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More than 8,500 people have donated to support Mississippi synagogue damaged in arson attack
Zach Shemper never expected to spend Shabbat on the bimah of one of the largest congregations in America, but that’s where the president of Mississippi’s largest synagogue, which was damaged in an arson attack two weeks ago, found himself on Friday night.
After the fire at Beth Israel in Jackson, Shemper was invited to Central Synagogue in Manhattan — and then, hours later, was speaking before another congregation hundreds of miles away — carrying a story he never expected to tell before returning on Saturday to Jackson, where a winter storm forced the shul to cancel Sunday school.
Shemper, 45, said the trip to New York came together with startling speed. After learning that Central Synagogue had helped raise a substantial donation for Beth Israel, he called Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the head of the Union for Reform Judaism, and asked him to reach out to Central’s senior rabbi, Angela Buchdahl. Within minutes, Buchdahl called on Tuesday to invite Shemper to speak before Central’s congregation — and the thousands more who tune in to its weekly livestream. By Friday, he was on the plane.
For a small Southern congregation with fewer than 150 member households, the invitation signaled how quickly a local antisemitic attack had become a national Jewish concern.
Beth Israel was targeted earlier this month by Stephen Spencer Pittman, authorities say, a 19-year-old whose interest in Christianity and fitness may have led him to antisemitic messages online. The fire destroyed the synagogue’s library and offices, burned Torah scrolls and books, and sent smoke and soot through the sanctuary.
“It’s not like I signed up for this,” Shemper said in an interview. “For a small congregation in Jackson, Mississippi — it’s amazing what’s happening.”
Shemper’s New York trip also included a meeting with Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, who met him at his hotel for about an hour before services. They spoke, Shemper said, about antisemitism, security and “the strength of the Jewish people.”
Central Synagogue — a flagship Reform congregation whose reach extends far beyond New York — has its own history with fire. In 1998, a blaze severely damaged its landmark building on Lexington Avenue, forcing the congregation to rebuild — a history Shemper referenced as he stood before the congregation.
During the Friday night service, Shemper participated in the Torah procession and was given an aliyah, a ritual gesture of public honor and solidarity.
Speaking from the bimah, Shemper said the attack in Jackson was meant to do more than cause physical damage. “They’re meant to strike fear in an entire community, to make it want to hide, to make it feel isolated and alone.”
Buchdahl framed the congregation’s response as an expression of Jewish peoplehood that transcends geography, a theme she returned to in her sermon that evening. She cited Shemper’s visit as a reminder that Jewish communities remain bound to one another, and that when one is attacked, others are called to walk alongside it.
Early Saturday morning, Shemper flew to Florida, where he addressed the Palm Beach Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation.
“Within 15 minutes of my arrival, they had me on the pulpit speaking,” he said. After services, he stayed for a luncheon and a question-and-answer session before heading back to the airport.
The rebuilding effort
Shemper said he has been careful about how he describes the financial response to the fire. More than 8,500 people have donated so far, he said — unsolicited.
“We haven’t asked anybody for anything,” Shemper said. “Everything that’s been given to us has been from the kindness of strangers — Jews and not — reaching out and saying, ‘How can we help?’”
The focus now, he said, is on rebuilding. Engineers have determined that the sanctuary walls are structurally sound. But the ceiling throughout the building will need to be replaced because of smoke damage, and much of the rest of the structure — including administrative offices and the library — will have to be demolished. The timeline, he said, is likely one-and-a-half to three years.
In the meantime, Beth Israel will be housed at nearby Northminster Baptist Church, a return of a favor decades in the making. In the 1960s, when Northminster was being built, Beth Israel hosted the church’s services.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, many churches reached out to offer their spaces. The shul thought they would move every few months so as not to overstay their welcome. But Northminster’s congregation had other ideas.
“They came back to us and said, ‘We’d like to house you for the interim,’” Shemper said. “My initial response — after crying — was to say no. But we were wandering Jews for many years. We’d rather do less of that these days.”
Any donations that exceed the cost of restoring the building, Shemper said, will be placed into an endowment to support Jewish life in Jackson for generations to come.
“If the kindness keeps coming,” he said, “we’ll be able to support four or five generations. Maybe more.”
