When fire tore through Mississippi’s oldest synagogue earlier this year, it left behind charred walls, destroyed sacred scrolls, and a grieving congregation more than 1,300 miles from the Colorado Rockies. Today, thanks to the steady hands of B’nai Vail Rabbi Joel Newman—one of America’s few master Torah scribes—five of those damaged Torahs are being painstakingly restored, transforming a story of antisemitic destruction into one of resilience and renewal.
On January 10, 2026, an arsonist set fire to Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi, the state’s oldest synagogue. Two Torahs were destroyed and five were damaged in the flames. It was the second time in the congregation’s history that it was attacked with fire: in 1967, the temple was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. A Holocaust-era Torah on permanent display in a glass case survived unscathed, but the five damaged scrolls could not be used again without a master sofer, a specially trained scribe, examining every letter and restoring them to kosher status.
That work fell to Rabbi Joel D. Newman of formerly of Rodef Shalom in Denver and now rabbi of B’nai Vail Congregation. One of only a handful of qualified soferim in the country, Rabbi Newman trained as a scribe in Israel, and while living in London from 1977 to 1981, he served as senior scribe to the Memorial Scrolls Trust’s “Precious Legacy” project, restoring roughly 1,600 Torahs recovered after the Holocaust.
He has brought that same expertise to B’nai Vail for over a decade, from restitching a scroll whose rollers cracked apart mid-service to spending thirteen
For more than a decade at B’nai Vail, Rabbi Newman has continued this sacred work. His projects have ranged from repairing a Torah whose wooden rollers split apart during a Shabbat service to spending thirteen months painstakingly hand-restoring a 300-year-old Yemenite Torah.
The Jackson Torahs presented a unique challenge.
Smoke damage requires more than the usual tools of a sofer. Rabbi Newman first sealed the Jackson Torahs inside a chamber with an ozone generator, slowly oxidizing the odor compounds clinging to the parchment. Once the smell had faded enough, B’nai Vail volunteers unrolled the scrolls across long tables and wiped them down, while Rabbi Newman began the letter-by-letter work of repair.
As the Jackson synagogue continues to rebuild, the loss of two Torahs is a real one. But thanks to a small mountain congregation and a rabbi whose career began repairing scrolls after the Holocaust, five more scrolls are being brought back to life instead of retired.
If you would like to support B’nai Vail in its repair work, there are real costs in repairing the scrolls.
To support the rebuilding effort in Mississippi, click here.
– written by Seth Levy