A British-born rabbi whose congregants were injured in this week’s firebombing in Colorado has spoken of the attack as “the worst nightmare” which “just defies belief”.
Rabbi Marc Soloway has been rabbi of the Bonai Shalom, or Builders of Peace, Masorti congregation in Boulder for 20 years. He trained at Leo Baeck College and worked with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, of New North London Synagogue.
In an interview with US broadcaster NBC following the attack, Rabbi Soloway said that the dream of peace, which was a fundamental principle of his congregation, had been “violently and brutally attacked by fire, and it brings up horrific images of our past.”
Rabbi Soloway said that the most important thing now was “that we have got each other’s backs, we are here together and taking care of each other. It is just inconceivable that Jewish people in the United States of America in 2025 can feel so unsafe right now”.
His community, he said, were “like a big family, so we all feel broken and angry and grieving and sad and hopeless. It’s hard to know where to direct the anger to, but there’s a lot of emotion.”
Early reports of Rabbi Soloway’s presence at the hospital where those injured had been taken were mistakenly assumed to suggest that the rabbi himself had been a victim of the firebombing, but that does not seem to have been the case.
Rabbi Soloway received his semicha (rabbinical ordination) in 2004 from the Ziegler School for Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. His rabbinical training spanned six years in London, Jerusalem, and Los Angeles.
Before that, he was an actor and storyteller in his native London, and developed and performed a one-man show of Jewish stories called The Empty Chair, as well as a show for children called The Jewish Princess and Other Stories. He is a former co-chair of UK Limmud and was a founding board member of Limmud Colorado in 2008.
The rabbi, a long-standing activist and spokesman for environmental issues, has long warned that anti-Zionist rhetoric — not least that used in local council meetings — was both dangerous and inciting.
He said previously that “many of us have experienced hatred, bigotry and intolerance from progressives, those who many of us have considered friends and allies. The last time I attended a city council meeting in Boulder, I felt physically and verbally threatened by people screaming anti Israel slogans right in my face…there is no question that anti Zionism has become a pernicious form of antisemitism”.
Nevertheless, the Jewish community in Boulder has thanked local authorities for support in the wake of the attack, which wounded 12 people in total, ranging in age from 52 to 88, one of whom was a child when her family fled the Nazis during the Holocaust. The attack took place on Sunday against a group holding its regular weekly demonstration to highlight the plight of the Gaza hostages, under the banner Run For Their Lives. On Wednesday three people were understood still to be hospitalised.
The suspect arrested over the terror attack in Colorado had planned an attack on a “Zionist group” for over a year, police statements suggest. Ahead of Sunday’s attack he planned to kill everyone taking part in a demonstration in support of the hostages in Gaza with Molotov cocktails.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, faces charges including attempted murder in the first degree, the use and attempted use of an incendiary device, along with a hate crime offence, after he was arrested at the scene of the attack that left 12 people injured in Boulder.
Soliman, who is Egyptian-born, confessed to the attack after being taken into custody on Sunday and told the police he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people.”
On Sunday, June 8, the Jewish community is due to mark the 30th anniversary of the Boulder Jewish Festival, whose programme has now been adjusted to reflect a response to the firebombing.
