They saw Mississippi’s largest synagogue bombed by the KKK in 1967. Seeing it now destroyed by arson feels like ‘deja vu’

By Nicquel Terry Ellis, CNN

(CNN) — Clay Crystal was sitting on his front porch in Jackson, Mississippi, as a child in 1967 when he heard the thunderous sound of an explosion echo through his neighborhood.

“I had no idea what it was,” said Crystal, who was 13 at the time.

He’d later learn from his father, then president of the Beth Israel Congregation, that their rabbi’s house had been bombed by Ku Klux Klan members. Their temple, the state’s oldest synagogue, had been destroyed in a similar bombing two months before.

Like many in the Jewish community, his parents struggled to move forward. Fearful of more bombs being planted, they made Crystal sleep in a room in the back of their house rather than his bedroom, facing the front yard.

“It was a scary time for sure,” said Crystal, who at 72 is still attending Beth Israel.

Nearly 60 years later, the community is reliving the horror of those bombings after an arson fire left the walls of the Beth Israel temple severely damaged and its library destroyed.

The 19-year-old suspect, identified by the FBI as Stephen Spencer Pittman, set fire to the building last Saturday and confessed to starting the blaze because of its “Jewish ties,” according to a criminal complaint.

Pittman was arrested and charged with “arson of property used in interstate commerce or used in an activity affecting interstate commerce” according to the complaint. He was also indicted on a state charge of first-degree arson of a place of worship with a hate crime enhancement, according to a statement obtained by Mississippi Free Press.

While Beth Israel Congregation Rabbi Benjamin Russell has been processing the “sadness, anger, bitterness” of seeing the synagogue destroyed, the damage has also been a reminder of the impact of the 1967 bombings.

“We are kind of living through a repeat of that because the same spaces that were destroyed then are the same spaces that have been destroyed now in a different manner,” Russell said.

1960s bombings loom large in Jackson

The 1967 bombing came during the historic civil rights movement that saw Black activists, often supported by Jewish leaders, fighting and marching for equality as their churches and homes were bombed and set on fire by the Klan and other people opposing racial integration.

Jewish leaders were also instrumental in the funding and creation of civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, according to the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

On September 18, 1967, Klan members bombed Beth Israel’s temple, destroying most of the rabbi’s office and the library, according to the Institute of Southern Jewish Life.

Two months later, its members bombed Rabbi Perry Nussbaum’s house while he and his wife were home. They were not seriously injured.

Nussbaum, who took the reins of Beth Israel in 1954, was an outspoken advocate for ending racism and segregation. He helped create a committee of diverse ministers that looked to raise money to help burned and bombed churches rebuild.

The bombings sent fear and panic through the Jewish community, said Lennie Mullins, whose father led a synagogue in Meridian, Mississippi, but had close ties to Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, and she visited often as a child.

Neighbors, she said, stopped trusting each other because they didn’t know who had ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

Mullins said arson had become common in the South, but the bombings in the mid to late 1960s were a new form of terror. To Mullins, it signaled the Klan’s growing resistance to the voting rights movement and efforts to integrate schools across the South.

“You could hide a bomb, and you could kill people, multiple people,” said Mullins, who was around the age of 10 when the synagogue was bombed. “It was different. The message was stronger. The message was louder and had more power behind it.”

Mullins, now 68 and living in South Carolina, said Jewish people from Mississippi spent decades healing from the emotional toll of the synagogue bombing. Last week’s fire brought them back to that moment.

“It’s like ripping the Band-Aid off an old wound,” Mullins said. “You put these things in a place in your mind that you’ll never forget, but you don’t have to reminisce every day on it.”

Arson fire meant hate is not in the past, congregants say

Antisemitism has surged in recent years, particularly following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

In the US, the number of antisemitic incidents has been on the rise for the past four years, with data from the Anti-Defamation League showing last year’s incidents reached the highest level since the organization began tracking them in 1979.

Despite the rise in antisemitism, some Beth Israel congregants told CNN they believed the city had progressed beyond the hatred and racism that led to the 1960s incidents.

“You know, having grown up in a segregated society, I really thought that we had all moved on past all of this,” said Don Mitchell, a longtime Beth Israel member who grew up attending the synagogue with his family. “But unfortunately, it appears that we aren’t past it.”

Mitchell was surprised by last week’s attack and said the devastation it left in the Jewish community feels like “deja vu.”

“It was definitely deja vu,” said Mitchell, who said he was a freshman in college when the synagogue was bombed in 1967. “We all thought we had gotten past all these things.”

Last week, Beth Kander had just submitted a play about the 1967 synagogue bombing to a festival when she learned about the fire. Kander said she came up with the idea for the play in the early 2000s when she was a member at Beth Israel and first learned about the historic bombing. She then wanted to tell the story through her first passion: theater.

Kander said she initially hoped the fire was caused by faulty wiring or something accidental. Once she saw reports that it was arson and the surveillance footage of the suspect, Kander said she went from feeling shocked to “utter lack of surprise.”

“The years in between were filled with many joyful moments, some of which I was privileged to experience. The history no longer feels distant,” Kander wrote in a post on Instagram about last week’s fire.

Racism, hate and antisemitism, she said, have not been eradicated in the US. Kander said she believes Pittman had the same motives as the Klan members who bombed the synagogue in the 1960s.

“In both instances, it’s someone trying to send a message,” Kander said. “It’s trying to instill fear. It is taking the most prominent symbol of Jewish life in Jackson, Mississippi, because it is the only synagogue there, and attacking it, which, by extension, attacks the sense of safety and community for the people who worship there and who gather in fellowship there.”

Despite having to rebuild the synagogue for the second time in 60 years, congregants say they are resilient and won’t live in fear.

Congregation President Zach Shemper said it could take at least a year to rebuild the synagogue. However, he said several churches have offered up their spaces for Beth Israel to hold its services in the meantime.

Mitchell said he’s confident the congregation will persevere.

“We’re strong,” Mitchell said. “And we’ll continue.”

CNN’s Jason Carroll contributed to this report.

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