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Rabbi of firebombed N.J. synagogue: ‘We’ve unfortunately been preparing for this’
(JTA) — A New Jersey synagogue is crediting recent safety improvements after a Molotov cocktail thrown at its door overnight caused little damage.
Still, Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield canceled activities on Sunday as the police investigated, marking the second time in recent months that the suburban congregation suspended activities because of an antisemitic incident.
Last November, the Reform synagogue of about 500 families near New York City briefly closed its doors while the FBI investigated a “credible threat” against New Jersey synagogues; an 18-year-old man was later arrested for making a threat online.
The latest incident took place around 3 a.m. Sunday when, according to security camera footage, a man approached the synagogue and threw what appeared to be a Molotov cocktail, a homemade bomb, at the door before fleeing. The man was wearing a ski mask and a shirt that appeared to have an image of a skull and crossbones, according to a picture that police distributed.
The building suffered only superficial damage, an outcome that Rabbi Marc Katz attributed to the safety investments made over the past several years, funded largely by state homeland security grants. The synagogue has added shatterproof glass to its door and upgraded its security cameras, which generated a relatively clear image of the man who threw the device.
“Everything worked the way it was supposed to,” Katz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Sunday afternoon. “We’ve unfortunately been preparing for this day for a while and we were ready.”
The synagogue canceled religious school, where roughly 200 children had been expected, and a rehearsal for the year’s Purim play largely out of concern that it would be upsetting for community members to see evidence of the assault and the investigation, Katz said. On Monday, a scheduled book talk by Rabbi Joshua Stanton, whose recent book tackles the challenges facing American religious institutions, has been postponed to make way for an evening event focused on the incident.
But Katz emphasized, including in his communications to community members, that the community’s normal activities were also ongoing. On Sunday morning, he said, he had officiated at a baby naming, and other activities would proceed as planned on Monday.
Katz said there had been no warning prior to the Sunday incident. But he noted that Montclair has experienced multiple apparently antisemitic incidents in recent years, including swastikas found on playgrounds and etched on desks in the high school.
“Every few months, something happens. But this is the first time that there’s something directly against our congregation to this magnitude,” he said. “If things had been different, like even the wind blowing differently, we could be having a very different conversation. … That’s what’s so scary about this.”
Katz said that even as the incident had left him and his congregants shaken, it was not just antisemitic incidents such as the attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh; Poway, California; and Colleyville, Texas that had created an atmosphere of fear in the community. He said that every year he asks teenagers in the congregation where they feel more unsafe, at synagogue or at school, and every year the answers come back split.
“Our kids are suffering and they’re not just suffering because they’re Jewish,” he said. “So we have to be responding with a bit of a wider lens even than just what our own community is facing.”
In his letter to congregants, Katz noted that Ner Tamid’s trauma stood alongside other crises in the United States, alluding to multiple shootings targeting Asians in California and the release of footage showing police officers beating a Black man to death in Memphis.
“This has been a horrible week for many, for the AAPI community, for the African American community, and yes, for us,” Katz wrote. “If you don’t know what to do in light of this, then offer up support to a community who is equally at a loss. Perhaps in our collective anger and grief, we can find a way out together.”
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The post Rabbi of firebombed N.J. synagogue: ‘We’ve unfortunately been preparing for this’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Turkish FM Hosts Hamas Delegation Ahead of Guarantors Meeting in Istanbul
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan speaks during a press conference following the inaugural meeting of the Balkans Peace Platform, a Turkish-led initiative aimed at fostering dialogue and cooperation across the Western Balkans, in Istanbul, Turkey, July 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Murad Seze
i24 News – Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with Hamas chief Khalil al-Khayya and other senior members of the jihadist group’s political bureau in Istanbul on Saturday.
Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas negotiator, was among the terror chiefs surviving an Israeli strike on their Doha residence last month. Topics of discussion, according to the Turkish foreign ministry, included the state of the ceasefire and the flow of humanitarian aid.
