Alabama Jewish prayer service 'Zoombombed' with anti-Semitic messages, Hitler images
Less than a week before Judaism’s high holy days, four Alabama Jewish communities held Saturday night prayers in a special service in the run-up to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which begins this Friday night.
Unlike other years, Saturday night’s service, known as Selichot, was held on the online video conferencing platform Zoom, with synagogues not holding in-person services because of the coronavirus pandemic.
About 80 to 100 Alabama Jews from Montgomery, Mobile, Auburn and Dothan participated in the service, said Rabbi Scott Kramer of the Montgomery synagogue Agudath Israel Etz Ahayem, who was on the Zoom call. But they were not alone.
Around 7:30 p.m. Saturday, shadowy figures disrupted the online service by bombarding the call’s chat with photos of Adolf Hitler, Nazi symbols and shouting anti-Semitic epithets, Kramer said.
“It was horrible. There were Nazi imagery, swastikas, images of Hitler, there were videos, some of them I thought were pornographic, but I’m not sure,” Kramer said. “But then the voices came over and they were very loud, very boisterous. They used very bad language, ‘f’in jew,’ ‘go back to the showers.’ Just very foul Holocaust imagery.”
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