A Mississippi Synagogue Was Attacked in 1967 and 2026. The Antisemitic Rhetoric Looked the Same Then and Now.
This affects the entire country.
In July of 1968, Samuel Bowers sat down in his office with fingers poised over his typewriter keys, thoughts filled with fury. As founder and imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, he cut a charismatic figure, though one with a militant Christian faith and a hate-filled mind. Just a day earlier, police had killed one of his most trusted assassins and severely injured another.
Bowers had spent the past few years masterminding bombings at Mississippi’s Black churches and, more recently, synagogues as well. His two foot soldiers now riddled with bullets had bombed the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson on a foggy night nine months earlier and were en route to bomb a Jewish leader’s home when police gunned them down.
At the typewriter, Bowers pounded out a five-page missive to Thomas Tucker, a local police officer who shot one of the Klan members but had earlier faced suspicions of being a Klan sympathizer himself, journalist Jack Nelson wrote in his 1993 book “Terror in the Night: The Klan’s Campaign Against the Jews.”
“Mr. Tucker,” Bowers wrote, “the principle of law as it has been twisted and abused by the animals in the Synagogue of Satan, one of which you were guarding and protecting.” The Klanswoman killed, he insisted, was an American Patriot “doing her limited best to preserve Christian Civilization by helping to destroy the body of an animal of Satan’s Synagogue.”
Flash forward almost 60 years after Bowers wrote his letter.
On Jan. 10, a whole new generation of congregants at Beth Israel, among Mississippi’s oldest synagogues, awoke to devastating news about their house of worship. Someone had set a fire inside. The blaze had started in the library, destroying it along with sacred Torah scrolls, prayer books and myriad other materials. Smoke had filled the sanctuary. No congregants were injured, but they would not be able to worship there for some time.
Later the day of the arson, a young man with scorched hands faced an FBI agent and others investigating the crime. Stephen Spencer Pittman was born in Jackson in 2006, the year Bowers died. Just 19 years old, he allegedly admitted to investigators that he set fire to the temple due to its “Jewish ties,” according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. He dubbed Beth Israel a “synagogue of Satan.”
The fire that damaged Beth Israel’s synagogue last month marks the second time in nearly 60 years that the building has come under attack. Courtesy of Beth Israel Congregation
The term refers to biblical passages in which Jesus described Jews in specific communities who were persecuting the early Christians. Antisemites like Bowers had co-opted the phrase to describe Jews broadly as agents of evil plotting against white Christians. He believed that Jews who hadn’t converted to Christianity were “heretics” and their houses of worship therefore legitimate military targets — especially those like Beth Israel, whose rabbi had been linking arms with civil rights protestors.
Why Pittman, who has pleaded not guilty, used those words remains unclear. But according to the affidavit, after the fire burned the temple, Pittman texted his father, “I did my research.”
What did that …
This affects the entire country.
In July of 1968, Samuel Bowers sat down in his office with fingers poised over his typewriter keys, thoughts filled with fury. As founder and imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, he cut a charismatic figure, though one with a militant Christian faith and a hate-filled mind. Just a day earlier, police had killed one of his most trusted assassins and severely injured another.
Bowers had spent the past few years masterminding bombings at Mississippi’s Black churches and, more recently, synagogues as well. His two foot soldiers now riddled with bullets had bombed the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson on a foggy night nine months earlier and were en route to bomb a Jewish leader’s home when police gunned them down.
At the typewriter, Bowers pounded out a five-page missive to Thomas Tucker, a local police officer who shot one of the Klan members but had earlier faced suspicions of being a Klan sympathizer himself, journalist Jack Nelson wrote in his 1993 book “Terror in the Night: The Klan’s Campaign Against the Jews.”
“Mr. Tucker,” Bowers wrote, “the principle of law as it has been twisted and abused by the animals in the Synagogue of Satan, one of which you were guarding and protecting.” The Klanswoman killed, he insisted, was an American Patriot “doing her limited best to preserve Christian Civilization by helping to destroy the body of an animal of Satan’s Synagogue.”
Flash forward almost 60 years after Bowers wrote his letter.
