Poway chased

‘Never again’ — again

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POWAY, Calif.  — With hundreds gathered to show support for the victims of a shooting inside his shul, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein recounted the moment when he came face to face with the gunman and what happened next: He described watching a congregant’s husband, a doctor, faint as he attempted to give CPR to his bloodied wife, and hearing their daughter call out in terror.

“This is not supposed to happen,” Rabbi Goldstein told the crowd, which had gathered for a candlelight vigil at a park Sunday in this affluent community of 50,000, 20 miles north of San Diego. “This is not a pogrom. This is Poway.”

Poway’s landscape is textbook Southern California with its tract houses, red-tiled roofs, manicured lawns and palm trees off in the distance. 

But a day after a gunman entered Chabad of Poway, killing congregant Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, and injuring three others, including Rabbi Goldstein, the Jewish community here teetered between disbelief (“Poway of all places?”) and the conviction that in a post-Pittsburgh world, all Jewish communities are possible targets. (“Yes, even Poway.”)

Rabbi Mendy Rubenfeld, Chabad of Poway’s Hebrew school director, said the city is a warm, welcoming place for religious Jews. In the 16 years that he’s lived here, “I never received an unkind statement. No one has so much as shown me the finger.”

After a gunman motivated by his antipathy for Jewish support for immigrants killed worshippers inside Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, Rubenfeld knew such an attack was likely to happen again somewhere. He just never thought it would be here.

“We always say ‘never again,’ but here we are,” said Douglas Stone, 70, a friend of Rabbi Goldstein, a member of Adat Shalom and an active participant in Chabad’s programming. Given the threat, Stone said, “I’ve thought about getting a gun” for protection.

Saturday’s shooting took place on the last day of Passover and six months to the day after the Pittsburgh massacre. It closely followed two other deadly attacks on houses of worship, one targeting Muslims in New Zealand and another targeting Christians in Sri Lanka.

Rene Carmichael, who works for the city of Poway, said it’s common to see Orthodox Jews walking to services along Rancho Bernardo Road, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, on Saturday mornings and Jewish holidays. Leah Golembesky, a longtime member of Chabad of Poway, said newfound fear will now accompany the walk.

“Now we are too scared to walk with a kippah,” said Golembesky, 37, whose husband was worshipping at another area Chabad on Saturday. “We saw these type of incidents coming.”

Golembesky said her young children have faced anti-Semitic harassment at area public schools and that a Poway house with Chanukah decorations was vandalized with swastikas in the past year.

At around 11:30 am Saturday, as more than 60 congregants worshipped inside, a 19-year-old gunman identified as John Earnest entered the building and began firing shots. Rabbi Goldstein heard a loud noise, went to investigate and found a bloodied Gilbert-Kaye lying on the floor in the lobby. She had come to take part in the Yizkor service for her late mother, who died last year.

Rabbi Goldstein, who was shot in the hands, lost a finger in the attack. Almog Peretz, who was visiting and originally from Sderot — an Israeli city that is a frequent target of Hamas rockets — was hit in the leg. Peretz’s niece, Noya Dahan, 8, also suffered shrapnel wounds during the shooting.

Gilbert-Kaye, the sole fatality, was remembered as thoughtful and generous. Her friends said she would drop off gifts for no other reason than that she was thinking of them.

“If you were sick, she’d be there giving you chicken soup,” said Michelle Silverstein of nearby La Jolla, adding that her friend “would give and give and give, and she believed that giving anonymously was the highest degree of tzedakah.”

Last year, Gilbert-Kaye and Silverstein celebrated their 60th birthdays together, and they had already begun discussing what they would do when they turned 70.

Gilbert-Kaye is survived by her husband, Howard Kaye, a physician, and their daughter, Hannah Kaye, 22.

The gunman was chased off with the help of two Chabad congregants: Oscar Stewart, a U.S. Army veteran, and Jonathan Morales, an off-duty border patrol agent. Earnest was apprehended and has since been charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. Local law enforcement is treating the shooting as a hate crime.

As unlikely a target as many considered Poway to be, the Chabad convened an event about synagogue security last fall in the wake of the Pittsburgh shooting.

“We memorialized the victims of the Tree of Life massacre, and then we gave them tips about what to do if hate comes knocking at the door,” said Poway Mayor Steve Vaus, who attended the meeting with representatives of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. “Tips like, if you can run away, run away; if you can hide, hide; if you can’t hide, challenge the shooter.’”

During Saturday’s shooting, “all of that happened,” the mayor said, “and I have no doubt that that meeting contributed to saving lives.”

At the vigil Sunday evening, which brought together Jews and non-Jews — the crowd included Muslim women in hijabs and Sikh men in turbans — Rabbi Goldstein recounted what he said before being transported to the hospital following the shooting.

Looking out at the congregants who had made their way out of the synagogue, the rabbi got up on a chair, his hands bleeding badly.

“I said, ‘Guys, Am Yisrael Chai.” —JTA