(Jewish Group) Near Texas synagogue, a 'bubble' is pierced by attack

COLLEYVILLE, Texas – Lisa Bain Grossman, who lives next door to Congregation Beth Israel, had a sign on her front lawn Sunday that read “Love” with a Star of David in place of the “o.”

Grossman said she had made the sign back in 2018, when 11 people were shot dead during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, distributing copies at an interfaith vigil Beth Israel hosted following that attack. Now, her own community was at the center of a national discussion of antisemitism and synagogue safety, after a British man with a gun disrupted Beth Israel’s Shabbat services and held its rabbi and three others hostage for hours.

“We feel like we’re in a bubble here but we’re really not,” Grossman told a television crew from NBC News, adding that the police had banged on her door Saturday morning as the hostage crisis began and ordered her to evacuate.

The neighborhood around Beth Israel was swarming with journalists, law enforcement officers and well-wishers all day Sunday, after the hostages escaped unharmed and their captor, Malik Faisal Akram, died late Saturday. Police and federal agents flowed in and out of the synagogue and emergency vehicles blocked off the road in front of it, amid an otherwise calm suburban swath of new mansions and manicured lawns.

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