My Family’s Synagogue Was Burned Down. How Is This Not a Hate Crime?
What happens when crimes against religion are not hate crimes, and anti-Semitism is not just the hatred of Jews?
My family synagogue was burned to the ground in Duluth, Minnesota, last week. The televised image of a Jewish sanctuary on fire was an ancestral trauma made real. Six sacred scrolls were lost to the flames.
My stages of grief have not been discrete in the days since, but are lived simultaneously: shock, fear, guilt for not visiting, and, after an arrest was made, rage. But mostly and overwhelmingly, I am lost.
The fire was arson. It was not, we are told, a hate crime.
James Amiot, a 36-year-old white man, set ablaze the sukkah, the traditional Jewish structure built for autumn festivals. As the flames spread, he spat on the fire in hopes of extinguishing it. He then walked away. The fire spread to the sanctuary. By morning, a congregation founded by my great-great-grandfather was reduced to ashes.
It is not clear if the community will rebuild.
The investigation is ongoing. There is “no reason to believe this is a bias or hate crime,” Duluth Police Chief Mike Tusken said at a press conference Sunday. “That may change,”…
