old prayer book pages littered the soot-filled floor and shattered glass rested under a window the suspect broke to get in, according to the FBI\u2019s criminal complaint.\n <\/p>\n

\n Jewish custom calls for holy texts to get a respectful burial, rather than simply being tossed out. So, after the temple is remediated, the prayer books and what\u2019s left of their pages will be collected, commemorated with a funeral and interred, Shemper said.\n <\/p>\n

\"Beth<\/p>\n

\"Shemper<\/p>\n

\n Along a library wall, an ornate cabinet with glass doors known in Judaism as an Ark held two Torahs that were almost completely incinerated, he showed CNN this week.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAs you can see by everything,\u201d Shemper said, pausing, \u201cit\u2019s totally destroyed.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The flames then moved toward the sanctuary, where congregants worshipped. Pews were left heavily soiled in black.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI want to cry. I\u2019m disgusted,\u201d Shemper said as he surveyed the damage. \u201cI\u2019ve never had to deal with something like this. I\u2019ve never even experienced the feelings that I\u2019m feeling right now.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The heat from the fire was so overwhelming, all but one of hundreds of small brass plates that made up the temple\u2019s Tree of Life art installation succumbed to the flames. The display, a common Judaic symbol, represented moments of celebration within the congregation, Shemper said.\n <\/p>\n

\"Beth<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Also damaged was a decades-old sculpture of Moses, one of Judaism\u2019s greatest prophets who is often credited with receiving the Torah from God and writing it down.\n <\/p>\n

\n The sculpture, which survived the 1967<\/a> bombing by Ku Klux Klan members, remained intact after the fire, Hailey said. But in short order, its head broke off its body, chipped and got covered in ash.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"Shemper<\/p>\n

\n Repairing this holy space could take at least a year, until which several churches have opened their doors to Beth Israel, Shemper said. Amid the devastation, the synagogue\u2019s congregation is committed to maintaining Jewish community in Jackson and is ready to rebuild, Michele Schipper said, one of temple\u2019s past presidents.\n <\/p>\n

\n Digging through rubble, Shemper searched for a Jewish musical instrument called a \u201cshofar\u201d that\u2019s used on holy days like Rosh Hashanah. He knew the piece, made from an animal horn, had been on a nearby shelf.\n <\/p>\n

\n But after sifting through soot on the floor, Shemper could not find it.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI don\u2019t know how hot something has to get,\u201d he said, \u201cfor a ram\u2019s horn to burn.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jackson, Mississippi \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 What was once a place of worship filled with precious objects packed with meaning now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-414947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}