Canada Has A Serious Antisemitism Problem

"[An officer already on site as part of a security detail since the last attack heard the distinct sound of a single gunshot near where he was stationed. He then spotted] a white late-model Honda Accord with no licence plates in the area and saw it speeding away from the scene."

"It's because of that officer's actions that we were able to get up on our suspect and that's why we actually managed to get involved in a pursuit." 

"[That the shot was fired while a Toronto police cruiser was parked in front of the building with its emergency lights on] perhaps speaks to the brazen quality of this act and the recklessness that's involved, certainly, to engage in a high-speed pursuit."

"[Investigators] would not, as a matter of course, rule out any possible connection [between the latest consulate incident and the shots that were fired at two Jewish-owned Kavi's bakery locations late Saturday night]." 

Deputy Chief Frank Barredo, Toronto Police Service  

 

"What kind of city have we become? Paid shooters roaming through our streets to spread terror."

"We will support and wish for the safety of all the diplomats and their staff while living in Toronto."

Toronto Councillor James Pasternak

 

"Canada has a serious antisemitism problem the government needs to get serious about."

"Everyone needs to wake up. Attacks like this are the canary in the coal mine."

"The attackers are coming after our Judeo-Christian values. We need to act like it."

Republican Florida Senator Rick Scott

A shooting at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, the second this year, set off a high-speed chase and a manhunt. Police called the attack 'brazen' and 'reckless,' but didn't say why the consulate was targeted again.  CBC News

 

Five months ago, gunshots were fired at the U.S. Consulate building in Toronto. An investigation that followed at that time established that three young men -- Sheldon Tracey-Stewart 18, Zara Jabbi 19, and Nicholas Bennett 19, were responsible for that shooting, an attack described as a "national security incident". Multiple firearms charges face all three, while Bennett is charged as well with first-degree murder of Toronto police officer Constable Marc Pinizzotto, 43. While attempting to serve an arrest warrant, Constable Pinizzotto was shot to death by Nicholas Bennett.

 

"Police allege  young people are being recruited through encrypted messaging applications to carry out attacks and are required to record the incidents as proof, to receive payment", police explained in a public announcement. Ballistics from seized handguns, the one used in the death of Constable Pinizzotto included, have been linked to 27 shootings in the city. Another link is an unsealed criminal complaint where prosecutors in the U.S. suspect the attacks were ordered by Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, an Iraqi militia commander with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

 

Now, police in Toronto dealing with another shooting at the U.S. Consulate, consider a link with the previous shooting there, part of a gun-for-hire network, targeting various city locations, mostly synagogues and Jewish schools. The Monday shooting at the U.S. consulate on University Avenue led to a high-speed chase, ending when police decided they would no longer engage in the high-speed pursuit for fear of potential crashes on busy roadways -- at 5:00 a.m. 

 

An officer stationed near the building immediately reported seeing a white Honda Accord with no licence plates speed away from the scene, Deputy Chief Frank Barredo said. (Toronto Police Service)

 

A single spent shell casing was located that caused some damage to the building's facade. Two security personnel at the consulate were uninjured. Two Jewish-owned Kavi's bakery locations were also shot at, late on Saturday night on St.Clair Avenue and Steeles Avenue, damaging both facades.  

"I can assure Torontonians that the Toronto Police Service and our partners, federal, provincial and otherwise, are very much actively working to not only deter, but apprehend people involved in this."

"We have made arrests in practically all of the other shootings, at great cost to the Toronto Police Service [the death of Corporal Pinizzotto] in one instance."

Deputy Police Chief Frank Barredo

 

"[The] warning signs are becoming impossible to ignore [Canada must] get tough on terror."

"Hold accountable those perpetrating and directing these attacks."

"And ensure law enforcement and security agencies have the tools they need to protect Canadians."

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs  

Police at the scene after a shooting outside the U.S. Consulate in Toronto on Monday.  Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press via AP

 

Toronto Has a Problem With Juvenile Gang-Recruited Shooters

"These details are important as this investigation involves at least six shooting incidents in the Greater Toronto Area linked to a 9mm handgun, and at least 11 shooting incidents in the Greater Toronto Area linked to a .45-calibre firearm."
"We are still doing ballistic testing, and more arrests and charges could come at a later date."

