Terror exacts a terrible cost in human life and trauma. The extent of the cost of the Jerusalem terror attack this week has been revealed with The Times of Israel reporting on the identities of those who were just making their way to work that morning and were senselessly murdered.
The two gunmen, Palestinian residents of the West Bank, arrived at the Ramot Junction shortly after 10 a.m. — according to some reports, by car — and opened fire at people waiting at a bus stop as well as at a bus that had just stopped there.
The dead were named as Levi Yitzhak Pash, 57, Yaakov Pinto, 25, Yisrael Matzner, 28, Rabbi Yosef David, 43, Rabbi Mordechai Steintzag, 79, and Sarah Mendelson, 60. All were residents of Jerusalem except for Pash, who lived in Tel Zion in the central West Bank.
Yosef David was a Torah scholar and recently employed by a Haredi elementary school.
Yisrael Matzner, a father of three, had an upbringing in Haredi schools similar to the one where David worked, and was also studying to become a Torah scholar. His students and peers from where he studied said they will remember him for his intelligence and wisdom when it comes to the Bible.
For decades, Sara “Sarita” Mendelson was a leader of Bnei Akiva, a religious youth group. Her peers referred to her as the motherly figure of the movement.
Levi Yitzhak Pash was a father of six who also worked within a Haredi institution in Jerusalem as a maintenance worker. Students will remember him as a pillar of good deeds and Torah insights, as he studied too.
Yaakov Pinto was an olim (immigrant) from Spain who married two months ago. He worked as a counselor for students of Hedvat HaTorah Yeshiva High School.
When Mordechai Steintzag retired from cardiology, another door was opened with him starting Dr. Mark’s Bakery in Beit Shemesh. Steintzag had moved to Israel from the United States in 1993 and will be remembered as a doctor-turned-baker who healed through warmth, comfort, and giving.
The Fellowship and its supporters’ prayers are with the victims’ families, and we remember how these people so cruelly murdered worked to make Israel a better place and take care of her people. They taught, worked, and healed – and whether they knew them personally or not, all Israelis are poorer for their loss. May their memories be a blessing.
