Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Utah company embroiled in antisemitism scandal makes ‘game changer’ donation to local synagogue

Executives at Entrata, the Utah company whose founder was ousted last week over an antisemitic screed, called on a local rabbi to help them understand the roots of their former colleague’s bigotry.

Rabbi Sam Spector was met by a level of angst and a gift he did not expect on Friday. He left Entrata’s offices with a six-figure pledge from the company to complete his synagogue’s capital campaign — funds that will allow the congregation to, among other needs, buy a new boiler and repair damaged Torah scrolls.

“They’re all just crying and saying this has been the worst week of any of their lives,” Spector said.

Spector said he walked executives at the property management software company through the history of classic antisemitic conspiracy theories like the blood libel and the claim that Jews were responsible for spreading the Black Plague through Medieval Europe.

Rabbi Sam Spector

Rabbi Sam Spector said he was taken aback by Entrata’s offer to cover much of his synagogue’s capital campaign goal. Courtesy of Congregation Kol Ami

But Spector said Entrata’s chief executive Adam Edmunds wanted to do more –- something big for the state’s Jewish community –- and asked Spector what his Congregation Kol Ami, which serves 350 families in Salt Lake City, needed most.

“My synagogue is falling apart, basically,” Spector said. The building is 50 years old. The bathrooms, seating and even the prayer books haven’t been replaced in decades. The total for the boiler alone, crucial during Utah winters, came to $150,000.

“They said, ‘We’re going to take care of all that for you,’ and they made the largest donation we’ve ever seen,” Spector said.

The scandal at Entrata began last week when David Bateman, its former CEO, emailed a rant to leading figures across Utah claiming that the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine were “a sadistic effort” to kill Americans orchestrated by Jews, who he also accused of taking over the Catholic Church.

Bateman, one of the most prolific donors to Republican and conservative causes of the state, was known for his fringe views. But this email had gone too far, and he was forced to sell all his shares in Entrata, the software development firm he co-founded in 2003.

Spector declined to share the exact amount of the Entrata donation, but said it was a six-figure contribution that would allow the synagogue to complete most of a capital campaign it had been struggling to fund.

“So many of these things we had no clue how we would get them,” Spector said. “This is a total game changer for us.”

Entrata also plans to invite Spector back to address its entire workforce of 2,500 employees located in both the United States and India, and Gov. Spencer Cox has invited Spector and other Jewish leaders to meet with him to discuss how to combat antisemitism in the state.

“We are fully committed to continuing to work with Jewish leaders to provide education for not only our company but for the broader community as we work with them directly to fight antisemitism,” Edmunds, the CEO, said in a statement to the Forward. He also confirmed the company’s donation to Kol Ami.

Tech mogul and conspiracy theorist

Bateman, a leader in the Silicon Slopes community –- Utah’s answer to California’s Silicon Valley –- is no common internet troll. According to an investigative report by the Salt Lake Tribune, Bateman was by far Utah’s biggest political donor in the 2018 election cycle. More than half of the $777,454 he spent that year went towards fighting SB 54, a law that weakened the power of the Utah Republican Party in the primary process, and which the party incurred massive debts fighting in court. Bateman agreed to pay off the $410,000 debt —- rescuing the state party from bankruptcy —- on the condition the party not drop the lawsuit.

When Spector first heard about the email, he figured it for just another case of antisemitism in Utah. In May, a swastika was drawn on the Salt Lake City Chabad center. Ten years ago, a man fired three shots through Kol Ami’s windows. The congregation gathered in 2018 for active shooter training after the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh.

Spector said he was heartened to see the company and political leaders across the state condemn Bateman, but never expected that Entrata’s response would go beyond severing its relationship with their founder.

“We hear stories about people who hate us constantly,” Spector said. “I have never seen any company step up in this way to say, ‘We’re going to do what we can to be a good ally and train our company to be good allies to the Jewish community.’”

Staff writer Louis Keene contributed to this report

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.