"What we are dealing with in this case and in other unrelated incidences, including shootings at synagogues and Jewish schools, is a reoccurring and similar modus operandi. And that is criminals for hire." 

"Young people are hired [through encrypted messaging apps including WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal] to carry out attacks against various targets."

"And in order to get paid, they're required to film their attacks."

Toronto Police Service Chief Myron Demkiw 

Chief Myron Demkiw announces the loss of Constable Marc Pinizzotto alongside Toronto Police Association President Clayton Campbell and Mayor Olivia Chow.Toronto Police Service

 

 It was finally made official through a news conference Monday, that Toronto Police have linked the shooting at Toronto's U.S. Consulate and another at a private industry, to a number of repeat shootings at Toronto-area synagogues and Jewish schools. Just a week earlier as a Toronto Police squad arrived at an uptown apartment complex to deliver a warrant, a shootout took place between several youth wanted for involvement in those very shootings, that led to the death of one of the police officers, Constable Marc Pinizzotto, 43, a member of the Emergency Task Force, whose death in the line of service suddenly made the investigation into the mystery shootings very personal for the Toronto Police Service.

 

The young shooter, Nicholas Bennett, 19, wounded in the shootout and currently in hospital faces a first-degree murder charge for Constable Pinizzotto's killing, while his companion Zara Jabbi, 19 -- both suspects in the March 10 U.S. Consulate attack on University Avenue -- is a fugitive, with an active police search ongoing. "We are doing everything we can to find and arrest him", assured Chief Myron Demkiw at a press briefing. "This is an incredibly difficult moment for all of us. Marc's family has lost a husband, a father and a son, and as a service, we've lost a colleague and a friend."

 

Constable Marc Pinizzotto with his wife and children.

 

 During the investigation, police retrieved two guns on Thursday, the product of a raid on an apartment complex, where Constable Pinizzotto was shot to death, in the area north of Black Creek Drive and Eglinton Avenue West. According to Chief Demkiw announcing the find, the 9 mm handgun and .45-calibre handgun had both "originated in the United States of America". Some of the gangs that are known to recruit young offenders to steal vehicles throughout the Toronto area to ship them abroad, have been known to use their profits from stolen-vehicle sales to finance the illegal purchase of weapons smuggled from the U.S. into Canada.

 

According to U.S. prosecutors, the attack on the Toronto U.S. Consulate had been directed by Mohammad Baqeer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a commander of an Iraqi militia linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. A wiretapped conversation with al-Saadi soon after the March 10 shooting, reported through an unsealed criminal complaint in the U.S. has evidenced his involvement when he claimed "our people" to have been responsible for the attack, along with another on "the Knesset", referencing the Toronto synagogue fired on almost simultaneously. 

 

Will it ever occur to the Toronto Police Service that the 'our people' would be in reference to the many IRGC members who have slipped into Canada, particularly in and around Toronto, to live comfortably away from the messy nuisance of the Israel-U.S. bombing in Iran? And while their presence is fairly well known to Canadian Intelligence and the federal government who appear to view their presence with a certain blase nonchalance, that very presence is a threat? 

 

The entrance to Congregation Beth Tikvah in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, following an antisemitic attack, December 18, 2024   (photo credit: SIMON-MARC CHARRON/RADIO CANADA)

 

Two men were seen to emerge from a stolen Honda CRV to "fire multiple rounds" into the U.S. Consulate building, according to the TPS Chief Superintendent of Detective Operations, Joe Matthews. "While the building was struck by gunfire, thankfully nobody inside was injured", he noted, adding that the shooters had recorded their actions on their phones. The CRV they had stolen, later "was found abandoned in Scarborough", a Toronto suburb. 

 

Superintendent Matthews went  on to state that investigators determined the shooting was connected to "several other firearm discharge investigations across the Greater Toronto Area, both in terms of the individuals involved and the firearms being used." Police are still attempting to identify "individuals responsible for pulling the triggers", along with "those who may have directed or organized these acts of violence." There are, it appears, "multiple networks" of shooters for hire that are "multi-layered", explained the TPS superintendent. 

