Canadian authorities have opened an investigation after Beth Tikvah, a Modern Orthodox shul in Montreal, as well as a Jewish community center in the city’s suburbs, were targeted with firebombs on Wednesday in the second such attack on the congregation since the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

According to the Montreal Gazette, police were called to the shul on West Park Boulevard around 3 a.m. after receiving a report of a fire at the building, which houses several Jewish institutions.

Officers doused the flames with a fire extinguisher and discovered the remnants of a crude firebomb. Glass was said to have been smashed, and smoke caused minor damage to the building.

Véronique Dubuc, a spokesperson for the Montreal City Police Service, said witnesses had seen a suspicious individual at the site, adding that CCTV footage was being examined to identify a suspect in the case.

The house of worship, located in the predominantly English-speaking suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, was the target of a firebomb attack in November 2023.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar urged Ottawa to “take the strongest possible stance against antisemitism” following the attacks.

“I strongly condemn the antisemitic attack on Montréal’s Beit Tikvah synagogue. This surge in antisemitism must not be tolerated! This is the second(!) act of arson on Beit Tikvah—the first synagogue attacked after October 7th,” he wrote in a statement on social media.

B’nai Brith Canada Quebec Regional Director Henry Topas, who also serves as a cantor at Beth Tikvah, called the incident “a terrifying reminder that Montreal is increasingly unsafe for Jewish people.

“This is the result of the failure of leaders at all levels to hold accountable those responsible for the hate and violence that is infesting Canadian society,” Topas charged in a statement. “Mayor Valérie Plante must act now to stop the exponential rise in hate and antisemitism which she has permitted to get out of control in Montreal.”

Shootings, firebombings and vandalism struck Montreal’s Jewish community in the first weeks of the war between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas terrorists in Gaza, local sources told JNS in 2023.

“Between Oct. 7 and Nov. 7, the police reported 79 hate crimes in Montreal against the Jews. In the entire year before, the number was under 40,” Yair Szlak, president and chief executive officer of Federation CJA, the largest Jewish group in the city, said in a conversation with JNS.

Israel’s consul general in Montreal, Paul Hirschson, confirmed the sharp rise in antisemitic events, telling JNS it is “more than the 70-plus incidents listed by the police. A lot of it doesn’t even get reported.”

Montreal police told JNS that 25 other instances of antisemitism were recorded between Nov. 7 and Nov. 14, 2023, bringing the total number of reported incidents in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 to more than 100.

Canada is home to the fourth-largest Jewish community in the world with some 90,000 Jews in Montreal alone. The North American country also boasts a large Arab population originating from countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon. JNS