The emotion was palpable in the pews Friday night at Beth Israel Congregation’s first Shabbat service since its synagogue was targeted by an arsonist last week.
Mississippi
Mississippi synagogue holds first Shabbat since arson | The Jerusalem Post
“We will not only survive, we will thrive,” the congregation’s student rabbi and spiritual leader, Benjamin Russell, told his community. He was draped in the only surviving tallit from the synagogue’s library, where the arsonist lit the fire.
“A few days ago, someone tried to wound us, someone tried to destroy what we love, someone tried to tell us that we do not belong in our own city, that being visibly Jewish is dangerous, that being proudly Jewish is a risk, that being a synagogue is an invitation for hatred,” Russell said. “What they failed to understand is that we are not made of wood and paper and shelves. We are made of Torah, memory, community, stubborn love, and 3000 years of defiance.”
Roughly 170 Beth Israel congregants filled Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson on Friday night, after the church lent its space to the displaced community.
Founded in 1860, Beth Israel has always been the only synagogue in Mississippi’s capital. The arson attack last week, which burnt out the synagogue’s library and destroyed two of its Torahs, was not the first time that Beth Israel’s congregants were faced with the task of rebuilding. In 1967, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the synagogue, and, months later, also targeted the home of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum after he advocated for civil rights and desegregation.
Reflecting on the congregation’s 160-year-old roots in Jackson, Russell said, “We have prayed through wars, depressions, pandemics, demographic shifts, and antisemitism in every decade, and every single time we did more than survive, we adapted, we rebuilt, we showed up, and that is exactly what we are doing and will continue to do now.”
Throughout the service, little mention was made of the suspect who confessed to the arson, Stephen Spencer Pittman, a 19-year-old resident of a suburb of Jackson who told the FBI that he had targeted Beth Israel because it was a “synagogue of Satan.”
Standing outside of the charred entrance to the synagogue earlier in the day Friday, Abram Orlansky, a lifelong Jackson resident and past president of Beth Israel Congregation, said that most of the conversations within the congregation had not revolved around Pittman.
“To the extent we’re talking about him, we’re just saying what he wanted to do was interrupt or destroy Jewish life in Jackson, and all he’s going to succeed at is making it more vibrant,” said Orlansky. “All he’s done is reaffirm the connection between this Jewish community and this city.”
Multiple Churches offered to host congregation for Shabbat
On Thursday, a host of Christian faith leaders and Jackson city officials said a prayer for the congregation during a citywide prayer service. Zach Shemper, the president of Beth Israel Congregation, said more than 10 churches had offered to host the synagogue for Shabbat.
“We’ve been persecuted for thousands of years, and just like we survived that, we will survive this,” said Shemper outside of the synagogue. “All this atrocity did was relocate where we’re having services.”
Support from other Jewish congregations across the South was also visible throughout the services.
Temple B’Nai Israel, a Reform synagogue in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, lent the community a Torah as well as 50 prayer books. A synagogue in Memphis, Tennessee, sent another 100 prayer books.
The oneg after services was provided by Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, Louisiana, and included a pecan praline challah king cake, a Jewish twist on the traditional Mardi Gras dessert.
The challah king cake loomed large over the evening. When Shemper announced the pastry at the end of the service, several children in the audience cheered, and audience members applauded.
On Friday morning, Orlansky showed a photo of the cake on his phone and said, “That’s Jewish southern culture,” adding that there is a store in New Orleans called “Kosher Cajun.”
In Jackson, a city with no explicitly Jewish establishments or cultural centers, Beth Israel has acted as a central hub of Jewish communal life. (The city’s only Jewish restaurant, Olde-Tyme Deli, closed in 2000 after serving the Jewish community for 39 years.)
“We are the minority in the area, and so we don’t have all of the Jewish delis and JCC down the road and all of those things,” Russell said. “Our synagogue is that place for us to meet.”
About a 45-minute drive from the synagogue is Jacobs Camp, a Jewish summer camp run by the Union of Reform Judaism.
Sarah Thomas, the synagogue’s first vice president, read an address by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the URJ’s president, aloud during the service.
“Beth Israel family, like our ancestors, who endured the plague of hate and still found light, we think of all of you and know that there’s much light in your midst,” Jacobs said in the comments. “We pray that you continue to bask in the light of community and the light of solidarity and the light of hope for better days ahead.”
In the absence of Jewish infrastructure in Jackson, Russell said the congregants “make every space that we are in Jewish by our own presence there.”