Despite the upheaval, Shemper said the fire has ignited something unexpected.
“There’s been a spark of Jewish identity with Jews all over the world,” he said. “We’re focusing on seeing the light through the darkness. We’re moving forward.”
The post More than 8,500 people have donated to support Mississippi synagogue damaged in arson attack appeared first on The Forward.
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Federal Officials Dig in on Minneapolis Shooting Narrative Despite Video Evidence
A person reacts at a makeshift memorial at the site where a man identified as Alex Pretti was fatally shot by federal immigration agents trying to detain him, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 25, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans
Senior Trump administration officials on Sunday defended the fatal shooting of a US citizen by immigration agents in Minneapolis even as video evidence contradicted their version of events and tensions grew between local law enforcement and federal officers.
As residents visited a makeshift shrine of flowers and candles in frigid temperatures and snow to mark Saturday’s fatal shooting of Alex Pretti — the second shooting death by federal officers in Minneapolis this month — the Trump administration argued that Pretti assaulted officers, compelling them to fire in self-defense.
Gregory Bovino, Border Patrol commander-at-large speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” could not offer evidence that Pretti was trying to impede a law enforcement operation, but focused on the fact that the ICU nurse was carrying a gun, which he had a license to carry.
“The victims are border patrol agents,” Bovino said. “Law enforcement doesn’t assault anyone.”
Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Pretti of assaulting the agents, rioting and obstructing them.
“We do know that he came to that scene and impeded a law enforcement operation, which is against federal law,” Noem told Fox News’ “Sunday Briefing” program. “It’s a felony. When he did that, interacting with those agents, when they tried to get him to disengage, he became aggressive and resisted them.”
That official line, echoed by other Trump officials on Sunday, triggered outrage from local law enforcement, many in Minneapolis and Democrats on Capitol Hill, because of bystander videos that appear to show a different version of events.
HOLDING A PHONE, NOT A GUN
Videos from the scene verified and reviewed by Reuters showed Pretti, 37, holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, as he tries to help other protesters who have been pushed to the ground by agents.
As the videos begin, Pretti can be seen filming as a federal agent pushes away one woman and shoves another woman to the ground. Pretti moves between the agent and the women, then raises his left arm to shield himself as the agent pepper sprays him.
Several agents then take hold of Pretti — who struggles with them — and force him onto his hands and knees. As the agents pin down Pretti, someone shouts what sounds like a warning about the presence of a gun.
Video footage then appears to show one of the agents removing a gun from Pretti and stepping away from the group with it.
Moments later, an officer with a handgun pointed at Pretti’s back and fired four shots at him in quick succession. Several more shots can then be heard as another agent appears to fire at Pretti.
Darius Reeves, the former head of ICE’s field office in Baltimore, told Reuters that federal agents’ apparent lack of communication is troubling. “It’s clear no one is communicating to me, based on my observation of how that team responded,” Reeves said.
One of the officers appeared to have taken possession of Pretti’s weapon before he was killed, Reeves said. “The proof to me is how everyone scatters,” he said. “They’re looking around, trying to figure out where the shots came from.”
‘VIDEOS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES’
Brian O’Hara, the Minneapolis police chief, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “the videos speak for themselves,” adding the Trump administration version of events was “deeply disturbing.” He said he had seen no evidence that Pretti brandished a gun.
Tensions in the city were already running high after a federal agent fatally shot US citizen Renee Good on Jan 7. Trump officials claim she was trying to ram the agent with her car, but other observers have argued that bystander video suggests she was trying to steer away from the officer who shot her.
Federal authorities have refused to allow local officials to participate in their investigation of the incident.
US Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, told ABC News’ “This Week” that Trump’s surge of federal agents into Minneapolis was “completely out of control and out of balance,” and that they should leave Minnesota. She described the shooting of Pretti as “simply horrific.”
The deaths of Good and Pretti have sparked large protests in the Democrat-run city, although on Sunday morning the area where Pretti was shot was calm.
A woman wearing nursing scrubs ventured out in Sunday’s frigid temperatures to pay homage to Pretti, who she said worked with her. When asked what brought her out, the woman began to sob.
“He was caring and he was kind. None of this makes any sense,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified by name, saying she feared retribution from the federal government.
