Congregations attacked at synagogue to hold joint service

PITTSBURGH — The three congregations attacked at a Pittsburgh synagogue will gather for a joint service Saturday, while a prayer vigil is planned outside their desecrated worship space to mark the time the massacre began one week earlier.

Meanwhile, Friday brought the end of a wrenching series of funerals as the oldest victim, 97-year-old Rose Mallinger, was laid to rest.

“We will reopen, but it will not be for quite a while,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers said Friday morning, as he prepared for the last funeral service. Myers himself survived the attack that began just as Shabbat services got underway. In the end, 11 people were gunned down in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.

Mallinger’s daughter attended her mother’s funeral at Rodef Shalom synagogue, accompanied by a nurse, Rabbi Aaron Bisno said. The 61-year-old daughter had been hospitalized since the massacre Saturday at the Tree of Life synagogue. Bisno didn’t know if she returned to the hospital after the funeral.

The suspect, Robert Bowers, pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal hate crime charges that accuse him of killing 11 people and injuring six others as they tried to practice their religion. He could face the death penalty.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said Friday that the two most seriously injured victims, one a 40-year-old police officer, have been moved out of the intensive-care unit. Hospital officials said a 70-year-old man was upgraded from critical to stable condition, while a 40-year-old police officer remains in stable condition.

Also Friday, Allegheny County authorities released the redacted 1979 court file of a man believed to be Bowers’ father. The court files and press clips showed the man, 27-year-old Randall Bowers, had killed himself while out on bail in a rape case.