(Jewish Group) When a Molotov cocktail thrown at your synagogue scrambles your Sunday
Our Sundays here in a comfortable New Jersey suburb are often structured around how many times we have to shuttle back and forth to synagogue.
Today, we were meant to bring our 15-year-old daughter there by 9:30 a.m. for her weekly gig babysitting the small children of a woman studying for her adult bat mitzvah, then return to pick her up at 11. The husband was headed over at 2 p.m. for Purim spiel rehearsal (he’s the director). And I had to pick up the Dutch oven I’d dropped off on Friday with veggie chili I made for this weekend’s Shabbaton.
Instead, we got a staccato text message at 9:20 a.m.: “Religious school is closed today due to an act of antisemitic vandalism at 3 a.m. last night. Police are investigating. No one is hurt, No major damage. Check email.”
Surveillance cameras at the synagogue, Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, had caught a man approaching the entrance from the parking lot, the way my kids and I have a thousand times. The footage showed him lighting a bottle on fire and throwing it at the front door. By afternoon, the Bloomfield police had put out the photo, calling him a suspect in an attempted arson.
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