Every day on Peachtree Road, tens of thousands drive by The Temple. Few know of the pivotal moment in its history that shaped its city.
“I think lots of people come to Atlanta, but they don’t necessarily know what happened in 1958,” said author Melissa Fay Greene. She wrote the book on the bombing that took place sixty years ago at Atlanta's largest synagogue.
“Here was a moment," Greene said, "of hate speech exploding, bursting open a peaceful building.”
In the late 1950s, the Temple was led by Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, who spoke out about issues like segregation and civil rights.
“I was eight years old in 1958,” recalled Mark Jacobson, the Temple's current executive director. "I remember at a young age hearing Rabbi Rothchild’s sermons about the injustice in our Atlanta community at that time.”
“Rabbi Rothschild was a veteran," said Greene. "He saw himself as an ally of Martin Luther King Jr. He invited prominent black speakers to speak on his pulpit. It scared them at the Temple: ‘Won’t you speaking out like this cause the white supremacists to turn back on us?’”
Early Sunday morning, October 12th, 1958, Peachtree Road was awakened with the sound of an explosion.
Janice Blumberg, Rabbi Rothschild's wife, remembers the phone call to her husband.
“The next thing I heard personally was a long silence, and then he says … ‘Oh nooooo.' And he said, ‘I’ll be right there.’ He hung up and he said to me, ‘The Temple’s been bombed.'"
“The side of the building was blown open," Greene said. "It was a tremendous blast. Had Sunday school been in session, as it would have been hours later, children would have been killed.”
Within minutes, the news spread through Atlanta and across America. No one was killed, and the Temple was insured for the damage. But a message was sent.
“We would hear slogans," Jacobson says, "like, '2, 4, 6, 8, we don’t want to integrate!' We heard them with different ears after the bombing. People meant it. If someone’s gonna put 50 sticks of dynamite at my congregation, that puts it at a whole other level.”
Times of terror put leaders to the test -- and they responded with resolve. Mayor Hartsfield arrived immediately and searched through the rubble with Rabbi Rothschild. He then spoke in front of Atlanta news cameras and declared the act unacceptable.
The following day, Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill wrote an opinion piece about the bombing, saying, "Let us face the facts. This is a harvest. It is the crop of things sown." That editorial won a Pulitzer Prize.
Churches and schools opened their doors for services and classes. Donations came nationwide in large checks and crumpled dollars.
“When they did rebuild the back of the Temple," says Blumberg, "they called the assembly hall Friendship Hall in honor of the people that had been so friendly. It was heartwarming, and to me it said Atlanta considered itself a city of churches.”
If the bombing aimed to silence those of this faith, the Temple’s next Shabbat service showed a different outcome.
“A few days later for Friday night services," Green said, "where there are usually at best eight people, it was packed. The rabbi put out front that the topic he would be speaking about was titled, ‘And None Shall Make Us Afraid.”
Five suspects were arrested. None were convicted. But the legacy of the bombing lies with not those responsible but those tested.
“Still to this day, we worship with Ebenezer Baptist Church,” says Jacobson. “We have something called the Rothschild Social Justice Institute, dealing with issues like racial injustice, gun sense, and domestic minor sex trafficking.
“I think the bombing really inspired us to take action.”
Photos courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum
