Texas Synagogue In Colleyville Reopens Three Months After Hostage Crisis

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Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, has reopened nearly three months after an armed assailant took four members hostage at the synagogue, NBC reported.

The Reform synagogue’s services were streaming online from various locations while the building was being restored following the crisis on Jan. 15, in which four congregants were held hostage for nearly 12 hours. One hostage was released several hours before the three others were freed, after the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team stormed the synagogue. The armed hostage-taker, 44-year-old British national Malik Faisal Akram, was killed at the scene.

“I’ll tell you, it’s not always an easy thing to be Jewish in our area. It’s not an easy thing, especially for our kids going through school,” he told NBC. “We had really great relationships and still, it wasn’t always easy. So to get the outpouring we received meant the world to us.”

Anna Eisen, a founding member of Congregation Beth Israel, said: “People I didn’t know in my community were praying for us. Churches in Coppell were organizing prayer services. … Every act of love, of friendship, of support really lifts us up. It was a wonderful thing not to feel alone, not to feel disregarded.”

 

He also noted that the building now has enhanced safety measures, like an iron fence, as well as more police and security. JNS

{Matzav.com}


2 COMMENTS

  1. The building should remain permanently closed. For every moment it’s open they are creating a chillul Hashem. Michalel Shabbos bifarhesia!

  2. It’s a Deformed temple, rather than a synagogue, and it reopened just in time for its leadership to celebrate Ramadan with their Muslim brothers. Many temples do that, as idiotic as it would seem to anyone with a cat’s intellect.

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