Unburned quantities of an unknown flammable liquid were discovered on the scene, and, even on Sunday morning, the burned back patio bore a gasoline-like odor. Inside, the sanctuary smelled of smoke.
Dashiell Ferguson arrived at 7:50 Sunday morning expecting to study the Rambam with Rabbi Judah Dardik. Instead he learned firefighting terms like “small diameter hoseline” and “overhauling.”
The former is the device the Oakland Fire Department used to quench three separate small fires along the building’s perimeter after receiving a 911 call at 11:54 p.m. on Saturday night.
The latter term refers to a fire department practice of peeling back siding on a building to search for hidden flames within the walls — which, at Beth Jacob, resulted in some of the most visible alterations to the building, along with charred wood and blackened metal on the wall behind the sanctuary.
“There are children’s toys out there. Whoever poured that gas had to walk past or trip over children’s toys,” said a visibly frustrated Ferguson, a student at San Francisco State University. “I’m still dazed out from all this.”
Other congregants were put in the difficult position of explaining the event to their children.
“Daddy, what happened?” asked toddler Hanna Marcus to her father, Ben, as they walked through the temple’s sanctuary. “Somebody tried to put a fire in our shul,” he explained to Hanna and her brother, Jordan.
“It’s very difficult. I tell them it’s part of the world and we can’t hide,” Ben Marcus later told the Bulletin. “Someone asked me if the kids would be at school on Monday, and I said if they didn’t go it’d be mission accomplished for whoever did this. You have to go about living your life.”
While congregants, media representatives and police and fire investigators intermingled in the sanctuary, singing echoed from the shul’s second story, as Adina Stallman celebrated her bat mitzvah.
“This is very disconcerting because you’re always immune, you think. But no one is immune, obviously,” said Adina’s mother, Lisa, on Monday. She is a teacher at Oakland Hebrew Day School along with her husband, Rabbi Moshe Stallman.
Adina “was fine with it, she was very articulate. It was her day.”
The Stallmans never considered delaying or moving the event.
“Not at all,” said Lisa Stallman. “It’s my shul. I feel safe, you know?”
Dardik joked with reporters on Sunday and played with his not-quite 2-year-old son Aharon Akiva. Yet he couldn’t contain his outrage at the events of Saturday night.
“People in the world have hate and anger and there are proper ways to express anger and there are ways that are completely unacceptable to the community,” he said. “I’m frustrated, I’m angry and I just want to do something. People decided to take out their hatred on us, and I want to get them.”
Dardik characterized the structure’s physical damage as minor, and temple administrators said Tuesday that no estimate had been reached yet. The rabbi added that tapes from the synagogue’s security camera have been handed over to the Oakland Police Department.
Jonathan Bernstein, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the ADL and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the fire. ATF agents were on the scene Sunday, and FBI agents are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
Like many East Bay Jewish organizations, Beth Jacob has received anti-Israel and anti-Semitic letters in the last couple of weeks. The letters hail from an unknown source — or sources.
Gas cans were found atop San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Israel-Judea in March, Bernstein pointed out, meaning the fire at Beth Jacob could be the second anti-Semitic arson incident in less than two months. These incidents are the first Bernstein can recall since Benjamin and James Williams torched three Sacramento-area synagogues in 1999.