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How one man’s burial brought Jews and Christians together — and what it still teaches 120 years later
“The beautiful little synagogue was filled to capacity,” the Tupper Lake Herald reported on February 12, 1915. “Many were there who had known Mr. Cohn for the past twenty years — old Adirondack pioneers… The air was heavy with tears as Rev. Boyd of the Episcopal Church lifted a Hebrew prayer book given him by Mr. Cohn a few years ago.”
The man they gathered to honor was Harris Cohn, an early Jewish resident of Tupper Lake, New York. His funeral filled the small Beth Joseph Synagogue, the same wooden building that still stands today, now celebrating its 120th anniversary.
Just a decade earlier, in 1904 or 1905, local families — peddlers, merchants, and new immigrants — had pooled roughly $450 to build it, holding Hebrew school classes in the town hall while waiting for carpenters to finish the sanctuary. In 1911 they purchased an acre for a cemetery beside the Methodist burial ground.
Cohn, the paper wrote, was “the personification of honor, truth, and integrity” — a man of “deep religious convictions… the firm believer of righteousness, benevolence, charity and prayers.” His “belief in God,” the editor added, “was so ideal, so far elevated above all earthly things, that no sacrifice was too great to show and prove his devotion to his Maker.”
Rabbi S. Freedman of Beth Joseph led the prayers, chanting the memorial service in Hebrew. Then the local Episcopal minister rose to speak.
He held up the worn Hebrew prayer book Cohn had given him and said, “I prize this book so much, for Mr. Cohn was a man whom I admired and with whom I established a strong and lasting friendship.” Then he turned to the young people present and urged them “to hold fast to whatever denomination they were reared under,” reminding them that conviction and faith come from devotion to one’s own tradition.
The rabbi had spoken of religion not as a convenience but as “a deep solace to the soul.” The minister, moved also by faith, echoed it in his own words. Jews and Christians mourned together. When the eulogies ended, the mourners recited kaddish, an ancient prayer offering comfort and acknowledging God.
I came across this article, digitized through the New York State Historic Newspapers archive, while researching Jewish life in nearby Ogdensburg and Massena. I paused to hold this memory. I had been tracing the histories of small-town synagogues — some now closed, others still standing in places like New York’s North Country and across the Midwest. In Tupper Lake, as in so many places, Jewish life grew quickly and then thinned with time: by 1913 a Sisterhood had formed; by 1914, a lodge of the Independent Order of Brith Abraham met in the synagogue twice a month; and by 1918, Beth Joseph had joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Each step spoke to a community that saw itself as part of something enduring, even in a place far removed from America’s largest Jewish centers.
The story of Harris Cohn’s funeral felt familiar. I had come across many such moments in small-town American history, and it revealed something essential that runs through so many of these places: a moral imagination larger than their size.
These were communities where faith was not theoretical. Jews and their neighbors depended on one another — through long winters, economic hardship, and the isolation of distance. Synagogues, often built by peddlers and storekeepers, became civic landmarks as much as houses of worship. A century later, when we look back at the geography of American Jewish life, we see that its reach was far wider than today’s metropolitan map suggests. For every major center of Jewish population, there were dozens of smaller congregations that carried the same prayers into fields, factory towns, and forest settlements.
It’s easy to forget that these rural sanctuaries once embodied outposts of Jewish belonging. Their stories are rarely told, overshadowed by the better-known narratives of New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Yet in towns like Tupper Lake, Judaism became part of the spiritual language of the whole community.
That is what moved me about the 1915 funeral. The newspaper account wasn’t written for a Jewish audience. It was published for the whole town, describing the service with reverence and curiosity but without exoticism. The boundaries between communities blurred, and what emerged was shared moral clarity: the belief that dignity, faith, and friendship can withstand every division.
There is something profoundly Jewish in the humility of that service. The simplicity of the synagogue, the equality of all before death, the act of remembrance itself — all mirror the same values I have seen in Jewish life today. In Tupper Lake, that ethos endured. By the 1930s, Beth Joseph opened its doors to patients from the nearby state hospital for Passover Seders, and in 1925 Rabbi Freedman — the same clergyman who eulogized Cohn — offered words of comfort at a Masonic memorial for a Presbyterian pastor. The boundaries were always more porous than history remembers.
Beth Joseph’s continued presence in Tupper Lake is a kind of quiet miracle. This year marks its 120th anniversary — a milestone few rural synagogues reach. The synagogue testifies that Jewish life has, at various times and places, reached into nearly every corner of America, leaving behind something worth remembering: the habit of neighborliness, the belief that God is present wherever people honor one another.
When Rev. Boyd lifted that Hebrew book at a funeral in 1915, he could not have known how far that gesture would travel. But in reading it more than a century later, I think of it as an act of faith in its own right. A Christian minister, holding the sacred words of another tradition, showing them to his townspeople with tenderness. That is a kind of sermon that still preaches.
The story of Harris Cohn’s funeral is not about a vanished world. It is about a world that, at least for one afternoon in the Adirondacks, revealed its best self.
The prayer book may no longer exist, but its lesson remains open: that the sacred is never confined by walls, and that remembering each other is itself a holy act.
