The president of a synagogue in Detroit was found stabbed outside her home Saturday morning, according to local newspaper reports.
Samantha Woll, 40, had led the Isaac Agree Downtown synagogue since 2022. The Detroit Free Press reported that she had also worked for Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin as well as the re-election campaign of the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel. Slotkin and Nessel are Democrats, and the latter quickly issued a statement lamenting Woll’s killing.
“I am shocked, saddened and horrified to learn of Sam’s brutal murder,” Nessel said in a statement. “Sam was as kind a person as I’ve ever known. She was driven by her sincere love of her community, state and country. Sam truly used her faith and activism to create a better place for everyone.”
I am shocked, saddened and horrified to learn of Sam’s brutal murder. Sam was as kind a person as I’ve ever known. She was driven by her sincere love of her community, state and country. Sam truly used her faith and activism to create a better place for everyone. pic.twitter.com/gIYRP4USaj
— Dana Nessel (@dananessel) October 21, 2023
The Free Press obtained a statement from the synagogue which said the institution would share more information on Woll’s unexpected death when it became available. “May her memory be a blessing,” the statement said, according to the Free Press.
On Saturday afternoon, Woll’s neighbors who spoke with the Guardian said no one had seen or heard anything unusual. They described the area as quiet and it is among the city’s wealthier neighborhoods.
According to the Free Press, police said they were investigating a possible motive but did not elaborate.
It is unclear if the murder, which was discovered about 6.30am, is connected to the war in Gaza. Michigan has North America’s largest Arab-American population per capita, and is also home to a sizable Jewish population. Tensions among the groups are rarely reported, though police arrested a Jewish man last week for making online threats against local Muslims.
The escalating conflict had prompted the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, to warn that Jews, Muslims and Arabs faced a rise in threats of hate crimes and violence.
On 16 October, sheriffs in Illinois charged a man with a hate crime after the murder of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume. Police said the landlord of the home where Wadea lived with his mother knocked on the door of their apartment on 14 October and began stabbing the mother and then the son dozens of times while allegedly shouting, “You Muslims must die!”
The Isaac Agree Downtown synagogue has been supportive of Israel on social media and offered services for the community in the wake of the Hamas attack. On 19 October it held a community event in which it invited area Jews to “unpack the happenings of the past two weeks including the unprecedented attacks on Jewish communities in Israel by the terrorist group Hamas, and the loss of lives of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians in the region”.
Woll was the former co-chair of the American Jewish Committee’s Access Detroit Young Leadership Program and founder of the Muslim-Jewish Forum of Detroit, which aims to foster relationships between the two religions.
As news of Woll’s death spread on Saturday afternoon, there was an outpouring of support on social media from friends and colleagues, among them Detroit’s mayor, Mike Duggan, and Slotkin, Woll’s former employer.
In a statement to the Guardian, the Michigan congressman Noah Arbit said he worked with Woll in the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus he founded, and was previously her neighbor in a different building. He expressed shock at her murder, and said there “was no kinder human being” than Woll.
“She believed in the city and the people of Detroit, and her deep commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people reflected in all of her work,” Arbit said. “Sam was a gift to this world and it is inconceivable that someone could commit such an act of evil against another human being, let alone one so good as Sam Woll.”