 

Three suspects in a Toronto police investigation into a series of recent shootings are shown. The suspects are from left to right: Jayon Burgher, 18, Sheldon Tracey-Stewart, 18, Zara Jabbi, 19. Police say Burgher and Tracey-Stewart have been arrested, while Jabbi is still at large. A fourth suspect, 19-year-old Nicholas Bennett (not pictured) is in custody in hospital. CTV News

  

"I know there's been a lot of reporting about criminal groups and foreign actors, but what I can tell you is that we are still working actively to investigate who's responsible for orchestrating these criminal acts."

"What we know is that bad actors are using criminal elements in our city to carry out these dangerous incidents."

"And it is clear that some of these individuals want to create a sense of fear in our communities, including in the Jewish community."

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw 

When Life Isn't Life

"You executed the defenseless Mr. S. in a cowardly way. Unlike you, he didn't retreat into his childhood bedroom — he worked, he enjoyed football, he got qualifications."

'[You are a loner living in your childhood bedroom at the age of 27, soaking up] crude conspiracy theories [on the internet and building weapons]."

"You are a danger to humanity [showing no remorse and when in court only repeated] absurd [ideology]."

"You are a fanatical, ideologically motivated lone perpetrator. You are anti-Semitic and xenophobic."

"You showed no indication of remorse. On the contrary, you repeatedly made clear that you wanted to continue your fight."

"Consequently, we have decided that society must be protected from you."

Judge Ursula Mertens, regional court, Hlle, Germany

 

"The verdict makes clear that murderous hatred of Jews meets with no tolerance." 

"Up to the end, the attacker showed no remorse, but kept to his hate-filled anti-Semitic and racist world view."

Josef Shuster, head, Germany’s Central Council of Jews

 

"None of the hate-filled conspiracies that this man has voiced are new."

"We’ve heard them all before. And we know where they lead. We know what happens when this propaganda and this speech goes unchecked."

"Germany knows it. I know it."

Talya Feldman, synagogue attack survivor

Accused Stephan Balliet stands in the courtroom of the regional court at the beginning of the trial in Magdeburg, Germany, Tuesday, July 21, 2020. (Hendrik Schmidt/dpa via AP)

"Inmates live in rooms and sleep in beds, not on concrete or steel slabs with thin padding. They have privacy -- correctional officers knock before entering. Prisoners wear their own clothes, and can decorate their space as they wish. They cook their own meals, are paid more for their work and have opportunities to visit family, learn skills and gain education."

"[The cells are] more like dorm rooms at a liberal arts college than the steel and concrete boxes most U.S. prisoners call home."

Visiting American Justice and Corrections authorities, Vice

This is a description of the German penal system accommodation for federal prisoners sentenced to prison for any number of serious crimes against society, including murder. A similar type of confinement and opportunities in a 'humane' prison system can be found in Norway.  German law has it that the purpose of criminal confinement is a method that leads to rehabilitation. The theory being that someone has gone temporarily astray in psychotic acts against society's best interests and must be gently led back to their natural inclination to live in peace and solidarity with other citizens of Germany.

 

Mourners outside the door of the synagogue in Halle, Germany, last year.Credit...Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

This is called forward-looking liberal penology. Advanced nations of the world sympathizing with the plight of the pathologically criminal element among them, the sociopaths and the psychopaths; viewing them all as salvageable, to return them to a pacific state of psychological well-being and acceptance of their role in a well-oiled society through acts of kind solicitation for their welfare. The victims, on the other hand, must accept that those who sinned against them were momentarily bereft of their senses and are deserving of rehabilitation, not ongoing punishment.

Take the case of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right extremist who killed 8 people with a bomb and later shot 69 other people -- including many teens -- dead on a island nearby Oslo in July of 2011, serving Norway's maximum sentence of 21 years. He was given a room of his own with all the comforts that German prisons offer, but attempted to sue the state arguing that strict conditions imposed upon him through isolation violated his human rights. 

 

Eligible to seek parole after serving the first ten years of his sentence term of 21 years in July 2021, it will be left to the courts to make the determination whether such a release is appropriate. "I have at his demand sent a request for parole. This is a right that all prisoners have and that he wants to use", said his lawyer, Oeystein Storrvik. "I feel quite safe that the Norwegian judicial system will do the right thing", tweeted Vegard Wennesland, a survivor of the attack on Utoeya island.

