Rabbi Josh Bennett of Temple Israel says the attack at his synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on Thursday “could have been a far worse tragedy,” and he credits the staff’s security training for saving lives.
“As part of the Jewish community, we are ready for these kinds of threats,” Bennett told “CBS Mornings” in an interview Friday.
“We have a full security team who is tasked with keeping us safe but also training us to know what to do in the event of one of these events,” Bennett said. “So we knew something like this might happen. Of course we hope and pray that it never does.”
Bennett said everyone in the building “did exactly what they were supposed to do” when a man rammed his vehicle into the building.
Police said security guards shot and killed the suspect, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali. Sources say Ghazali, a Lebanese-born U.S. citizen, had a rifle and explosives in the vehicle.
One security guard was injured in the incident, but everyone else in the building got out safely, including all the children at the preschool.
Cassi Cohen, a staff member at Temple Israel, said she was standing near the hallway where the car breached the building. She and several other staff members “heard a loud crash and a bang” and “immediately knew that something was wrong.” They were able to hide in her office nearby.
“It was honestly just a gut instinct,” Cohen said. “We have been trained for this and so we all knew that we should not be near that or in the area and the best thing for us to do was to lock down in a secure area.”
There were about 140 students at the early childhood center who were “taken out of the building immediately” and went with their teachers to a nearby reunification site, Bennett said. “And because of the training that we’ve all gone through, it happened naturally and calmly and it was really miraculous that everybody was safe,” he added.
The rabbi said they’ll be taking steps to care for the mental health of the teachers and staff.
“When we get through this, we are going to go back to business as usual because that is our obligation as a strong Jewish community,” he said.
The FBI is leading the investigation and said the attack is being investigated as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called the attack “every community’s worst nightmare,” and said it was “hate, plain and simple.” She urged Americans to “lower the rhetoric” amid what she called a rising wave of antisemitism.
Bennett said a key message is that the community’s preparedness paid off: “I think that the most important takeaway for me is if a community pays attention to the training, to a security detail, to making sure that the people are safe and everybody acts accordingly, we can keep our communities safe.”
