On Jan. 15 a man took four people including a rabbi hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel outside of Dallas for 10 hours, and while each hostage was rescued safely, the suspect was pronounced dead.
According to a report by NBC, the incident happened at 10:41 a.m. in what was a reform synagogue in Colleyville, which sits about 30 miles northwest of Dallas. The four hostages, all adults, were held by a man demanding that an inmate held in a North Texas federal prison, Aafia Siddiqui, be released.
Siddiqui was reportedly convicted in 2010 for attempting to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan. One hostage was released just after 5 p.m. and by 9 p.m. the FBI hostage rescue team stormed the synagogue and rescued the rest, according to Colleyville Police Chief Michael Miller. The cause of death of the suspect was not released. President Joe Biden has since called this “an act of terror.”
Members of the Austin Jewish community have spoken out about the incident and how it hit extremely close to home.
“My heart [was] just really, really just struggling to watch this situation unfold: Another Jewish institution and specifically a synagogue that's being attacked,” said Rabbi Daniel Septimus in an interview with KVUE. “But this one is even more personal for me, as I know Rabbi [Charlie] Cytron-Walker really well. We were in rabbinical school together.”
Septimus said this was a show of the Jewish community’s strength and resiliency. He said that anti-semitism is not only on the rise in the U.S., but all around the world.
Members of the University of Texas’s Texas Hillel were also bothered by the event, including Olivia Zelling who told KVUE her family attended Congregation Beth Israel until recently. She even had her bat mitzvah with Rabbi Citron-Walker, who was the rabbi taken hostage. The Austin-area Anti-Defamation League has responded to several incidents recently. One involved a fire at the Congregation Beth Israel in Austin. There were also anti-Semitic signs and stickers in local parks. However, the local Jewish people are using this as a way to make their community stronger in the face of evil.
“I've had people come to me and say that they almost want to double down on their Jewish strength from seeing all of this," Austin-area Anti-Defamation League Regional Director Renee Lafair told KVUE. "The Jewish community here is tired, angry, a little weary and grateful to the greater community for supporting us in what has been kind of, you know, a really bad few months.”