Deadly shooting brings nation together
Communities gather to show hope, share grief
PITTSBURGH – This city of three rivers struggled with a confluence of grief, anger and frustration Tuesday as mourners began burying their dead from Saturday’s synagogue massacre and protesters decried a presidential visit that they denounced as untimely and unwelcome.
Mourners gathered early for the day’s two funerals, one at a synagogue and the other at a theater, with both struggling to accommodate the turnout. The lines included many in wheelchairs and walkers, doctors still in scrubs, Jews and non-jews who greeted each other in the fellowship of grief.
The crowd quickly overflowed the 1,400-seat Rodef Shalom temple, leaving many to stand between pews for the combined service of David Rosenthal and Cecil Rosenthal, brothers who lay side by side in wooden caskets. The pair, lifelong members of Tree of Life synagogue who were known to greet strangers at the sanctuary door, were shot by a gunman, alleged to be Robert Bowers, when he burst into Shabbat services shouting anti-semitic slurs.
Those who came to say goodbye to the brothers passed beneath words chiseled into the facade that read: “My house shall be called a house for all people.”
“He’d be the first person to greet me when I walked in with a ‘Good Shabbas,’ “Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers said of Cecil Rosenthal, whom he described as the unofficial “mayor” of the Tree of Life community, inviting a wave of tears and laughter that rippled over the audience. “No matter how early you got there,” he said, “Cecil was always there.”
Mourners came from around the corner and around the country. At least two bus loads traveled from synagogues in Washington, D.C. About 100 members of the Pittsburgh Steelers organization attended, including quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and Coach Mike Tomlin, who lives near Tree of Life. A relative of the brothers used to work for the team.
Michael Hirt, their brother-in-law, tearfully recalled Cecil Rosenthal as a shy man with a lifelong fascination with police and firefighters.
“Michael, the police are looking for you!” Rosenthal would say mischievously upon answering the phone, Hirt said.
Hirt described David Rosenthal as an incorrigible socialite whose great pleasure was unearthing and sharing gossip from the community. He would have “loved” seeing his picture in the papers, Hirt said.
At the funeral of Jerry Rabinowitz, an ebullient, bow-tie-loving physician, those who couldn’t squeeze into the Jewish Community Center’s Henry Kaufman theater filled an overflow area equipped with a video feed. That section filled up, too, with some attendees sitting on stairs, craning for a view of Rabinowitz’s pine coffin flanked by U.S. and Israeli flags.
Ellen Surloff, president of Rabinowitz’s Dor Hadash congregation, recalled the doctor’s inviolable early arrival at Saturday morning Bible study, taking the same seat, filling paper cups with wine for the kiddush blessing. “I never saw somebody look so happy filling Dixie cups,” Surloff said. “That there is always, always a smile on Jerry’s face ... even when Jerry was being soundly beaten at the Dor Hadash poker game.”
Sondra Krimmel and Barbara Krimmel, twin 72-year-old sisters, remembered Rabinowitz as a both a jolly presence and caring doctor who had treated Barbara for more than 20 years. They said he healed not just the patient but her family.
“He took care of me during the time my sister was suffering,” Sondra Krimmel said. “Jerry treated the whole person, the physical body and the emotional body.”
They mourned for both their friend and their neighborhood.
Responding to the horrific killings motivated by hate 2,600 miles away, Sonoma County residents will join in a community expression of grief and a message of hope Thursday night at a Santa Rosa synagogue.
“It’s not just about us,” Rabbi George Gittleman of Shomrei Torah said Monday. “Any time anyone is attacked, ultimately we’re all being attacked.”
Lighting candles, singing songs and reciting prayers will be part of the special local service prompted by the massacre at a Jewish house of worship Saturday in Pittsburgh, leaving 11 people dead and six wounded by a gunman with a documented history of antisemitism.
The public is invited to the Solidarity Interfaith Service, scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at Congregation Shomrei Torah with two other Jewish groups and people of six other faiths, including Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal and Unitarian churches and the Center for Spiritual Living participating.
Gittleman quickly organized the service as part of his stunned reaction to the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in western Pennsylvania, while he, too, was engaged in Sabbath services.
Rev. Dale Flowers, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Rosa, had sent a text to Gittleman with the frightful news Saturday morning, offering his prayers for the Pittsburgh congregation and to Gittleman, a longtime friend. Gittleman called Flowers that day with the proposal for an interfaith event.
“I was never aware of how much the Jewish community is a target of hate and violence until I befriended him,” said Flowers, whose congregation numbers 650 members and friends.
Indeed, there were 1,986 anti- Semitic incidents reported nationwide last year, according to the Antidefamation League based in New York.
A couple kneels before a memorial at Murray and Wilkins avenues on Sunday in Pittsburgh, Pa. The memorial was for the 11 people that were killed during the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue. Rabbi Shulamit Cenker of St. Louis, Mo., is comforted as words are spoken on Sunday during an interfaith vigil against hate at the Jewish Community Center in Creve Coeur, Mo. About 1,500 people gathered in the gym of the Staenberg Family Center to denounce violent acts of hate following Saturday’s deadly shooting that killed 11 people at a Pennsylvania synagogue.