A 38-year-old man is in police custody after an attempted arson early Friday morning, June 5, at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Westmount, Que.
According to Montreal police, a 911 call was received at 12:15 a.m. reporting an individual attempting to start a fire at the building on Sherbrooke Avenue W., near Wood Avenue.
When police from SPVM Station 12 arrived on scene, they were assisted by Westmount Public Security officers in quickly locating and arresting the suspect not far from the location of the incident.
“The man was taken into custody without incident,” SPVM Agent Jean-Pierre Brabant told The CJN Friday morning, adding there was no force involved. “We are compiling a dossier and investigators are currently meeting with the suspect,” who is being held at the local investigative and detention centre. Checks will also be made on any local surveillance cameras.
No one was injured during the incident, and according to initial reports, the suspect, reportedly masked, allegedly smashed a window on the west side of the building in a failed attempt to set fire to the interior before fleeing. The glass was reportedly covered by a protective film, so no fire penetrated the building. Incendiary materials were found at the scene and Montreal’s fire department quickly extinguished the small fire outside the building. Damage is minor. The investigation has been transferred to the SPVM’s arson unit.
Federation CJA says infrastructure put into place by the Community Security Network (CSN) was immediately activated and directly contributed to the assailant’s arrest, preventing a much worse situation from occurring.
It is the second time in 16 months that Montreal’s only Reform synagogue has been targeted. Notably, in early 2025, it was vandalized with a spray-painted swastika, with no arrest made in that case.
In a message to the Temple community, Rabbi Lisa Grushcow said “thanks to ongoing leadership from Federation CJA and our Community Security Network, our building is well-protected, and the outcome was not worse. As I write, our building is fully open and functional. We are grateful for the dedication and courage of our community and our team.
“It’s good to have protection, but it’s terrible to need it.”
Rabbi Grushcow was first alerted by a member of her internal team, and while shocked, she told The CJN, “we are unfortunately not surprised.” Coming the same week as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address on antisemitism, she says “we cannot ignore the broader issues and the unmistakable rise of antisemitism in our city and our country. We also know that we are seeing an escalation: a swastika spray-painted on our building last spring, and now, an arson attack.”
Federation CJA CEO Yair Szlak expressed gratitude to Westmount Public Safety as well as the SPVM “for their swift and effective response, helping ensure the safety of the Montreal Jewish community.”
In an emailed message, he called this attack “yet again, the result of over two years of unchecked antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the streets of Montreal. We are urging political leaders at every level to state unequivocally that antisemitism and anti-Zionism have no place in Canada. The radical extremism we are witnessing is not merely a threat to the Jewish community, but, furthermore, is a threat to the core democratic values that the Jewish community shares with broader society. It is time to wake up!”
He recalled that Carney called antisemitism in Canada ‘a crisis’ and named a council to study the problem. “Our community does not need another study to tell us what we already know and live every day. More money for Jewish security is appreciated but only builds higher walls.” It doesn’t address the root cause that the Canadian government needs to address, he says, “radical extremism. A failure to name it and deal with it will destroy the Canada we know today.”
There is also a sizeable daycare operating in the Temple building, which itself sits some 300 meters from the office tower housing the Israeli consulate, the site of weekly and often twice-weekly, raucous and aggressive demonstrations for almost three years. The gatherings require a robust police presence and are often rife with genocidal slogans and antisemitic rhetoric, with an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hung on a construction barricade outside the building a few days ago.
Rabbi Grushcow says a colleague from the U.K. reached out overnight, and knowing there would be questions from families with young children, offered a template to discuss issues like antisemitic attacks with children. “How horrible” the rabbi said, “how atrocious that we live in this world where we have a template to talk about this with children.” Still, she says, “I am not giving up on being a full-fledged Canadian, and a proud Jew.”
While expressing confidence in Marc Gold, a Temple member who was named to the Carney government’s new advisory council studying hate and racism, Rabbi Grushcow, echoing Szlak’s comment, says the challenge faced by any liberal society is how to address those who would want to harm it.
In an email to the synagogue’s members, she wrote, “If we don’t name the danger, we cannot address it.” Responding to antisemitism “requires being proactive, not reactive. Naming the ways in which external conflicts are being imported. Recognizing that while criticism of Israel can be legitimate, when the Jewish State and those who love it are libelled, violence against Jews is the result.”