 

In Germany on Monday a regional court imposed the most extreme penalty available; life imprisonment for Jew-hater Stephan Balliet who last year on Yom Kippur in the city of Halle attempted to storm a synagogue to shoot to death the 51 congregants gathered within to pray. A special budget exists for the protection of synagogues through the German federation but no special precautions for Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement had been taken. The synagogue, however, had installed a thick wood entrance capable of withstanding a violent onslaught.

The synagogue's locked gate and CCTV system were all that stood between the attacker and worshippers inside

 

Determined to gain entrance while the Jewish congregants watched on security cameras as he shot repeatedly at the door without success Bailliet shot to death a 20-year-old woman passing by then rampaged through a kebab shop nearby where he confronted and shot to death a disabled 20-year-old man who begged for his life. He wounded two other people before he fled the scene. He was outside Halle when police caught up to him and confiscated a camera mounted on a helmet that recorded his actions which he obviously meant to post on social media.

Most criminals who stand trial in Germany are treated to a 'faint hope' protocol. And most of those who received "life" sentences become parole-eligible in 15 years. And lucky man, rehabilitation efforts are in his future, hope not denied the man whose plan was to slaughter as many Jews as he could manage. His punishment won't be hard to take for a man who lived as a recluse, with an increasing number of German states permitting restricted internet access for prisoners.

What is so very fascinating is that Germany is concerned with quality of life for its malefactors, with offering them a rainbow of hope for their futures; yes, they may be incarcerated for unspeakable crimes but all is not lost, they are given the opportunity to reclaim their futures by accommodating themselves to the penal authorities' efforts to lead them toward repentance and rehabilitation. This is the same nation that saw fit a lifetime ago to incarcerate Jews en masse in ghettoes preparatory to sending them to forced labour, gas chambers and death.

But at the present time, judges sitting in an atmosphere of liberal penology insist that the penalty for a crime must not be without limits much less absolute, where the potential for diminished sentences exist, crimes of horrendous nature not excluded. Whereas judges during the period of the Third Reich officially stamped their approval over the removal of citizenship and human rights for Germany's Jews, agreeing them to be sub-human, a pestilence upon the nation.

In December 1959, two members of the Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP) right-wing extremist party painted swastikas and the words "Germans demand: Jews out" on the synagogue in Cologne. Anti-Semitic graffiti emerged across the country. The perpetrators were convicted, and the Bundestag passed a law against "incitement of the people," which remains on the books to this day.

The Jews of Egypt

"If it wasn’t for [President Abdel Fattah] al-Sissi, this would have never been done. A lot of things have changed since he’s taken over."
"I have relatives who left to France, Italy and Israel and they would like to visit the synagogue now."
Yolande Mizrahi,  septuagenarian Jew born and raised in Alexandria

"This is recognition of Egypt’s Jews who were neglected for over sixty years."
"It is recognition that we have always been here and that we have contributed to a lot of things just like any other Egyptian."
"I'm very proud of what my country has done, and it symbolizes living together; today there is no difference between Egyptian Muslim , Christian and Egyptian Jew."
Magda Haroun, a leader of the dwindling Egyptian Jewish community, Cairo

People attend the opening of Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria, Egypt, Friday, Jan. 10, 2020, three years after the Egyptian government started the renovations of the synagogue originally built in 1354. (AP Photo/Hamada Elrasam)

During the pre- and post-Biblical era, Jews lived and prospered in Egypt, as an integral and equal part of the Egyptian population.
"From the time of the post-exilic prophets Judaism developed in three main streams, one flowing from Jerusalem, another from Babylon, the third from Egypt. Alexandria soon took precedence of existing settlements of Jews, and became a great centre of Jewish life. The first Ptolemy, to whom at the dismemberment of Alexander's empire Egypt had fallen, continued to the Jewish settlers the privileges of full citizenship which Alexander had granted them. He increased also the number of Jewish inhabitants, for following his conquest of Palestine (or Coele-Syria, as it was then called), he brought back to his capital a large number of Jewish families and settled thirty thousand Jewish soldiers in garrisons. For the next hundred years the Palestinian and Egyptian Jews were under the same rule, and for the most part the Ptolemies treated them well."
"Under their tolerant sway the Jewish community thrived, and became distinguished in the handicrafts as well as in commerce. Two of the five sections into which Alexandria was divided were almost exclusively occupied by them; these lay in the north-east along the shore and near the royal palace -- a favourable situation for the large commercial enterprises in which they were engaged."
"The Jews had full permission to carry on their religious observances, and besides many smaller places of worship, each marked by its surrounding plantation of trees, they built a great synagogue, of which it is said in the Talmud 'He who has not seen it has not seen the glory of Israel'. It was in the form of a basilica, with a double row of columns, and so vast that an official standing upon a platform had to wave his head-cloth or veil to inform the people at the back of the edifice when to say 'Amen' in response to the Reader. The congregation was seated according to trade-guilds, as was also customary during the Middle Ages; the goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, and weavers had their own places, for the Alexandrian Jews seem to have partially adopted the Egyptian caste-system..."
Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria, Norman Bentwich, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1910