According to Russell, some of the local spots that have become surrogate Jewish spaces include Myrtle Farms, a brewery, and Thai Tasty, a restaurant, a short walk from Beth Israel.
Russell said that Thai Tasty had become so popular with his congregants that he now announces during services when its owners are on their annual month-long trip to Thailand.
“Something that we see across the South’s Jewish communities is that there is a level of pride, because you may be the only Jewish person in your high school,” said Russell. “I think there’s just a little bit of charm in that resilience or that stubbornness that we have that says we’re going to be here, we’re going to always be here.”
In high school, Orlansky recalled, there were two other Jewish students in his grade. Today, he said his two children are the “only Jewish kids in their class, or either class on either side of them.” That makes Beth Israel a haven, he said.
Representing Jewish community both an ‘honor’ and a ‘challenge’
“A shared experience I have with my kids is being able to come to this building and not be the sort of constant representative of the Jewish people to everyone you know,” said Orlansky.
Orlansky said that the responsibility of representing the Jewish community was both an “honor” and a “challenge.”
“It is an honor to live in a place like this where people ask you about your religion, and people kind of look to you for answers about Judaism, but it can be a challenge, and so having a home where everyone around you is also Jewish is a respite,” he said.
Thomas, who is also a lifelong Beth Israel congregant, said growing up, she was also the only Jewish student in her grade, but when she came to Beth Israel Congregation on Wednesdays and Sundays, she found a “safe space.”
“We talked about things that were happening outside of here and how we were going to respond with our Jewishness to a world, or a community, that was just different, and we knew that here was our safe space,” said Thomas.
Thomas said the Beth Israel building was an “epicenter of life” for the community’s 140 families.
“What I want people to know about the southern Jewish communities, especially the smaller ones, or the only ones within a 90-mile radius, is everything related to Jewish life happens here,” said Thomas.
But while the building had served as a focal point of the community, Thomas added that “the building is not what makes up our community.”
“The building is not what makes up our community; our community is made up of the people,” said Thomas. “We’re going to be in other places, and we’ll make that our home, but really together, we the people are going to be home to one another.”
Shari Rabin, an associate professor of Jewish studies and religion at Oberlin College and the author of the 2025 book “The Jewish South: An American History,” told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the sentiment was common in small Jewish communities in the region.
“Synagogues are such important institutions in these smaller Southern communities,” said Rabin. “This is the center of Jewish life, and it’s really important for Jewish communities there to have a public address to show we’re here, we’re part of the landscape, other Jews can find us here.”
But Rabin said that public visibility also has a potential dark side.
“It can also make these institutions a target for those who are poisoned by various ideologies and decide that they want to make Jews a target,” said Rabin.
Synagogue leaders initially suspected accidental fire
Following the attack last Saturday, most of the synagogue’s leaders said they had initially assumed the fire had been caused by an electrical malfunction or another accident.
While antisemitism has risen across the country, in many Southern states, including Mississippi, the trend has felt less pervasive. From 2022 to 2024, the number of antisemitic incidents in the state rose from 7 to 20, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual antisemitism audit.
“To know that someone could do this in your own community is frightening, but it’s also eye-opening,” said Russell. “We always say, not me, not me, not me, not us, not our community, and I think what I have learned, and my message for everyone, is that you never know.”
The day after the arson attack, Rachel Myers, the second vice president and co-director of the religious school at Beth Israel, hosted the synagogue’s Sunday school at the Mississippi Children’s Museum, where she works as the director of exhibits.
There, Myers showed the class of 14 children a slideshow of the damage inside the synagogue and helped them brainstorm ways to rebuild it. She said one child imagined a cotton candy machine while another said, Let’s do a mural of all the rabbis on the wall.”
“I just was trying to focus on: this thing happened to us, all of these grown-ups around you are the ones that work so hard to make Jewish life happen, and we’re going to continue to make Jewish life happen,” said Myers.
For the teens in the synagogue, Myers said the main question was “why.”
While Myers said she hadn’t yet planned her lesson for the teens, she said she would lead with explaining that “when people are bad and angry, they look for somebody to blame, and in this case, this young person decided to blame Jewish people.”
After being a part of the congregation for almost 20 years, Myers said she had never before experienced antisemitism in Jackson.
“I think I know that there’s a rise of antisemitism, and I think I know that there’s a rise of mis- and disinformation on the internet,” said Myers. “I know there’s crazies on the internet, I don’t read the comments, but the fact that someone, that crazy, left the internet and came and did a physical act of harm to us — it is surprising.”
