SYNAGOGUE SHOOTINGS
Local vigil for Pittsburgh victims
The Congregation Agudas Israel Synagogue will hold a solidarity vigil Tuesday night to honour the 11 people killed in a shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue.
The congregation invites everyone to join the event at 7:30 p.m.
On Saturday, a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue, shooting and killing eight men and three women who were attending Shabbat morning services. Six others were injured. Police said the shooter expressed that he wanted to kill Jews. Authorities arrested and charged Robert Bowers with 11 state counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation. Other charges include the federal hate crime charge of obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs causing death and using a firearm to commit murder.
Rabbi Claudio Jodorkovsky said members of the Saskatoon congregation are grieving and needed to find some way to share their emotions and articulate what happened.
“On one hand I think we have a need of commemorating what happened or sharing the pain together, and because our Jewish community here in Saskatoon is integrated with the general community, we want to open this to anyone who wants to come and be with us in that moment,” he said.
Jodorkovsky said he wants to preserve messages of support the congregation has received since the attack.
Rabbi Raphael Kats of the Chabad Jewish Centre of Saskatoon said he has also received an outpouring of kindness in the form of messages from others in the community. His congregation is still in “absolute shock” after the attack, he said. “We consider ourselves one people, one family. We’re absolutely shocked that such hatred can exist in North America, in the world in 2018.”
Kats called for everyone to eradicate hatred from our midst and fight darkness with light. He does not want members of the Jewish community to be afraid to be Jewish, he said.
“Don’t let this hatred divide us; on the contrary, let’s use it as a springboard to unite and come together.”