Synagogue Threatened By Bomb Plot Is Opening Its Shabbat Services To The Public
The Colorado synagogue that was targeted by a white supremacist would-be bomber has said that the public is welcome to attend Friday evening services this Sabbath.
Rabbi Birdie Becker, the leader of Temple Emanuel, in Pueblo, also noted that the synagogue will now install external security cameras in response to the bombing threat.
The man arrested for the plot, Richard Holzer, 27, planned the bombing with people he thought were fellow white supremacists and anti-Semites, but were in fact FBI agents. On Friday evening last week, during the supposed final preparations for the bombing, the agents arrested Holzer. We was expected to appear in federal court Friday.
Becker told local news station KRCC that despite the new security measures — the synagogue’s president recently told news media that he encourages the carrying of guns in synagogue — the community wanted the synagogue to remain open and hospitable.
“We’ll still come together as a community,” she said. “Life goes on. Celebrating goes on, rituals go on, this does not change any of that. It never has. Anti-Semitism has been around for a long time.”
Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO