Synagogue shooting victims were loved in community

PITTSBURGH — The 11 victims of the shooting Saturday at a Pittsburgh synagogue were professors and accountants, dentists and beloved doctors serving their local community.

The oldest was 97. The youngest was 54. They included a pair of brothers and a husband and wife.

Said Stephen Cohen, co-president of New Light Congregation: “The loss is incalculable.” who worked at Goodwill Industries.

“They really found a home at the synagogue, and people reciprocated,” he said.

“Together, they looked out for each other,” Schopf said. “Most of all, they were kind, good people with a strong faith and respect for everyone around.”

Bernice and Sylvan Simon were always ready to help other people, longtime friend and neighbor Jo Stepaniak said, and “they always did it with a smile and always did it with graciousness.” “And they did it as a team.” The Simons were fixtures in in the town-home community on the outskirts of Pittsburgh where they had lived for decades. Sylvan, 86, was a retired accountant with a good sense of humor. Bernice, 84, a former nurse, loved classical music and devoted time to charitable work, according to Stepaniak and neighbor Inez Miller.

And both Simons cared deeply about Tree of Life Synagogue.

“(They) were very devoted, an active, steady presence,” Berkun said. The Simons had married there in a candlelight ceremony nearly 62 years earlier, according to the Tribune-Review.

“Bernice and Sylvan were very good, good-hearted, upstanding, honest, gracious, generous people. They were very dignified and compassionate,” Stepaniak said, her voice breaking. “Best neighbors that you could ask for.” “There was always a smile on his face.”

Myron Snider said “Mel,” a retired accountant, was unfailingly generous.

“If somebody didn’t come that was supposed to lead services, he could lead the services and do everything. He knew how to do everything at the synagogue. He was really a very learned person,” said Snider, a retired pharmacist and chairman of the congregation’s cemetery committee.

“He and I used to, at the end of services, try to tell a joke or two to each other. Most of the time they were clean jokes. Most of the time. I won’t say all the time.”

Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, and his partner in his medical practice were seemingly destined to spend their professional lives together.

He and Dr. Kenneth Ciesielka had been friends for more than 30 years, since they lived on the same floor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ciesielka was a few years behind Rabinowitz, but whether by fate or design, the two always ended up together. They went to the same college, the same medical school and even had the same residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center a few years apart.

“He is one of the finest people I’ve ever met,” Ciesielka said. “His patients are going to miss him terribly. His family is going to miss him terribly, and I am going to miss him.”

Rabinowitz, a family practitioner at UPMC Shadyside, was remembered by the medical center as one of its “kindest physicians.”

“Those of us who worked with him respected and admired his devotion to his work and faith. His loss is devastating,” Tami Minnier, UPMC chief quality officer, wrote on Twitter. as a researcher looking at learning in the classroom and in museums. She worked on several projects, including studying the practices of highly effective teachers.

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

The research center’s current director, Charles Perfetti, said Fienberg brought a keen mind, engaging personality and “a certain elegance and dignity” to the center.

Stephen, who died in 2016 after a battle with cancer, was a professor of statistics and social science at Carnegie Mellon University. His work was used in shaping national policies in forensic science, education and criminal justice.

The couple married in 1965 and had two sons and several grandchildren.

Daniel Stein was a visible member of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, where he was a leader in the New Light Congregation. 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.”

Stein, 71, was president of the Men’s Club at Tree of Life. He also was among a corps of the New Light members who, along with Wax and Richard Gottfried, 65, made up “the religious heart” of the congregation, said Cohen, the congregation co-president.

Stein’s nephew Steven Halle told the TribuneReview of Pittsburgh that his uncle “was always willing to help anybody.”

With his generous spirit and dry sense of humor, “He was somebody that everybody liked,” Halle said. Stein

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.

“Rose was really a fixture of the congregation,” Brian Schreiber, president and CEO of the Jewish Community Center of Pittsburgh, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Her daughter, Andrea Wedner, 61, was among the wounded, a family member said. She remains hospitalized.

Richard Gottfried was preparing for a new chapter in his life.

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, who often did charity work seeing patients who could not otherwise afford dental care, was preparing to retire in the next few months.

He, along with Wax and Stein, “led the service, they maintained the Torah, they did what needed to be done with the rabbi to make services happen,” Cohen said.

“He died doing what he liked to do most,” Don Salvin, Gottfried’s brotherin-law, told the Post. Gottfried

A neighbor in Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington neighborhood remembered Irving Younger, 69, as “a really nice guy.”

“I’m scared for my kids’ future,” Jonathan Voye told the Post-Gazette. “How can you have that much hate for your fellow neighbor?”

Tina Prizner, who told the Tribune-Review she’s lived next door to Younger for several years, said he was a “wonderful” father and grandfather.

The one-time real-estate company owner “talked about his daughter and his grandson, always, and he never had an unkind word to say about anybody,” Prizner said.