Mississippi Burning

We’ll know more about Jackson in the days ahead: the name of the suspect, estimates of the damage, what was captured on the security cameras, the layout of the building. It’s all the details that go with cataclysm, the granular postmortem of violence in America.

I regret to confess that this one leaves me shaken. Our daughter spent time in Jackson, Mississippi, a semester of study at Tougaloo College. After high school at Booker T. Washington in Tulsa, she wanted somehow to extend her experience, and she petitioned Tougaloo to spend time on campus. The sojourn was complicated in all the best ways, and continues to influence her career to this day. If I know Jackson at all, it’s through her months in Mississippi.

But I also know something about the Jews of Jackson. In the continuing story of decentralization, a new commitment in our community to local and regional, the Jews of Jackson have played a distinguished role. One of the most powerful actors in our part of the country is the Institute for Southern Jewish Life, operating out of the offices of Congregation Beth Israel, the very congregation that was just victimized by arson. The Institute is a scrappy, entrepreneurial enterprise that writes curriculum for Jewish religious schools, brings culture to the hinterlands, preserves the history of Jewish settlement, and stimulates connectivity. It’s a great operation, and it point to a future where we are sustained by powerful local Jewish initiatives.

The fire, on the other hand, points toward the past. There have been only a few pictures so far of the damage at Beth Israel, but what they show could have come from Germany in the 1930s. I do not mean to be maudlin or dramatic, but the charred remains of a library take us right back to Kristallnacht, whether its Munich or Dusseldorf, or Jackson, Mississippi. Every Jew I know has been imprinted by those images, and it makes it difficult not to imagine the worst.

But not imagining the worst is what I’ve chosen for myself. No one was killed. No one was injured. This was not an instance of state-sponsored violence. Secular authorities have valorized Beth Israel as an essential corporate citizen of the city. Religious organizations have offered resources and shelter. Beth Israel will be rebuilt as a project of the city, and will, I predict, emerge stronger than before. That happened in Pittsburg and it will happen in Jackson. This may be a moment of sadness, but not a moment of panic. One door closes and another opens.