If you go looking on the home page of the Star Tribune for a story on the wild anti-Semitic attack at Michigan’s Temple Israel yesterday, you won’t find it. Ditto re the terrorist attack and murder at Old Dominion University. It’s not for want of space on the home page. The Star Tribune home page lists more than 40 stories, columns, and features.
Yesterday’s terrorist stories just aren’t deemed that important by the powewrs-that-be at the Star Tribune. Not as important, anyway, as the story reporting “St. Paul police investigating allegation that Macalester professor urinated on student’s backpack” (“Police said they are weighing whether to pursue charges”).
Using the Star Tribune search engine, however, I find this absurd AP story: “The Latest: Man fatally shot attacking Michigan synagogue.” The AP story reports: “The name and possible motives of the suspect were not disclosed.”
The AP story is already stale. The Department of Homeland Security has identified the suspect in the Temple Israel attack as naturalized citizen Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, formerly of Lebanon.
Listening to news of the wild attack attack at the synagogue yesterday, my thoughtw turned to Temple Israel in Minneapolis. Like Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, it’s the state’s largest Reform Jewish congregation and one of the largest Jewish congregations in the United States.
Minneapolis’s Temple Israel has been the subject of anti-Semitic vandalism. The local paper might want to follow up with a story on the lengths to which the local Temple Israel has had to go to protect congregants from the kind of violence to which Michigan’s Temple Israel was subjected yesterday.
The local paper might also want to explore the concerns facing every publicly known gathering of Jews in Minnesota. Take, for example, the opening of the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis’s Longfellow neighborhood this past October. A uniformed security officer stood guard conspicuously packing heat.
The film — Midas Man, a biopic telling the story of Beatles manager Brian Epstein — was of course open to the public, but the film festival is notably “Jewish,” the name of the festival was included on the theater’s marquee, and the film attracted a largely Jewish audience. As in attending high holiday services, we were taking our lives in our hands to attend the event, if you know what I mean.
The local paper might want to interview a few represenatives of the local Jewish community about the way we live now. Isn’t it wearing? What is to be done? Speaking for myself, I can say it’s wearing and I’ve got a few ideas about what is to be done.
The day of the opening of the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival, by the way, “Fridley man” Firomsa Ahmed Umar was charged with two counts of arson in connection with the late-night firebombing of a Minneapolis ice cream shop. He allegedly struck late the evening before and again the following day. Once was not enough.
Umar’s motive remains unclear. Speculation ranges from the LGBTQ flag that the ice cream shop had affixed to the building and to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s residence with his family on the same block in a loft apartment. Frey is Jewish. Perhaps Umar had Frey in mind. Perhaps was expressing support for Frey opponent Ahmed Fateh in the then upcoming election.
The LGBTQ flag thing seemed like a stretch to me. There is no shortage of LGBTQ flags around town. Why pick on Fletcher’s Ice Cream and Cafe? Maybe Umar was protesting ice cream.
The adjacency of Frey’s residence was also a stretch. Umar went back a second time to target the shop. It is unlikely that Frey was his intended target.
Umar’s motive may have been overdetermined. Unfortunately, we will probably have to await word from Umar himself. But there is no shortage of reasons for Minnesota Jews to have Temple Israel on their minds today — both Michigan’s and Minneapolis’s — despite the lack of interest reflected in the Minnesota Star Tribune and the stale AP story.