The post How one man’s burial brought Jews and Christians together — and what it still teaches 120 years later appeared first on The Forward.
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Arson Suspect Targeted Mississippi Synagogue for ‘Jewish Ties,’ Laughed During Confession: FBI
Smoldered remains of the Beth Israel Congregation’s library. Photo: Screenshot.
The suspect believed to have intentionally ignited a catastrophic fire which decimated the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi has told US federal investigators he targeted the institution over its “Jewish ties,” according to an affidavit the FBI has submitted to federal court.
Stephen Pittman, the FBI said in portions of the affidavit made public on Monday, “was identified as a person of interest and ultimately confessed to lighting a fire inside the building.” The document added that Pittman, arrested on Sunday, purchased the accelerant, gasoline, with which he ignited the blaze from a gas station.
Pittman, 19, allegedly started the conflagration in Beth Israel’s library during the early morning hours on Saturday, setting off a blaze which coursed through the entire building and intensified to the extent that its flames, according to one local account, “were coming out of the synagogue’s windows.” As he carried out the act, he notified his father of it via text message, saying “I did my research,” the
According to the court filing, Pittman also told his father that he was aware of the incident being filmed by Beth Israel’s security cameras, describing them as “the best.”
“Pittman laughed as he told his father what he did and said he finally got them,” read the affidavit from Nicholas Amiano, an FBI agent in the Jackson division.
In the end, Pittman allegedly destroyed a number of Torah scrolls and caused damage so great that the building must, for now, be abandoned while authorities conclude their investigation of the incident and Beth Israel, founded in 1860, weighs a reconstruction which could takes years to complete.
The institution was once targeted by the Ku Klux Klan over its rabbi’s support for civil rights for African Americans. With the latest destruction, some 150 families will be left without the only Jewish house of worship in the city.
“As Jackson’s only synagogue, Beth Israel is a beloved institution, and it is the fellowship of our neighbors and extended community that will see us through,” Beth Israel president Zach Shemper said in a statement. “We are a resilient people. With support from our community, we will rebuild.”
Jackson Mayor John Horhn, a Democrat also issued a statement, saying, “Acts of antisemitism, racism, and religious hatred are attacks on Jackson as a whole and will be treated as acts of terror against residents’ safety and freedom to worship. Targeting people because of their faith, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation is morally wrong, un-American, and completely incompatible with the values of this city.”
He added, “Jackson stands with Beth Israel and the Jewish community, and we’ll do everything we can to support them and hold accountable anyone who tried to spread fear and hate here.”
Reactions to the suspected hate crime poured in from major Jewish civil rights organizations across the country, with Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt saying, “An attack on any synagogue is an attack on all Jews.” The American Jewish Committee (AJC) called the fire a “hateful act” that “is only the most recent symptom of the dangerous rising antisemitism facing Jewish communities across the country and around the world.”
For several consecutive years, antisemitism in the US has surged to break “all previous annual records,” according to a series of reports issued by the ADL since it began recording data on antisemitic incidents.
The ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024 — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, providing statistical proof of what has been described as an atmosphere of hate not experienced in the nearly fifty years since the organization began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
The Algemeiner parsed the ADL’s data, finding dramatic rises in incidents on college campuses, which saw the largest growth in 2024. The 1,694 incidents tallied by the ADL amounted to an 84 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, antisemites were emboldened to commit more offenses in public in 2024 than they did in 2023, perpetrating 19 percent more attacks on Jewish people, pro-Israel demonstrators, and businesses perceived as being Jewish-owned or affiliated with Jews.
The FBI disclosed similar numbers, showing that even as hate crimes across the US decreased overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups have noted that this rise in antisemitic hate crimes, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
“This latest deplorable crime against a Jewish institution reminds us that the same hatred that motivated the KKK to attack Beth Israel in 1967 is alive today,” the Florida Holocaust Museum said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner on Monday. “Antisemitism are still trying to intimidate Jews, drive them out of public life, and make houses of worship targets of violence instead of place of safety and community.”
It added, “With your help we can resist this evil. The more society understands about the nature of antisemitism, including the Holocaust, the better prepared it will be to identify and reject anti-Jewish bigotry. May Beth Israel’s Holocaust Torah, which survived the fire, inspire us all to stand up for each other and create a more just and accepting world.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Synagogue arson suspect posted antisemitic cartoon on day of the attack
Stephen Spencer Pittman, who has been charged with setting fire to Mississippi’s oldest synagogue, recently launched a website promoting “scripture-backed fitness” and shared antisemitic content on Instagram the day of the arson attack.
Pittman, 19, was charged Monday in the Jan. 10 arson of Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., which he targeted because it was Jewish and described as a “synagogue of Satan,” according to an FBI affidavit. The affidavit included images of a text message conversation with his father showing Pittman went by his middle name.
St. Joseph Catholic School, Pittman’s alma mater, posted a photo of him in November 2023, with congratulations on his decision to attend Coahama Community College. St. Joe’s, as it’s known, has confirmed that Pittman is the suspect charged in the fire.