The meeting comes ahead of Monday’s Istanbul gathering of the foreign ministers of the so-called “guarantor countries” as stipulated in the ceasefire plan put forth by the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump. The countries include Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile Israel determined that partial remains of three deceased individuals handed over to Israel by Hamas in Gaza overnight were not those of any of the hostages held in the war-ravaged enclave.
The bodies of 11 hostages are thought to still be in Gaza. Hamas has released 20 living hostages and handed over the remains of 17 others since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on October 10, bringing to a halt the two-year war sparked by the October 7, 2023 massacre.
The U.S.-brokered truce, which left thorny issues like the disarmament of Hamas unresolved, has seen the jihadist group reassert its control over parts of Gaza by brutal reprisals against Palestinians perceived to be hostile to its rule. The outbreaks of violence by Hamas against both Gazans and Israeli forces have tested the fragile truce.
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Syrian President Sharaa Expected to Visit Washington, US Envoy Says
FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
Syrian President Ahmed Sharaa will visit Washington, US Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said on Saturday, in what would be the first visit by a Syrian head of state to the US capital.
During the visit, Syria would “hopefully” join the US-led coalition to defeat Islamic State, Barrack told reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, an annual global security and geopolitical conference.
A Syrian source familiar with the matter said the visit was expected to take place within the next two weeks.
According to the US State Department’s historical list of foreign leader visits, no previous Syrian president has paid an official visit to Washington. Sharaa addressed the UN General Assembly in New York in September.
Since seizing power from Bashar al-Assad last December, Sharaa has made a series of foreign trips as his transitional government seeks to re-establish Syria’s ties with world powers that had shunned Damascus during Assad’s rule.
Barrack said Washington was aiming to recruit Syria to join the coalition Washington has led since 2014 to fight against Islamic State, the terrorist group that controlled around a third of Syria and Iraq at its peak between 2014 and 2017.
“We are trying to get everybody to be a partner in this alliance, which is huge for them,” Barrack said.
Sharaa once led Syria’s offshoot of Al Qaeda, but a decade ago his anti-Assad rebel group broke away from the network founded by Osama bin Laden, and later clashed with Islamic State.
The US-led coalition and its local partners drove Islamic State from its last stronghold in Syria in 2019. The group has been attempting to exploit the fall of the Assad regime to stage a comeback in Syria and neighboring Iraq, sources told Reuters in June.
SYRIA-ISRAEL DE-ESCALATION TALKS
Barrack earlier told the summit that Syria and Israel continued to hold de-escalation talks, which the US has been mediating. He told reporters that Syria and Israel were close to reaching an agreement but declined to say when exactly a deal could be reached.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
The Syrian source said the US is pushing for a security agreement to be agreed with Israel by the time Sharaa visits Washington.
Israel and Syria have been Middle East adversaries for decades. Despite the overthrow of Assad last December, territorial disputes and deep-seated political mistrust between the two countries remain.
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US CENTCOM Publishes Video Showing Hamas Looting Aid Truck
Hamas terrorists commandeering and looting an aid track in Gaza. Photo: From social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law. Via i24
i24 News – The US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) on Saturday published a video showing Hamas operatives commandeering and looting an aid truck that traveled as part of a humanitarian convoy delivering needed assistance from international partners to Gazans in northern Khan Younis.
The coordination center was alerted through video surveillance from a U.S. MQ-9 aerial drone flying overhead to monitor implementation of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, the statement said.
Operatives attacked the driver and stole the aid and truck after moving the driver to the road’s median. The driver’s status is unknown.
The CNCC is a coordination hub, established in southern Israel near the Gaza border to facilitate humanitarian, logistical, and security efforts, monitor the ceasefire agreement, and promote stabilization.
“Over the past week, international partners have delivered more than 600 trucks of commercial goods and aid into Gaza daily,” the statement read. “This incident undermines these efforts. Nearly 40 nations and international organizations represented at the CMCC are working together to help flow humanitarian, logistical and security assistance into Gaza.”