Standoff has Jewish community alarmed
Rabbis Gideon Estes and Barry Gelman planned a nighttime vigil from Houston, anticipating that they would lead prayers of safety and deliverance for the three people still being held hostage at a Colleyville synagogue Saturday.
Those prayers shifted to ones of joy and thanksgiving by the time they and 300 others gathered at 10 p.m. Saturday night on Zoom, just after the hostages had left the temple physically unharmed. Then came a new day for Jewish community members in Texas — one of anxiety, sadness and recovery.
“We’re resilient and strong, and we will persist,” Estes said. “We have to call out hate when it comes.”
The nation waited in horror Saturday after a man took four hostages, including Rabbi Charlie CytronWalker, during a livestreamed service at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, outside Fort Worth. One hostage was released about 5 p.m. before FBI agents breached the building later in the evening and ended nearly 11 total hours of captivity for the remaining hostages. The hostage-taker, identified Sunday as 44-year-old Malik Faisal Akram of the United Kingdom, was killed in a shooting, authorities said. Law enforcement officials did not immediately clarify whether he killed himself or was shot by responders, but witnesses said they heard a loud bang and gunfire before the incident resolved.
The horror quickly extended beyond the Dallas-Fort Worth Jewish community, affecting worshippers around the state and country. Debbie Karakowsky, 39, said she felt frightened and hyper-aware about the implications of the hostage situation.
“Even though it wasn’t happening in my community, it felt as if it were,” said Karakowsky, of Bellaire.
Gathering as a community is a large part of what Judaism stands for, said Senior Associate Rabbi Adrienne Scott of Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. That makes attacks on synagogues even more personal.
“You have a gut reaction of fear,” said Scott, who knows CytronWalker from her time in seminary. “And then to find it’s truly happening in your backyard with a friend and a colleague, it brings a whole new dimension of relatability and empathy.
Abby Hemstreet, 44, added that she worried less about the immediate dangers she felt than about law enforcement’s hesitancy to initially call the act antisemitism. Matthew DeSarno, special agent in charge of the FBI Dallas field office, said Saturday night that “we do believe that, from engaging with the subject, (the hostage-taker) was singularly focused on one issue and it was not specifically re
lated to the Jewish community.”
“That was a targeted act,” Hemstreet said. “We need to continue taking more steps in securing funds for security efforts and encouraging our state, federal and local politicians to support those efforts.”
The Jewish Federation of Greater Houston held a news conference Sunday decrying antisemitism and reiterating the right to live and worship peacefully. The Anti-Defamation League has tracked a rise in antisemitism in recent years, counting 2,024 antisemitic incidents throughout the United States in 2020.
“Any time there is an attack on a place of worship, especially during active worship, that is an antisemitic act,” said Renée WizigBarrios, the federation’s founder and CEO. “It’s incredibly ironic that this synagogue was praying for peace and worshipping peacefully and welcoming anyone of course who chose to worship with them. … And they were attacked.”
Many Jewish communities are already focused on security, and Houston is no different, Wizig-Barrios said. The group hosted active shooter training for Jewish institutions in July 2020, and it connected eight institutions to $1 million in Homeland Security Department grant funding to support building security measures.
Wizig-Barrios also announced Sunday a new community service initiative to hire a full-time director who can act as an expert security adviser, liaison and training coordinator for the local Jewish community. Made possible through $1 million of funding over three years, the director will be a local representative of the Secure Communities Network. The more comprehensive security measures were already being planned before the events in Colleyville.
Luis Gomar, 43, said it is an unfortunate reality that these types of measures are necessary.
“Even though this is exactly what you want to avoid, I had concerns about taking my kids to Sunday school this morning at our synagogue in Houston,” Gomar said. “We hope that one day we won’t worry about these things.”
Authorities are investigating how and why Akram entered the Colleyville synagogue. Leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization, said in a statement that the hostagetaker planned the attack by “posing as a homeless man.”
The synagogue’s livestream viewers — numbering more than 8,000 — could hear an angry man ranting, at times talking about religion, before it was taken offline about 2 p.m., according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The four people who were taken hostage were running the service.
The hostage-taker asked for his “sister” to be released from prison — possibly a reference to a known terrorist, Aafia Siddiqui, who is housed at a women’s prison in Fort Worth, a U.S. official briefed on the matter told ABC News. An attorney who previously represented a brother of Siddiqui said he was not the hostagetaker, according to the StarTelegram.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the incident in a statement.
David Bent, 46, watched Estes’ prayer service Saturday night and said he was heartened by the interfaith support there.
That level of interfaith dialogue has reiterated to Bent the importance of remaining inclusive while the community heals, he said.
“This is where you open your doors wider,” said Bent, of Houston. “You do it safe and smart, but you open your doors wider. This is the only way this type of thing goes away.”