A Special Rabbi, Two Israelis, and a Woman of Valor

Stand for Israel  |  April 29, 2019

This weekend, the U.S. faced yet another evil shooting attack, this one again targeting a synagogue as its congregants celebrated Passover. The Washington Post’s Katie Mettler tells us about these worshipers, among them a special rabbi, two Israelis, and a woman of valor:

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein was preparing for his sermon during services Saturday morning, a series of ceremonies on the final day of Passover, when he walked into his synagogue’s banquet hall and heard the deafening bang.

Only moments before, Lori Gilbert Kaye, 60, his friend of two decades and a pioneering congregant at Chabad of Poway, had stopped the rabbi to ask what time Yizkor would begin, a seasonal prayer meant to celebrate and remember those who have died. She and her husband were there with their 22-year-old daughter. They wanted to honor Kaye’s mother.

“11:30,” the rabbi replied.

So when he heard the bang, Goldstein thought Kaye may have fallen, or that perhaps a table had toppled. When he turned to look, though, he saw not Kaye, but a man wearing sunglasses and holding an assault rifle.

“I couldn’t see his eyes,” the rabbi recalled later. “I couldn’t see his soul.”

Soon there were more bangs moving in his direction, which Goldstein said he realized were gunshots. The rabbi raised his hands and bullets badly mangled his fingers. Shrapnel injured two others, both Israeli nationals, before the shooter’s gun “miraculously jammed…”

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