Boulder’s ‘shocked and traumatised’ Jewish community takes stock of its losses, and its strength

JTA – Three days after six of his congregants were burned by a man who yelled, “Free Palestine!” as he threw Molotov cocktails, Rabbi Marc Soloway said his Jewish community remained “shocked and traumatised”.

Soloway, who helms Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder, Colorado, rushed to the hospital after learning about the attack. He often attended the Run for Their Lives, a weekly rally in downtown Boulder to call attention to the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, but skipped it on Sunday, 1 June, to prepare for the Shavuot holiday that began at sundown and lasted until Tuesday night, 3 June.

Celebrations planned for the holiday gave way to comforting the injured, consoling the traumatised, and becoming a voice and face for a community in crisis.

“It’s been brutal, agonising, just shocking, unbelievable, just so many emotions, a lot of grief and pain and sadness, and also quite significant amounts of anger and just trauma,” Soloway said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) on Wednesday, 4 June.

He said that the fact such an attack could take place in 2025 in Boulder was “incomprehensible”.

Fifteen people between the ages of 25 and 88, as well as one dog, were injured during the attack on Sunday, officials said last Wednesday, after learning about more people who had been hurt but not hospitalised.

“This was someone who was literally setting fire to Jewish bodies. It’s just the most horrific thing to imagine,” Soloway said. “There were literally Jewish bodies lying on the ground in flames, and it was a pure hate attack, pure act of terrorism, pure antisemitic attack.”

Last Wednesday evening, a crowd filled the Boulder Jewish Community Center for a community gathering that included testimonials from people who had participated in Sunday’s march and witnessed or were injured in the attack, songs, and poems, and a prayer for the healing of those injured.

“We know that resilience, strength, and pride is who we are as Coloradans, as Boulder County residents, and as Jews,” said Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who is a member of Boulder’s Jewish community. Earlier on Wednesday, Polis had hosted an interfaith gathering at the site of the attack on the Pearl Street Mall.

Several local rabbis appeared at both events, many noting that the community had shown remarkable strength in the wake of the attack. “There’s been an outpouring of love and support from within the Jewish community, but there’s also been a tremendous outpouring of love from outside the Jewish community,” Soloway said on stage.

He also led the crowd in reciting a maxim of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of Renewal Judaism, who has spent the past two decades of his life in Boulder. “The only way to get it together is …” he said, pausing to allow attendees to end the sentence in unison, “together!”

Ahead of the event, Soloway said the attack had compounded feelings of isolation that many in Boulder’s Jewish community have felt over the past year and a half, during the Israel-Hamas war. City council meetings in the largely progressive city have been so swamped by pro-Palestinian activists seeking to speak and demand a ceasefire resolution that the council adopted new rules and moved many meetings online.

“Most of us in the Jewish community here in Boulder have been progressive and aligned and partnered with a lot of progressive people. And now some of the worst hateful rhetoric is coming from the far left, not the far right,” said Soloway. “It’s confusing and hurtful. There’s a sense of betrayal.”

On 1 June, the City of Boulder issued a statement acknowledging that the firebombing was a “targeted, antisemitic attack”.

One City Council member, Taishya Adams, refused to sign the acknowledgement, telling the Boulder Reporting Lab that she wanted the attack to be characterised as “anti-Zionist” instead.

Soloway said Adams’ decision not to sign the letter felt “incredibly painful” to him and others in the community.

“This isn’t the time to be analytical about the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. We just need to name it for what it is,” Soloway said. “It was a very deliberate, targeted attack, someone who wanted to kill Jews and he wanted, literally, to burn them to death with these home-made incendiary devices that were just primitive and awful.”

Among Soloway’s congregants to be injured in the attack was Barbara Steinmetz, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who has become one of the most poignant symbols of the attack. Soloway declined to speak about Steinmetz or any of his other congregants to JTA.

In an interview with NBC News last Tuesday, Steinmetz said she wanted people “to be nice and decent to each other, kind, respectful, encompassing” after being asked what she wants Americans to know following the attack.

“We’re Americans,” she said. “We’re better than this. That’s what I want them to know. That they be kind and decent human beings.”

Steinmetz was born in Gyor, Hungary, on 26 November 1936, as the second of two children in an Orthodox Jewish family. Her family operated a hotel on the island Lussinpiccolo off the coast of Croatia, which at the time belonged to Italy, according to a talk Steinmetz gave to University of Colorado Boulder students for Holocaust Remembrance Week in 2019.

Her family remained in Italy until 1939, when the Italian racial laws barred Jews from certain jobs and ordered Jewish property and businesses to be confiscated.

Steinmetz’s family fled in 1940 to southern France, and eventually made their way to Lisbon, Portugal, where they obtained visas for the Dominican Republic, one of the few countries at the time that accepted Jewish refugees.

In 1941, when Steinmetz was four years old, her family left mainland Europe and settled in the Dominican Republic before eventually securing visas for the United States with the help of relatives in 1945, according to another talk Steinmetz gave at the university in March.

Steinmetz shared her family’s story with the USC Shoah Foundation in an interview in 1998. In Boulder, she has spoken at synagogues and schools about the Holocaust and her family’s escape, her friend, Chany Scheiner, told the Denver television station 9News.

“She’s an amazing person. Not because she’s hurt. She’s always an amazing person,” Scheiner said. “She’s passionate about standing up for good things, and she’s an exceptional person. Always a smile on her face. Her life wasn’t easy, but she’s just a bright light.”

Steinmetz told NBC News the attack had “nothing to do with the Holocaust, it has to do with a human being that wants to burn other people.

“It’s about what the hell is going on in our country,” Steinmetz said. “What the hell is going on?”

Soloway told NBC News that Steinmetz had suffered minor burns in the attack but was “going to be OK” physically. He said that although her injuries would heal, the psychological toll remains to be seen.

“Can you imagine the trauma that that reactivates?” Soloway asked NBC News. “It’s just horrendous.”

The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, faces a federal charge of a hate crime and state charges of attempted murder in the first degree and related charges.