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By Steve Gorman
Jan 12 (Reuters) – Federal arson charges were filed on Monday against a man accused of setting fire to the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, home to the state’s first Jewish congregation and an institute providing religious school programs for Jews across the U.S. Deep South.
The blaze in the early morning hours of January 10 caused extensive damage to the building shared by the Beth Israel Congregation and the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, leaving the facility indefinitely closed.
Acting on a tip from the suspect’s father, authorities detained Stephen Spencer Pittman on the evening of the fire, who according to an FBI affidavit had admitted to starting the blaze in a series of text messages to his family.
Under questioning by investigators, Pittman confessed to torching Beth Israel “due to the building’s Jewish ties,” the FBI said in its affidavit, quoting him as referring to the temple as the “synagogue of Satan.” But he was not charged with a federal hate crime.
The single-page criminal complaint instead charged Pittman with the federal arson offense of deliberately setting fire to a building used in interstate commerce. The accompanying affidavit noted that institute housed in the building provides rabbinical services and Jewish education programs to Jewish congregations in a dozen Southern states besides Mississippi.
It was not immediately clear if the suspect has legal representation.
According to its website, Beth Israel was founded in 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln was elected president, making it the oldest Jewish congregation in the state, and has always been the only synagogue in Mississippi’s capital city.
The building that burned on Saturday had served as the congregation’s temple since 1967. The synagogue was the target of a Ku Klux Klan bombing that year, as it was the home of the congregation’s then rabbi, who was active in the Civil Rights movement at the time, Beth Israel’s website said.
Court documents filed by federal prosecutors also cite as evidence surveillance camera footage showing a hooded individual walking around the interior of the building apparently dousing contents with flammable liquid from a large container.
The suspect allegedly told investigators he had stopped at a service station on his way to the synagogue that morning to buy gasoline he used to set the fire, according to the affidavit.
The FBI said a cell phone linked to the suspect and the torch lighter he was believed to have used to ignite the blaze were also recovered from the scene.
The investigators said their evidence was further corroborated by burns on the suspect’s body.
The synagogue arson comes amid a dramatic spike in incidents of antisemitism reported in the U.S. in recent years.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Don Durfee and Michael Perry)
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