These are the 11 victims of synagogue shooting
Eleven people were killed on Saturday when a gunman opened fire inside a Pittsburgh synagogue. Here are those who died.
There was a long-standing joke at the University of Pittsburgh research center: If Gaea Leinhardt needed to remember something — even “small bits of information that I might need someday” — she could simply mention it to her research assistant, Joyce Fienberg. Without fail, Fienberg would be able to recall it, even years later.
“She was just a magnificently caring, generous and thoughtful human being,” Leinhardt said.
Despite Fienberg’s title, Leinhardt said their working relationship was much more collegial, like a partnership, and that she considered Fienberg her best friend.
When news of the shooting broke Saturday, Leinhardt was in the United Kingdom. She immediately tried calling and emailing Fienberg, knowing she would have likely been at the morning service.
“I just can’t say how terribly sad I am that this person isn’t in the world anymore,” Leinhardt said. Like his father and grandfather, Richard Gottfried took his faith seriously, regularly attending Saturday services as a member of the New Light Congregation.
But when Gottfried fell in love in the late 1970s, it was with a practicing Catholic. Peg Durachko was a fellow dental student at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1980, the year he graduated, they married.
Gottfried and Durachko would go on to build a successful dental practice together, opening in 1984.
The couple had just celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary, and had planned to wind down the practice and retire soon.
When Chuck Diamond, a former rabbi at Tree of Life, heard that a gunman had opened fire inside the synagogue, Rose Mallinger was among the first he worried about. The petite 97-year-old he regularly saw walking in the neighborhood or grocery shopping had attended service for decades.
Diamond, 63, has known Mallinger for years. He said he and Mallinger’s son went through kindergarten and high school together.
“I feel a part of me died in that building,” he said. Jerry Rabinowitz and his wife, Mari, did not have children, so they poured out all of their love and attention on their community, their synagogue and their five cats, said Anna BoswellLevy, a friend of the couple and a rabbi at a synagogue in Yardley, Pa. Flowers and cards sit at a makeshift memorial down the street from the site of the mass shooting that killed 11.
“Jerry and Mari just did everything for this synagogue. They were essential, they were core, to this community,” Boswell-Levy said. “They were kind of like the welcoming committee.”
Jerry, in particular, was always helping to set up services and lead them. He led Torah studies and organized meetings, BoswellLevy said.
“He had been looking to retire for some years now,” Boswell-Levy said. When people showed up for services at Tree of Life, it was often Cecil Rosenthal who would greet them, offering a warm hello, a smile and sometimes a joke. Cecil and his brother David were fixtures at the synagogue, attending services nearly every Saturday for much of their lives. They had been going to Tree of Life since they were young boys, said Chuck Diamond, a former rabbi.
The brothers had intellectual disabilities, according to two former synagogue presidents. When the synagogue held special services for adults with disabilities, Cecil and David would serve as the honorary chairs, said Howard Elson, who was president of Tree of Life about 12 years ago.
When Stephen Halle lost his father, he expected to do the grim work of cleaning out the man’s Florida condo alone and moving his mother’s things up to Pittsburgh alone. But then, his 71-yearold uncle, Daniel Stein, offered to join him. For days, the two men worked side by side to pack up the condo. It was emblematic, Halle said, of Stein’s generosity and kindness.
Stein was a member of the New Light Congregation, which held services in the same building as Tree of Life. He was heavily involved with the synagogue, having been president and on the board of directors.
Melvin Wax was the first to arrive at New Light Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood — and the last to leave.
Fellow members of the congregation, which rented space in the Tree of Life Synagogue, says Wax was a kind man and a pillar of the congregation.
Myron Snider spoke late Saturday about his friend who would stay late to tell jokes with him. He said “Mel,” a retired accountant, was unfailingly generous.
“He called my wife to get my phone number in the hospital so he could talk to me,” Snider said. “Just a sweet, sweet guy.”
When the gunman walked inside the Tree of Life, Irving would have been in the hallway, just coming in. Or he would have been sitting in the back, giving prayer books to people as they arrived, said Chuck Diamond, a former rabbi at the synagogue.
Diamond, 63, said he was close friends with Younger. They loved to exchange jokes, mostly jokes about Jews making fun of themselves. They shared a love of sports and politics. They talked about the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they aired their different views on politics.