Social media accounts appearing to belong to a Spencer Pittman in Madison, Miss., a city about 15 miles north of Jackson, and a website registered to Pittman show a deep interest in Christian evangelism and physical fitness. He regularly posted quotes from the New Testament and images of himself exercising or playing sports.
The website, www.onepurpose.us, is laden with Bible references, including seemingly Judaic ones. Its homepage prominently features the Hebrew tetragrammaton representing God’s name, and calls on young men to transform their lives through a “Temple plan” of exercise and Bible study. It used a Hebrew word, heichal, to refer to sanctuary.
Pittman’s Instagram account took a darker turn in recent days.
Two days ago he reposted an animated video of a woman seeing a Jewish caricature holding moneybags and exclaiming, “A Jew in our backyard!” before pushing the figure into a swimming pool and adding, “You’re getting baptized right now.” The account he reposted has primarily shared that meme over and over. It was unclear whether he posted the video before or after the arson attack, which occurred Jan. 10 at around 3 a.m.
Before that, most of Pittman’s posts were about baseball, which he played at Coahoma Community College. It appears from an Instagram post about three weeks ago that Pittman had stopped playing baseball. In a post from Dec. 19, Pittman wrote, “Peace out to the game that made me ascend.”
He was the team’s starting center fielder at the end of last season. The school has deleted Pittman’s page from its website.
Pittman, who is in federal custody, remains hospitalized with burns it’s believed he received as a result of the arson. He was appointed a public defender on Monday, who appeared with him via videoconference for a preliminary hearing. He is expected to be released from the hospital on Wednesday, his lawyer said. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 20.
According to WLBT 3, a Jackson-based TV news station, after a federal judge asked Pittman during the hearing if he understood his rights, Pittman responded, “Yes sir. Jesus Christ is Lord.”
Law enforcement is still investigating the attack, and additional charges may be filed. If convicted on the current charges, Pittman could face up to 20 years in prison.
Calls to Pittman’s lawyer and to his family were not returned Monday.
The post Synagogue arson suspect posted antisemitic cartoon on day of the attack appeared first on The Forward.
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California Democrat Scott Wiener Accuses Israel of ‘Genocide’ in Sharp Reversal Following Debate Backlash
California State Sen. Scott Weiner. Photo: Screenshot
California State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat seeking to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the US Congress, announced on Sunday that he believes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza meets the definition of “genocide,” a sharp reversal from a recent debate in which he declined to use the term.
Wiener’s declaration came after a contentious candidate forum last week in San Francisco, during which he declined to answer a direct question about whether he believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. That hesitation was met with jeers from the audience.
In a video posted Sunday on the X social media platform, Wiener, who is Jewish, said he had “stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore,” citing the “devastation and catastrophic death toll” in Gaza as justification for using the term. Weiner also accused Israeli officials of making “genocidal” statements while justifying their military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and claimed that Israel schemed to “destroy Gaza and push Palestinians out.”
The state senator also acknowledged the emotional weight the word holds for many Jews, given its origins in describing the Holocaust.
For years, I’ve condemned Netanyahu and his extremist government and the devastation they’ve inflicted on Gaza. It’s why I’ve been clear I won’t support U.S. funding for the destruction of Palestinian communities. I’ve stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore. pic.twitter.com/71nIt6K527
— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) January 11, 2026
Denying accusations of genocide, Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Wiener’s accusation of genocide marks a complete reversal not only from his recent debate answer but also from a new profile of him published in The Atlantic, in which he denied accusations of genocide lobbed at Israel and decried the weaponization of the war in Gaza as a “purity test.” He compared such ideological mandates to medieval attempts to divide the Jewish community between “good Jews” and “bad Jews.” Weiner also argued that Jewish liberals are being pushed out of progressive spaces if they don’t demonstrate sufficient hatred for Israel.
“If part of your Jewishness is, you know, that you support the homeland of the Jews and the home of one-half of all Jews on the planet, then that makes you a bad Jew,” Weiner said. “If you’re not willing to use the exact language that we want you to use, then you’re a bad Jew.”
The article came out on Sunday, the same day of his social media post accusing Israel of genocide.
Weiner has been a frequent target of anti-Israel demonstrators. In October, a group of agitators confronted the state lawmaker and accused him of supporting “genocide.”
Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan, similarly lamented that accusations of “genocide” against Israel are becoming a “purity test” within Democratic primaries. She argued in a new interview with Detroit Public Radio that there exists a “broadly shared goal among most Michiganders, that this violence needs to stop, that a temporary cease fire needs to become a permanent cease fire, that Palestinians deserve long term peace and security, that Israelis deserve long term peace and security.”
However, the candidate argued, “I also feel like we are getting lost in this conversation, and it feels like a political purity test on a word — a word that, by the way, to people who lost family members in the Holocaust, does mean something very different and very visceral.”
McMorrow, who has previously claimed she agrees that Israel committed a so-called “genocide” in Gaza, suggested that some candidates in the race are “using this as a political weapon and fundraising off of it.” Abdul El-Sayeed, a progressive Democrat in the Senate race, has condemned Israel for committing “genocide” and has called for an arms embargo on the Jewish state.