Displaying items by tag: synagogue shooting

John Earnest walked into a California synagogue carrying a semiautomatic rifle. Rabbi Goldstein was preparing for the day’s prayer and heard gunshots. He found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. Earnest had just shot someone in the foyer. ‘I have a fraction of a second to decide what to do’, he recounted. ‘Do I hide? The gun is pointing at me. Do I think about others?’ His mind raced. When he turned to herd the children to safety the gunman fired at him, blowing off his fingers. His granddaughter cried, ‘Grandpa, why are you bleeding?’ The gunman fired into a side room full of people but only two were slightly wounded. As the rabbi turned back, the gunman’s rifle jammed. Two congregation members chased him out of the building. A short time later, he inexplicably phoned 911 and reported the shooting.

2,500 people attended a vigil at a memorial hall and 1,500 stood outside in the rain, listening to loudspeakers, the day after an anti-Semite murdered eleven people and injured six in their place of worship on 27 October, their Shabbat. ‘We need love, not hate’, said the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. The Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others stood by the Bishop of Pittsburgh whose response to the shooting was, ‘This terror is added to the heap of such crimes we have witnessed in the past. Yet our hope is not dimmed. “Behold, I set before you this day, life and death, blessing and curse: therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live’’ (Deuteronomy 30:19).’ See