Shooting victims remembered: ‘The loss is incalculable’

They were professors and accountants, dentists and beloved doctors serving their local community.

The oldest of them was 97. The youngest was 54.

Cecil and David Rosenthal, 59 and 54,went through life together with help from a disability-services organization. And an important part of the brothers’ lives was the Tree of Life synagogue, where they never missed a Saturday’s services, people who knew them say.

“If they were here, they would tell you that is where they were supposed to be,” Chris Schopf, a vice-president of the organization ACHIEVA, said in a statement.

Bernice and Sylvan Simon, 84 and 86, were always ready to help other people, longtime friend and neighbour Jo Stepaniak says, and “they always did it with a smile and always did it with graciousness.”

“Anything that they could do, and they did it as a team,” she said.

Melvin Wax, 88, was the first to arrive at New Light Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighbourhood — and the last to leave.

Fellow members of the congregation, which rented space in the lower level of the Tree of Life Synagogue, says Wax was a kind man and a pillar of the congregation, filling just about every role except cantor.

Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, and his partner in his medical practice were seemingly destined to spend their professional lives together. He and Kenneth Ciesielka had been friends with Rabinowitz for more than 30 years, since they lived on the same floor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“He is one of the finest people I’ve ever met. We’ve been in practice together for 30 years and friends longer than that,” Ciesielka said.

Canadian native Joyce Fienberg, 75, and her late husband, Stephen, were intellectual powerhouses, but those who knew them say they were the kind of people who used that intellect to help others.

“Joyce was a magnificent, generous, caring, and profoundly thoughtful human being,” said Gaea Leinhardt, who was Fienberg’s research partner for decades.

Daniel Stein, 71, was a visible member of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, where he was a leader in the New Light Congregation and his wife, Sharyn, is the membership vice-president of the area’s Hadassah chapter.

“Their Judaism is very important to them, and to him,” said chapter co-president Nancy Shuman. “Both of them were very passionate about the community and Israel.”

Former Tree of Life Rabbi Chuck Diamond said he worried about Rose Mallinger as soon as he heard about the deadly shooting at the synagogue.

The 97-year-old had almost unfailingly attended services for decades, he told the Washington Post, and was among the first to walk in.

“I feel a part of me died in that building,” Diamond said.

Richard Gottfried, 65, was preparing to retire in the next few months. Gottfried ran a dental office with his wife and practice partner Margaret “Peg” Durachko Gottfried.

He and his wife met at the University of Pittsburgh as dental students, according to the Washington Post, and opened their practice together in 1984.

Gottfried often did charity work seeing patients who could not otherwise afford dental care, friends noted.

A neighbour in Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington neighbourhood on Sunday remembered victim Irving Younger, 69, as a “wonderful” father and grandfather.