In addition to large protests in Minneapolis since Good’s death, there have been rallies in other cities led by Democratic politicians, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., since Trump began sending immigration agents and National Guard troops to those communities last year.
Trump has defended the operations as necessary to reduce crime and enforce immigration laws.
Pretti’s shooting triggered legal filings on Saturday night from state and local officials, as well as others.
A US district judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting federal officials from destroying or altering evidence related to the shooting in response to a lawsuit filed by Minnesota’s attorney general, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. A full hearing is set for Monday.
Lawyers representing protesters in Minnesota also asked an appeals court to reinstate a lower court’s order that prevented violent retaliation by federal agents against protesters, citing Pretti’s death and the likelihood of a surge of people taking to the streets.
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Iran Health Officials Say Death Toll Far Exceeds Official Figures During Protests
Cars burn in a street during a protest over the collapse of the currency’s value, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2026. Photo: Stringer/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – Senior sources inside Iran’s Ministry of Health have told the American publication TIME that an internal government tally shows as many as 30,000 people may have been killed in Iran on January 8 and 9 alone, far exceeding the official death toll announced by the authorities. According to the report, the figure is based on accounts from two unnamed senior Health Ministry officials and could not be independently verified.
The officials said the scale of the killings by Iranian security services during those two days overwhelmed state systems. Stocks of body bags were depleted, the officials said, and eighteen-wheel semi-trailers were used in place of ambulances to transport bodies.
According to the report, the internal government count has not been previously revealed and far exceeds the figure of 3,117 deaths announced on January 21 by Iranian authorities and state media aligned with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. TIME noted that Iran’s ministries, including the Health Ministry, formally report to the country’s elected president.
The reported internal figure also surpasses counts being compiled by independent activists documenting fatalities by name. As of Saturday, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said it had confirmed 5,459 deaths and was investigating an additional 17,031 cases.
The two Health Ministry officials described the internal tally as reflecting only a portion of the broader unrest, highlighting January 8 and 9 as particularly deadly. The report mentioned the deaths cited occurred “in the streets of Iran,” underscoring the intensity of those two days. Iranian authorities have not publicly commented on the internal figures cited by TIME.
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UN Rights Body Censures Iran’s ‘Brutal Repression’ of Protests
Members of the UN Security Council meet on Iran at the request of the United States at U.N. headquarters in New York City, US, January 15, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The U.N. rights body condemned Iran on Friday for rights abuses and mandated an investigation into a recent crackdown on anti-government protests that killed thousands of people.
“I call on the Iranian authorities to reconsider, to pull back, and to end their brutal repression,” High Commissioner Volker Turk told an emergency session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, voicing concerns for detainees.
The council passed a motion extending a previous inquiry set up in 2022 so U.N. investigators could also document the latest unrest “for potential future legal proceedings.”
Rights groups say bystanders were among those killed during the biggest crackdown since Shi’ite Muslim clerics took power in the 1979 revolution. Tehran has blamed “terrorists and rioters” backed by exiled opponents and foreign foes the US and Israel.
Iran’s mission decried the rights council’s “politicized” resolution and rejected external interference, saying in a statement it had its own independent and robust accountability mechanisms to investigate “the root causes of recent events.”
Twenty-five states including France, Mexico and South Korea voted in favor, while seven including China and India voted against and 14 abstained.
“This is the worst mass murder in the contemporary history of Iran,” Payam Akhavan, a former U.N. prosecutor of Iranian-Canadian nationality, told the meeting. He called for a “Nuremberg moment”, referring to the international criminal trials of Nazi leaders following World War Two.
Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, told the Council its emergency session was invalid and gave Tehran’s tally of some 3,000 people killed in the unrest.
One Iranian official, however, has told Reuters that at least 5,000 people, including 500 members of the security forces, had been killed.
The U.S.-based HRANA rights group said it has so far verified 4,519 unrest-linked deaths and had 9,049 additional deaths under review.
China, Pakistan, Cuba and Ethiopia also questioned the utility of the rights session, with Beijing’s ambassador Jia Guide calling the unrest in Iran “a matter of internal affairs”.
It was unclear who would cover the costs of the extended U.N. inquiry amid a funding crisis that has stalled other probes.