c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) Three Sacremento area synagogues were recently set on fire within a 45-minute period, and one of them, Congregation B’nai Israel, suffered more than $800,000 in damages, mostly to its library.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the ugly intent of the arsonists was clear. At one of the burned synagogues, a TV crew found a printed flier that blamed something called the”international Jewsmedia”for the war in Yugoslavia. Of course. It’s always”the Jews.” Six years ago B’nai Israel was also firebombed, and a 17 year-old white supremacist was found guilty of that attack.

American houses of worship have always been convenient targets for bigots. Three summers ago America witnessed an epidemic of black church burnings, and the response from the religious and general communities was one of overwhelming solidarity and support.

The Sacramento synagogue burnings are already eliciting the same reaction from people who are outraged by this latest desecration.

On June 21, some 4,000 people, under a banner reading”Sacramento United Against Hate,”rallied at a community theater to dedicate themselves to opposing bigotry.”Tonight all of us belong to the three synagogues,”Mayor Joseph Serna told the the crowd.”When I hear of synagogues burning, then I am a Jew.” I know B’nai Israel’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Brad Bloom, because both of us served as rabbi of the same congregation in Champaign, Ill. Bloom said his Sacramento synagogue members were”devastated, shocked and numb.”He promised to”rebuild and hopefully create a culture which will not tolerate intolerance anymore.” Sadly, Bloom and his Sacramento rabbinical colleagues now join an illustrious and brave group of American rabbis who have endured bombs and arson in their synagogues and homes. In the past, most of the attacks took place in the deep South during the turbulent days of the civil rights struggle, but the Sacramento assaults clearly indicate today’s anti-Semites will use any pretext, even the war in Kosovo, to express their hatred of Jews.

Because Americans have short historical memories, it is important to remember the violent past and to see the California bombings as part of a painful and continuing chapter in our nation’s history.

On March 16, 1958, Temple Beth El in Miami was bombed and on the same day an explosive ripped off the front of the Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tenn. Shortly after Nashville came an attack upon the Jewish Center in Jacksonville, Fla.

Seven months after the twin bombings in Miami and Nashville, an explosion rocked Atlanta’s historic temple (it was established just after the Civil War) on Peachtree Road. The dynamite did extensive damage, and a stunned religious and political leadership of Georgia’s capital spoke out in shock and anger.

The temple’s rabbi at the time, the late Jacob Rothschild, and an outspoken advocate of civil rights, asserted:”There is a macabre and disquieting parallel in the South today and a totalitarian state. There is a curtailment of the right to speak freely and openly if what you say disagrees with the popular point of view.” Eighteen months after the Atlanta bombing, a worship service at Congregation Beth Israel in Gadsden, Ala. was interrupted by the frightening sound of an explosion from a bomb thrown at a window of the synagogue. When two members of Beth Israel ran out to investigate, they were shot and wounded by the 16-year-old bomb thrower who was a follower of neo-Nazi doctrines.

In September 1967, a bomb exploded at Beth Israel synagogue in Jackson, Miss. Its rabbi, the late Perry Nussbaum, was another Jewish leader who publicly advocated civil rights for America’s black citizens. On Nov. 20 of that year, Rabbi Nussbaum said:”Let all decent people stand up to bigotry and racism.”The next day his home was bombed.

Following the FBI’s insistence, he and his wife went into hiding to avoid being killed. Happily, the Nussbaums were spared a bigot’s bullet.

Many Americans forget how repressive Mississippi was in the 1960s. There were charges that the phones of civil rights sympathizers were tapped and their mail opened. Historians called Mississippi a”closed society”and it was the place where three civil rights workers were murdered 35 summers ago.

Today is, of course, a different time for Mississippi and America, but the Sacramento bombings are a chilling reminder that we have not yet come close to creating Rabbi Bloom’s desired”culture which will not tolerate intolerance anymore.”DEA END RUDIN