On Jan. 10, a whole new generation of congregants at Beth Israel, among Mississippi’s oldest synagogues, awoke to devastating news about their house of worship. Someone had set a fire inside. The blaze had started in the library, destroying it along with sacred Torah scrolls, prayer books and myriad other materials. Smoke had filled the sanctuary. No congregants were injured, but they would not be able to worship there for some time.
Later the day of the arson, a young man with scorched hands faced an FBI agent and others investigating the crime. Stephen Spencer Pittman was born in Jackson in 2006, the year Bowers died. Just 19 years old, he allegedly admitted to investigators that he set fire to the temple due to its “Jewish ties,” according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. He dubbed Beth Israel a “synagogue of Satan.”
The fire that damaged Beth Israel’s synagogue last month marks the second time in nearly 60 years that the building has come under attack. Courtesy of Beth Israel Congregation
The term refers to biblical passages in which Jesus described Jews in specific communities who were persecuting the early Christians. Antisemites like Bowers had co-opted the phrase to describe Jews broadly as agents of evil plotting against white Christians. He believed that Jews who hadn’t converted to Christianity were “heretics” and their houses of worship therefore legitimate military targets — especially those like Beth Israel, whose rabbi had been linking arms with civil rights protestors.
Why Pittman, who has pleaded not guilty, used those words remains unclear. But according to the affidavit, after the fire burned the temple, Pittman texted his father, “I did my research.”
What did that …
A Mississippi Synagogue Was Attacked in 1967 and 2026. The Antisemitic Rhetoric Looked the Same Then and Now.
This affects the entire country.
In July of 1968, Samuel Bowers sat down in his office with fingers poised over his typewriter keys, thoughts filled with fury. As founder and imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, he cut a charismatic figure, though one with a militant Christian faith and a hate-filled mind. Just a day earlier, police had killed one of his most trusted assassins and severely injured another.
Bowers had spent the past few years masterminding bombings at Mississippi’s Black churches and, more recently, synagogues as well. His two foot soldiers now riddled with bullets had bombed the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson on a foggy night nine months earlier and were en route to bomb a Jewish leader’s home when police gunned them down.
At the typewriter, Bowers pounded out a five-page missive to Thomas Tucker, a local police officer who shot one of the Klan members but had earlier faced suspicions of being a Klan sympathizer himself, journalist Jack Nelson wrote in his 1993 book “Terror in the Night: The Klan’s Campaign Against the Jews.”
“Mr. Tucker,” Bowers wrote, “the principle of law as it has been twisted and abused by the animals in the Synagogue of Satan, one of which you were guarding and protecting.” The Klanswoman killed, he insisted, was an American Patriot “doing her limited best to preserve Christian Civilization by helping to destroy the body of an animal of Satan’s Synagogue.”
Flash forward almost 60 years after Bowers wrote his letter.
On Jan. 10, a whole new generation of congregants at Beth Israel, among Mississippi’s oldest synagogues, awoke to devastating news about their house of worship. Someone had set a fire inside. The blaze had started in the library, destroying it along with sacred Torah scrolls, prayer books and myriad other materials. Smoke had filled the sanctuary. No congregants were injured, but they would not be able to worship there for some time.
Later the day of the arson, a young man with scorched hands faced an FBI agent and others investigating the crime. Stephen Spencer Pittman was born in Jackson in 2006, the year Bowers died. Just 19 years old, he allegedly admitted to investigators that he set fire to the temple due to its “Jewish ties,” according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. He dubbed Beth Israel a “synagogue of Satan.”
The fire that damaged Beth Israel’s synagogue last month marks the second time in nearly 60 years that the building has come under attack. Courtesy of Beth Israel Congregation
The term refers to biblical passages in which Jesus described Jews in specific communities who were persecuting the early Christians. Antisemites like Bowers had co-opted the phrase to describe Jews broadly as agents of evil plotting against white Christians. He believed that Jews who hadn’t converted to Christianity were “heretics” and their houses of worship therefore legitimate military targets — especially those like Beth Israel, whose rabbi had been linking arms with civil rights protestors.
Why Pittman, who has pleaded not guilty, used those words remains unclear. But according to the affidavit, after the fire burned the temple, Pittman texted his father, “I did my research.”
What did that …
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