The attack comes a few days after the city’s official opposition party Projet Montréal announced it will push the administration to immediately suspend all institutional ties with the Israeli government, institutions, and municipalities, at the June 15 council meeting, “recognize and denounce the apartheid regime imposed on Palestine and the genocide perpetrated there,” and “affirm its solidarity with the Palestinian people and all civilian victims of hostilities in West Asia, commonly known as the Middle East.”
That party also featured many candidates in last fall’s election who called for that and more, and who denounced the current administration’s inclusion of candidates who are Zionists, notably and vociferously targeting current downtown Ville Marie city councillor Leslie Roberts.
The Temple has been a singular example of Jewish congregational outreach, and interfaith dialogue in the province, and Rabbi Grushcow made a passionate defence of Jews, and Zionism in French media last year. Just last week, she hosted an online conversation with the New Israel Fund of Canada about “Israelis Fighting Settler Violence in the West Bank.”
She says it doesn’t matter how open-minded or progressive a community is. “Antisemitism doesn’t work like that. Antisemites are not parsing who’s a good Jew and who’s a bad Jew. We are Jews. And even if we were the most insular, most right-wing Jewish community, it would still be completely unjustified and unacceptable.”
“Temple will do what we do best,” Rabbi Grushcow concluded, “live a thriving, inclusive, joyous Jewish life…We have weathered worse, and we will build better.”
Westmount Mayor Michael Stern told The CJN the town’s public security officers were nearby. “They do a lot of patrols and as I understand it, they heard the breaking of glass. They were there and called the police.
“Public security officers and the police did a great job working together. They dealt with it exactly as they were supposed to and will continue to do so. They will ramp up patrols. Not that they were inadequate before, but they are ever vigilant regarding the Jewish institutions in the area. The Jewish community should feel safe and should continue to go about its daily business.”
Indeed, Westmount has a public security force of some 28 people and a nearby police station with 45 officers, so the area is regularly patrolled.
Temple member Charlotte Smoley says the news was “devastating, but also not surprising.”
She says she was very moved by how the Temple community and the rabbi responded this morning. She says she is also heartened by how responsive the community is. “It’s not reactionary, but responsive. Each time something happens, community security steps in and we educate ourselves.”
She is concerned, however, that incidents like this are not automatically investigated as hate crimes, “and instead require a recommendation or a referral. There is a history in the city and there is data that can inform this.”
As a parent of children enrolled in the Temple’s Torah school, she is of course concerned, “but I also remember during the second intifada the sight of police snipers on synagogue roofs.” More recently, memories of shelter-in-place training for her children during the war with Iran remain fresh.
“Ultimately, I do have faith, faith in my community, in the people who stayed at temple all night last night, and I will be in temple tomorrow, as will my family, who are not members, standing in solidarity.”
A joint statement from Federation CJA and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said this latest criminal incident is part of a “toxic antisemitic climate, fuelled by the importation of a distant conflict by extremist groups opposed to Quebec’s common values. Opportunism, complacency, radical and anti-Zionist extremism, Islamism: these evils must finally be combated rigorously.”
The Montreal Jewish community is tired of fearing for its safety and that of its children, they write. “We have already let the hanging of a Jewish effigy in our streets go unchallenged. We cannot wait for a ‘Bondi Beach’ to happen in Montreal.”
Westmount mayor Stern says the arson attack “is another sign that the Jewish community is at risk, and we need all levels of government to continue and increase their support for the Jewish community and continue to protect it. We’re as vigilant as we can be. What happened, happened, of course, and we will continue to protect our people.”
Federation CJA says there will be increased patrols in and around the Jewish community over Shabbat.
Joel has spent his entire adult life scribbling. For two decades, he freelanced for more than a dozen North American and European trade publications, writing on home decor, HR, agriculture, defense technologies and more. Having lived at 14 addresses in and around Greater Montreal, for 17 years he worked as reporter for a local community newspaper, covering the education, political and municipal beats in seven cities and boroughs. He loves to bike, swim, watch NBA and kvetch about politics.