It’s been a rough few days for our family. Tree of Life is our family synagogue. We’ve been going for over 50 years. Many cousins have been Bar and Bat Mitzvahed there. My parents go every year for the high holidays and other events. My great uncle Judah Samet is the patriarch of our family now and he is a fixture there. A holocuast survivor and religious teacher he made a ton of friends at the synagogue in his life and goes pretty much everyday. Never misses a service on saturday unless he is out of town. He also is never late.
On Saturday he was late. By 4 minutes. Here’s his story: https://forward.com/news/national/4...ted-death-at-pittsburgh-synagogue-massacre-4/
We spent a good 2 hours trying to see if he was still with us on saturday. He doesn’t take his cell phone to synagogue on saturdays. However many of the grandparents of our friends and his close friends are now gone. These were wonderful people. I knew the brothers Cecil and David well. They were both with special needs but were the kindest men you ever met. They devoted their lives to welcoming you to the synagogue. They loved my great uncle and would always come tell us how much they loved him. Rose Mallinger was the sweetest old lady. She sat right behind us at synagogue. Always told my brother and I how handsome we were as kids and to listen to my mom haha. We misbehaved in synagogue. In February my great uncle had a second Bar Mitzvah at 80. She came. As did my wife and I. She told my wife that she knew we would get pregnant this year she could feel it. We did in July. She was the sweetest.
I’m here in Pittsburgh now. Trying to help our friends and family get through this and say goodbye to those we lost. This was a really really close knit group of people. Families that really became one family over decades of attending synagogue. We shared in each other’s most joyous occasions in the Jewish faith and would never ever in a million years think something like this would ever happen here.
My great uncle was already scheduled to tell his Holocaust story on Sunday and decide not to cancel it as it seems that now those stories are more important than ever.
On Saturday he was late. By 4 minutes. Here’s his story: https://forward.com/news/national/4...ted-death-at-pittsburgh-synagogue-massacre-4/
We spent a good 2 hours trying to see if he was still with us on saturday. He doesn’t take his cell phone to synagogue on saturdays. However many of the grandparents of our friends and his close friends are now gone. These were wonderful people. I knew the brothers Cecil and David well. They were both with special needs but were the kindest men you ever met. They devoted their lives to welcoming you to the synagogue. They loved my great uncle and would always come tell us how much they loved him. Rose Mallinger was the sweetest old lady. She sat right behind us at synagogue. Always told my brother and I how handsome we were as kids and to listen to my mom haha. We misbehaved in synagogue. In February my great uncle had a second Bar Mitzvah at 80. She came. As did my wife and I. She told my wife that she knew we would get pregnant this year she could feel it. We did in July. She was the sweetest.
I’m here in Pittsburgh now. Trying to help our friends and family get through this and say goodbye to those we lost. This was a really really close knit group of people. Families that really became one family over decades of attending synagogue. We shared in each other’s most joyous occasions in the Jewish faith and would never ever in a million years think something like this would ever happen here.
My great uncle was already scheduled to tell his Holocaust story on Sunday and decide not to cancel it as it seems that now those stories are more important than ever.
