Parchment Burning

Rome, Italy 9 October, 1982 Shmini Atzeret At the end of Shabbat and Shmini Atzeret services in the Great Synagogue of Rome, members of the community were existing the synagogue. Five Palestinian mean calmly walked up to the back door of the synagogue. When a security guard stopped them, they tossed three hand grenades inside. They then open-fired on the crowd with semi-automatic weapons. Fortuitously, the hand grenades bounced off the steps of the building and ricocheted outside. The attackers escaped in cars and although one was eventually captured, were never brought to justice. The attack may have been perpetrated by the same group who later bombed a synagogue in Istanbul . 37 people were injured an one, a toddler named Stefano Gaj Tache, was killed in the attack. Stefano's older brother was shot in the head and chest but survived. "'The scene outside the synagogue was terrible. Seven or eight people were lying on the ground, some in serious condition.' (Dr...

Kfar Chabad, Israel 8 May, 1956 At eight pm, the 28 students of the Kfar Chabad Trade School were in the middle of the evening prayer service. Suddenly the lights went out. The sound of gunfire split the air. Some children struggled to flee through a window while others dropped to the floor. One 13 year old tried to evacuate some of his wounded friends, asking them to stop yelling in case the terrorists were still nearby. They did their best to comply, despite the terrible pain from their wounds. ( COL ) Three Palestinian terrorists had crossed the border into Israel from Egypt. While one waited in the car, another cut the power to the building and a third open-fired on the children in the synagogue. When the lights turned back on, dead students lay in puddles of their own blood. Four students and one counselor were killed. A sixth later died from his wounds.

El Ghriba Synagogue Djerba, Tunisia 7 October, 1985 On Simchat Torah, the community on the island of Djerba hired a local policeman to guard the synagogue during services. The locals were concerned that an Israeli raid on a local PLO headquarters, part of Operation Wooden Leg, might provoke violence. Rather than protect the worshipers, the security guard waited until services were underway and then open-fired on the Jews inside. Three people were killed. ( UPI ) One of those killed was Yehudit Bucharis, whose nephew Yoav Hattab was murdered thirty years later in the attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris. ( ynet ) Yehudit's remains were brought for burial in Israel in 2014. In 2002, the s ynagogue was attacked again , when an Al-Qaeda terrorist drove a truck full of explosives into the building, killing 21 tourists.

5 August, 1949 El Menasha Synagogue Damascus, Syria The El Menasha Synagogue was one of the oldest congregations in Damascus. The security situation for Jewish communities in the Arab world had deteriorated in the 1940s and synagogues were a target. On Friday night, a group of young students had gathered in the synagogue for the Kabbalat Shabbat service. It was Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat immediately following Tisha B'av. A Syrian veteran of the Israeli War of Independence threw several hand grenades into the El Menasha Synagogue in Damascus, shaking the walls of the building. Parents rushed to carry their blood-soaked children to the nearby Italian Hospital, but many were dead by the time they arrived. The attack killed twelve and wounded sixty, mostly children.

8 October, 1977 Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel (BSKI) Richmond Heights, MO Joseph Paul Franklin , a serial killer who believed it was his duty to kill Jews, randomly picked the address of the BSKI synagogue out of a phonebook from among the different synagogues in the St. Louis area. On Shabbat morning, he hid in some tall grass across for the parking lot and waited for several hours until a bar mitzva at the synagogue was finishing up. As guests left the building, Franklin fired five shots and then fled the scene. One guest, Gerry Gordon, was killed, and two others were wounded. "Gerry was something of a jokester so when I heard the shots, I saw him grab his stomach. At first I thought he was joking because that's what he did. But then his wife came running over to me in tears saying Gerry's been shot, help me. She had blood all over her dress." ( St. Louis Jewish Light )   Franklin confessed to the crime in 1994. He was convicted of murder and executed. He was...

Istanbul, Turkey 6 September, 1986 This relates to the attack on the Neve Shalom synagogue which took place in 1986, not to be confused with the one in 1992 which did not cause casualties, or the attack in 2003, which did. On Shabbat morning, 29 Jews were gathered at the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul for prayers. During Torah reading, two strangers entered the synagogue and barricaded the doors from the inside using an iron bar. They then open-fired with submachine guns, poured gasoline on the bodies and ignited them, and finally blew themselves up with hand grenades. Twenty-two of the Jewish worshipers were killed. ( Washington Post ) The attack "turned the elegant Neve Shalom Synagogue into a charred and blood-stained slaughterhouse." ( New York Times ) The JTA called it the "Bloodiest Synagogue Massacre Since [the] Nazi Era." The bodies were so disfigured that they were buried in a common grave. This was a high-coordinated terrorist attack, carried ou...

14 January 1951 Baghdad, Iraq After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews living in the Arab world were increasingly persecuted and the overwhelming majority were forced to flee. On January 14, 1951, several hundred Iraqi Jews crowded into the courtyard of the Mas'uda Shemtov synagogue. They had come to make arrangements for a flight to Israel, which was becoming urgent. Suddenly, someone threw a hand grenade toward this crowd. The grenade hit a high-tension wire above and exploded. Five people were killed and twenty were injured. (Moshe Gat, The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951  p.134) In wake of the bombing, the government claimed that Zionist agents had carried out the bombing to encourage emigration to Israel. Two Zionist activists were arrested and executed. However, Israeli papers reported that a Christian Iraqi officer had been arrested on suspicion of carrying out this crime, and similar bombs were uncovered in his house. In 2006, a former Mossad...

On October 27, 2018, a lone attacker entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and gunned down 11 congregants. In the wake of this massacre, the event was described by one official as "every Jewish person's worst nightmare." Synagogue massacres weigh heavily on the Jewish conscience because they are stories that are too familiar, repeated so that we won't forget what is possible. As long as there have been synagogues, there have been Jews who were rounded up and slaughtered while inside. And as Golda Meir once said, "It is true; we do have a Masada complex; we have a pogrom complex; we have a Hitler complex." This blog, Parchment Burning , will explore historical examples of this phenomenon. Not the ransacking and destruction of synagogues, or the murder of Jews, but the two together. When and where did it happen, under what historical circumstances, who were the victims and what was the aftermath.