Perhaps the greatest lesson to take from Saturday’s grisly shooting at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue near San Diego is how ordinary Jews’ love and compassion for each other — and courage even under the most horrifying circumstances – inevitably seem to shine through.
By: Howard Riell
More than the shaky mental snapshots of destruction and grief caused by demented gunman John T. Earnest, 19, what remains in the hours and days following such an incident are the inspiring stories.
One is of a courageous rabbi who tended to his flock even after he had been shot. Those who were under fire told the Los Angeles Times that Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein never stopped trying to help even after suspected killer John T. Earnest shot him in the hand.
Congregationist Minoo Anvari told CNN that Goldstein “did not leave his congregation until he was finished speaking to them, calming their fears and pledging resilience.”
Dr. Roneet Lev told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the woman had gone to the synagogue to say Kaddish dead, for her own mother who had recently died. “The irony is people will be saying it for her now,” Lev told the newspaper. “God picked her to die to send a message because she’s such an incredible person. He took her for a higher purpose to send this message to fight anti-Semitism.”
Jews around the world are also talking about the near “miracle” that, according to the rabbi of the Poway synagogue, might well have saved dozens of lives. The Chabad of Poway Synagogue was about to begin the Yizkor service in memory of the dead when the gunman entered and began shooting. Because those who parents are living traditionally leave the room where Yizkor is recited, the synagogue’s population of children were nowhere in sight when the bullets began to fly.
Friend Audrey Jacobs, wrote an emotional Facebook post in the wake of the attack, calling her late friend “a jewel of our community.” She added, “Your final good deed was taking the bullets for Rabbi Goldstein to save his life,” and added that she “leaves behind a devastated husband and a 22-year-old daughter.” Israel’s minister of diaspora affairs, Naftali Bennett, released a statement in which he referred to Gilbert-Kaye as a “hero who will be remembered in Jewish history.”
“She sacrificed her own life, throwing herself in the path of the murderer’s bullets to save the life of the Rabbi,” Bennett told the Jewish Press. “She has been described by those who knew her as an ‘Eshet Chayil,’ a ‘Woman of Valor,’ and I would add, a true Hero of Israel. Our thoughts and prayers are with her husband and daughter, may they find great comfort in Lori’s tremendous example and courage.”
