Assailants firebombed a synagogue in a Montreal suburb for the second time in just over a year, the latest in a series of attacks on Canadian Jewish institutions since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel.
Mordecai Zeitz, the emeritus rabbi at Congregation Beth Tikvah, a modern Orthodox synagogue in the suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, said the congregants met for morning prayers outside the synagogue.
“We were able to recite the morning prayers in an abbreviated way,” he said.”We did not close even if we had to go outside to avoid the fires on the inside, but we had the fires of Jewish identity and Jewish pride very much front and center, in front of the charred doors of the synagogue,” Zeitz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Flames were seen rising from the building at around 3 a.m. local time. Police later said they found an “incendiary device” near the scene.stensible encouragement of antisemitism.
Witnesses saw a “suspicious man” leave the area right after the fire broke out, she said, and a another building belonging to a Jewish community group was also damaged nearby.
