Her ‘final good deed’: Woman saved rabbi

Best friend says she stood in way of bullets and ‘died a sacred death’

POWAY, Calif. – The woman killed in Saturday’s San Diego synagogue shooting stepped in front of the bullets aimed at her longtime friend and rabbi as he raced to evacuate children, according to her friends and authorities.

Friends said the actions of Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, were in keeping with the San Diego native they knew: always the first to help with faith and family.

Kaye, 60, was killed at Chabad of Poway when a nursing student who espoused anti-Semitic beliefs opened fire with a rifle. Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, Kaye’s friend of 30 years, suffered wounds to his hands but survived the attack.

Roneet Lev, an emergency medicine physician from Poway, said Kaye was her best friend and like a second mother to her two children.

Lev rushed to the hospital and spoke to Goldstein as he was going into surgery. Lev said Sunday morning as she visited a growing memorial of flowers and candles across the street from the synagogue: “The rabbi told me as he was being rolled into the OR, ‘Let everyone know that Lori stepped in and saved my life. Tell everybody that I was a target.’ ”

Kaye left behind a husband and daughter. “Your final good deed was taking the bullets for Rabbi Mendel Goldstein to save his life,” friend Audrey Jacobs wrote in a post she said had been approved by the other victims and their families. “Tragically the rabbi was still shot in the hand and he gave a sermon telling everyone to stay strong.”

Lev said she and Kaye shared a Shabbat dinner Friday night. Saturday morning, Lev said, Kaye went to Chabad of Poway to say a prayer, known as the Kaddish, in honor of her mother, who had died in November. It was to be Kaye’s first time reciting the mourner’s prayer for her mother, Lev said. But Kaye never got to say it. “She’ll say it in person,” Lev said Sunday. “She died a sacred death. She died on the Sabbath. She died on Passover. She died in the synagogue. She died saving the rabbi’s life.”