Russell said that he was concerned for the teens of Jackson.
“I think the biggest thing is we have to watch our kids and our teens, the fact that they’re being radicalized so quickly online by social media and other things on the internet,” said Russell, later adding, “Of course, we have to monitor, but the real antidote is just to stop breathe and love each other, even when we disagree.”
‘I am Jewish and I belong here’
As the congregation mingled over the challah king cake following the service, Joshua Wiener, a Beth Israel Congregation member since 1981, said he believed that Russell and Shemper had represented the community well.
“As [Russell] said, antisemitism has been around since even before Pharaoh, but it hasn’t touched us here, and so I think there’s just shock at what happened, maybe a little relief that it wasn’t worse, and maybe some relief that it was not an organized effort,” Wiener said.
He described Jackson’s Jewish population as a “drop in the bucket,” but said they had always had an “outsize presence and influence, and a lot of that is just because of how welcomed we have been in the community.”
At the end of his sermon, Russell offered an instruction to the worshippers, several of whom were visibly emotional.
“This is the time to say, out loud, I am Jewish, I am proud, this is my community, and I belong here,” he said.
“I want to say something clearly. Beth Israel is still here, Jewish life in Jackson is still here, and we are not going anywhere, because the opposite of fear is not bravery, it is presence,” Russell continued. “Every time we gather, every time we pray, every time we teach a child to read aleph bet, every time we put on a tallis, every time we celebrate a bat mitzvah or mourn with the family, we are safe. We belong, we matter, we will outlive every Pharaoh history produces.”
Jackson State football coach TC Taylor addresses fans at signing day event
Jackson State football coach T.C. Taylor addresses fans at JSU’s recruit reveal event on Feb. 4.
Mississippi leaders and educators are remembering Dr. Elayne Hayes-Anthony as a trailblazing journalist, educator and public servant following news of her death Thursday, March 5.
Hayes-Anthony, a longtime professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Jackson State University and former acting president of the university, spent decades mentoring students and shaping communications education throughout Mississippi.
Jackson State University officials announced her passing in a statement Thursday morning. She was 72. A cause of death was not provided.
Hayes-Anthony served as interim president for eight months in 2023, between former President Thomas Hudson and Marcus Thompson. She became the first Black woman to work as an anchor, producer and reporter at WJTV in Jackson and later spent 17 years as chair of the communications department at Belhaven University. Hayes-Anthony also served as assistant superintendent of communications for Jackson Public Schools and served as the first Black woman and journalism educator to become president of the Mississippi Association of Broadcasters.
Jackson Mayor John Horhn praised Hayes-Anthony in a statement as a “proud daughter of Jackson and a distinguished graduate of Jackson State University who returned home to pour her knowledge back into this community.” Horhn also extended condolences to Hayes-Anthony’s husband, family, colleagues and former students.
“Our city mourns the loss of a trailblazer whose life’s work helped shape generations of communicators, educators, and leaders,” Horhn said in a statement. “As a pioneering journalist and the first African American woman to serve as anchor, producer, and reporter at WJTV-12, she broke barriers in Mississippi media and opened doors for countless Black journalists. Her leadership at Jackson State, from the classroom to the president’s office, reflected her commitment to excellence. Jackson is better because she chose to live, work, and lead here. We honor her legacy, celebrate her remarkable life, and pray for comfort and strength for all who are grieving this tremendous loss.”
Ward 4 Councilman and Jackson City Council President Brian Grizzell, a long time educator and alumnus of JSU, said he remembered Hayes-Anthony from several points in her life and career.
“I remember Dr. Elayne Hayes-Anthony from several stages of her remarkable journey,” Grizzell said. “I first knew her as a student in Jackson Public Schools, later as a student at Jackson State University, and we reconnected years later during her time serving as acting president of Jackson State University.”
Grizzell called Hayes-Anthony a pioneer in education whose work helped shape the lives of many students across the community.
Longtime Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, also a JSU alum, honored Hayes-Anthony as a “a trailblazer in every sense of the word.”
See his post on Facebook below:
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves also offered condolences Thursday via X, formerly known as Twitter.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker also shared the following statement on Hayes-Anthony passing:
“Mississippi has lost a leader and pioneer, my friend Dr. Elayne Anthony. Jackson State benefited from her steady hand during a time of transition. She was revered by its students. The Mississippi Association of Broadcasters recognized her leadership by electing her chair. Elayne’s legacy of kindness, servant-leadership, and community service will impact generations to come.”
Investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell reflected on Hayes-Anthony’s impact on journalism in Mississippi.
“What a loss. Dr. Anthony was truly a champion for journalism. Her work produced so many talented journalists we have today in Mississippi and beyond,” Mitchell said.
State Rep. Zakiya Summers and Sen. David Blount, both of whom represent parts of Jackson in the Mississippi Legislature, also paid tribute to Hayes-Anthony.
Officials with the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Mississippi State Board of Health also shared condolences, noting Hayes-Anthony served on the Board of Health for nearly two decades.
“I personally grieve the loss of a very important Mississippian who cared deeply about education at all levels, public health, and very importantly the need for the health of our population to improve,” said Dan Edney, state health officer and executive director of the Mississippi State Department of Health. “She was a strong supporter of MSDH and for my work as State Health Officer and was one of our greatest cheerleaders. Her passing is a loss to public health and higher education leadership, but her service has helped to make our state a better place.”
Lucius Lampton, chairman of the Board of Health, said Hayes-Anthony’s service on the board began in 2007.
“Dr. Elayne Anthony’s long service on the Board of Health, which began in 2007, was exceptional and benefited the public’s health in countless ways. She led always with intellect, creativity and integrity. The Board of Health and our agency will so miss her gracious presence. I also will miss her dear friendship.”
Charlie Drape is the Jackson beat reporter. You can contact him at cdrape@gannett.com.
BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) — Gas prices along the Mississippi Gulf Coast have jumped to nearly $3 a gallon, up from $2.41 just two days ago, according to AAA.
AAA said the increase is driven by two factors: the U.S.-Iran conflict, which has shut down a key Middle East oil route and prompted attacks on refineries, and a seasonal fuel blend switch that adds up to 15 cents a gallon on its own.
Uber Eats driver James Adams said he noticed the increase immediately.
“It actually jumped like 50 to 60 cents in one day,” Adams said.
Adams said the higher cost to fill his tank cuts directly into his delivery earnings.
“We’re working basically for pennies on the dollar already — and once you factor that in with traffic and the mileage you have to go — the gas is outrageous,” Adams said.
DoorDash driver Daniel Yelle said the spike will strain his weekly budget.
“I fill up about twice a week going to and from work and DoorDash — and that’s going to hurt my budget,” Yelle said.
FedEx driver Cecil Banks said there is little that workers can do about the rise in prices.
“As long as there is wars — the price of gas is going to go up for everybody — so it’s just an unfortunate situation,” Banks said.
Banks noted that even though Mississippi’s prices remain below the national average, not driving is not an option for working families.
“What can you do? A lot of people have families — they have to go get their kids — they have to go back and forth to work,” Banks said.
Yelle echoed that sentiment.
“They don’t pay us enough for the higher gas prices,” Yelle said.
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Mississippi
It’s 2,350 miles long, spans 31 US states and is home to a 100kg animal with a tongue that looks like a worm | Discover Wildlife
The Mississippi River flows for around 2,350 miles through the heart of the US. It drains an area of 1.2 million square miles – that’s roughly 40% of the country – and at certain points is 11 miles wide. It is North America’s second longest river, behind the Missouri River.
Rising from Lake Itasca in Minnesota, the Mississippi winds southwards through a range of environments, draining water from 31 US states before reaching its delta at the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana.
The sheer size of the river and the diversity of habitats it passes through make it a refuge for a huge range of animal species, including more than 260 fish, 326 birds, 50 mammals and at least 145 amphibians and reptiles, according to the National Park Service.
There are many weird and wonderful animals living within the Mississippi’s vast waters, but surely one of the strangest is the alligator snapping turtle.
This prehistoric-looking reptile is massive. It can weigh up to 100kg and males can grow well over half a metre long, making it the largest freshwater turtle in North America.
And as if its size wasn’t enough, the alligator snapper has a host of other characteristics that make it one of the Mississippi’s most striking creatures, including a dark, spiky shell (known as carapace), a brick-like head and a sharp, hooked beak. With such a formidable appearance, it’s easy to see how the turtle got its ‘alligator’ name.
But perhaps the turtle’s most curious feature is a worm-like appendage found on its tongue, which it uses as a lure to catch prey, such as fish, amphibians and invertebrates. Alligator snappers are also quite happy scavenging for food.
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