Synagogue shooting wounded – and united – 2 congregations
ESCONDIDO, Calif. – Two religious congregations about 12 miles apart – one Jewish and the other Christian – were bound by tragedy over the weekend.
One was a synagogue ripped apart by gunfire; the other was a church the suspected shooter’s family regularly attended. What both shared Sunday: an overwhelming sense of grief as worshippers grappled to make sense of the senseless.
Their leaders, a rabbi and a pastor, did their best to show how they are rising above hate.
At the Chabad of Poway, Orthodox Jews had gathered for Passover when a gunman burst in with a semiautomatic rifle Saturday and started shooting,
killing a worshipper and wounding the rabbi and two others.
The next morning at the Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church, also nestled in the picturesque rolling hills northeast of San Diego, the minister led the congregation in collective soulsearching over how a 19-year-old, a member of one of their most respected families, could be accused of carrying out a crime so horrific, one that so flew in the face of the church’s values and teachings.
At both congregations, the sense of horror was palpable. Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein endured the “indescribable” experience of staring down the barrel of a military-style rifle at a service in his own synagogue.
“Here is a young man standing with a rifle, pointing right at me, and I look at him. He had sunglasses on. I couldn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t see his soul,” Goldstein said.
Police said that young man was John Earnest, who lived with his parents while attending nearby California State University San Marcos. He had graduated from Mount Carmel High School, where his father was a teacher, and he was accomplished at the piano and participated on the swim team.
Earnest struck many as being unusually reserved.
“I tried to talk to John several times, but he just never said anything. I think it’s not good if someone is as quiet as that,” longtime parishioner Gerrit Groenewold said at the Escondido church.
The pastor of the church, Zach Keele, was so disturbed by the shooting that he called a special session after the main service to talk about it with the congregation. Most worshippers stayed, and they allowed a USA TODAY reporter to witness the moment.
Keele, in emotional tones, prayed for the victims, the police investigators and the Earnest family. He decried the evil that had landed on the church’s doorstep. He prayed that the suspect’s soul “will be softened.”
He reached for consolation, finding little except that the suspect, in a manifesto police said he published before the crime, didn’t blame his family for his radicalization, saying it was based on writing he encountered online.
“There is no superior race. We are all created equal,” Keele said. “We are committed to loving all people.”
He said he plans to “reach out and express my condolences to the synagogue.”
Keele is likely to find a receptive audience for the message in Goldstein. The rabbi emerged Sunday from a hospital – where he lost a finger damaged in the attack – determined that the community would heal.
“Wow, wow, wow,” he said at a rally later Sunday attended by more than 1,000 people. “Look at the love. Look at the warmth. What happened to us happened to all of us.”