20 | OCTOBER 17 • 2019 

In the German city of Halle, 
Yom Kippur services were 
suddenly interrupted by shots 
being fired near a synagogue, 
killing two people.
AP News reported an attack-
er tried to enter the synagogue 
but was repelled by the syna-
gogue’
s doors that were secured 
shut. The assailant was said to 

have fired shots and thrown 
grenades at the synagogue.
Fifty-one worshipers, includ-
ing 10 American youths, were 
in the synagogue at the time of 
the attack. The gunman shot a 
woman dead at a nearby Jewish 
cemetery, threw a grenade at a 
kebab shop, and then fired at it, 
killing a man.

Later, residents were given 
the all clear, and reports said 
that there was only one gun-
man.
CNN quoted a German 
security official as saying that 
the ideology driving the attack 
was from the far right.
SITE, a private intelligence 
group based in the U.S., said on 
Twitter that the shooters had 
posted video on a gaming site 
and that one of them had said, 
in English, that the “root of all 
problems are Jews.”

The suspect was identified 
by the German press late 
Wednesday night, Oct. 9, as 
Stephan Balliet, a 27-year-old 
German from the nearby state 
of Saxony-Anhalt, according to 
the Telegraph. 
Security was increased at 
synagogues around Germany 
in the wake of the attack. 
Identities of the victims have 
not yet been revealed.
Members of the European 
Parliament held a moment of 
silence for the victims. 

2 Killed in Shooting Near 
German Synagogue

W

hen Temple Jacob 
in Hancock, Mich., 
was vandalized 
with swastikas and SS logos 
in September, the community 
rallied together to clean the 
graffiti.
Support continues to pour 
in for Temple Jacob. Just before 
Rosh Hashanah, President 
David Holden and the syna-
gogue board initiated a com-
munity-focused response to 
share the positive outcomes that 
resulted from the Nazi graffiti.
Holden consulted with Pastor 
Bucky Beach of Good Shepherd 
Lutheran Church and Debbie 
Massarano, Temple Jacob’
s 
service leader for the High 
Holidays. Together, the group 
decided to host two events: 
a community discussion and 
a community-wide Kabbalat 

Shabbat service on Friday, Oct. 
4.
The first community discus-
sion was held Wednesday, Oct. 
2, at Good Shepherd, where 
roughly 25 members from 
different churches, Temple 
Jacob, Hancock City Council, 
plus several faculty members 
from Michigan Technological 
University and teachers from 
area schools were in attendance.
Participants discussed other 
ways that hate, intolerance and 
bigotry could show up in their 
community. They also formu-
lated different strategies on how 

to address these broader issues.
The result of this community 
meeting was to continue to 
grow the visibility of Keweenaw 
Faiths United, an interfaith 
group started recently to pro-
vide support for inclusiveness 
and diversity.
“The discussion also focused 
on strategic thinking on whom 
we should approach to have 
maximum impact — specific 
influential religious groups, our 
target groups for education and 
modeling,
” Holden said. “We 
also focused on what sort of 
messaging is appropriate for the 

Keweenaw Faiths United that all 
can get behind.
”
Temple Jacob continues to 
enhance security and has seen 
service attendance for the High 
Holidays nearly double, with 
many people making trips in 
from far outside the Houghton-
Hancock area.
In response to heightened 
security, the Jewish Federation 
of Metropolitan Detroit worked 
with Michigan Technological 
University’
s Public Safety 
Department and the Hancock 
Police Department to assist 
Temple Jacob in finding a 
capable security detail for their 
congregants.
Since Temple Jacob is almost 
100 miles away from a large 
city, private security firms don’
t 
exist in the area. Holden said he 
appreciated the work that Gary 
Sikorski, Federation’
s director 
of community-wide security, 
and his team did to help con-
gregants feel at ease during 
services.
“The vandalism has served 
only to pump more life into 
these groups of committed 
folks,” Holden said. “It has 
awakened some of us to the 
fact that these are daily prob-
lems that exist at many levels 
of our community — in ways 
that are invisible to lots of us 
— and need to be addressed 
with the same firm resolution 
that this is not who we are as a 
community.” 

Jews in the D

Detroit federartion provided security 
assistance for the High Holidays.
Detroit federartion provided security

Temple Jacob Continues to
 Unite the Community

CORRIE COLF STAFF WRITER
PHOTOS COURTESY OF DAVID HOLDEN

JN STAFF