Guests visit the newly renovated Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in the northwestern Egyptian city of Alexandria on January 10, 2020, on the day of its inauguration. (Khaled DESOUKI/AFP)

Alexandria's historic two-storey Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue was in parlous condition, having partially collapsed in 2006.The following year began restoration by the Egyptian Antiquities Department, preventing its total collapse.This is one of two remaining synagogues in Alexandria; many other have long since deteriorated with age and disuse and neglect in a city that once was host to 40,000 Jews up to 1940, descendants of Egyptian Jews who had lived there since antiquity.

This iteration of the synagogue dated only to 1881 to serve Alexandria's large and influential Jewish community. It boasted marble floors and marble, rose-coloured columns in its main hall. It stood on the very site of a much earlier synagogue, dating to 1354 a.d., to attest to its historical antecedents. Fully half of Egypt's Jewish community lived in Alexandria, a historical seat in Egypt of a portion of the Biblical diaspora.

The synagogue, now fully renovated, its opening ceremonies bringing a handful of Egyptian Jews to celebrate its resurrection together, in praise of Egypt's new warmer relationships with the State of  Israel, and the closer recognition of the role of Egyptian Jews in Alexandrian life. A small gathering of Jews, mostly elderly who had been born there and lived in the city all their lives, descendants of the original Jews who had made Alexandria their home.

When the State of Israel declared itself the reborn ancient Judea, its neighbours in the Middle East, the surrounding Arab Muslim states determined to eradicate its presence. Successive conflicts where various Arab states -- Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan sent expeditionary armies to destroy the fledgling nation. At the same time, Jews who had lived in Arab countries such as those, as well as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and others expelled their Jews, confiscating their property.

Coptic priests visit Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue. (Khaled DESOUKI/AFP

Ironically, non-Arab, Aryan Persia maintained friendly relations with Israel under the Pahlavi dynasty. Now the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have warmed relations with Israel under the regional threat of Persian ambitions to revisit its controlling past of the Middle East and it is from the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran that the existential threat to Israel emanates,

Egypt and Jordan have long since signed peace agreements with Israel, despite that the Jordanian and Egyptian public retain their distrust of and animosity toward the Jewish state. But it is Egypt, under the reign of former general and now president, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, with whom accommodation has been made between the two countries in their common battle against Islamist fundamentalism and terrorist groups and militias. "If we have Jews, we will build [synagogues] for them", the president said in 2018.

And this is just what has occurred, with the reconstruction of the Maimonides Cairo synagogue which Egypt sponsored in the 2000s. Egypt, mostly emptied of its once-numerous Egyptian-Jewish population in the 1950s, thanks mostly to bloody pogroms under then-President Nasser, has seen many synagogues in Cairo, along with a large Jewish cemetery, go into decay. The restoration of these ancient relics of sites of worship are as much a symbol of Egypt's past as they are of the Jewish presence in Egypt.

Guests visit the newly renovated Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in the northwestern Egyptian city of Alexandria on January 10, 2020, on the day of its inauguration. (Khaled DESOUKI/AFP)

The floor of the restored Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue has left open to public view the archaeological layers of history that lie beneath the edifice. Additional Egyptian Jews vacated Egypt, turning to Israel and migrating to the West in the wake of the 1956 Suez war after the launch of a military offensive against Egypt when Israel, France and Britain stopped Egypt from closing the Suez Canal to shipping traffic, and hostility from Egyptians toward its Jews was intensified.

Too Much Hate In The Country

"We are a Jewish nation that will stand tall. We will not let anyone take us down. Terrorism like this will not take us down."
"[I saw] a young man standing with a rifle, pointing right at me. I couldn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t see his soul. [He raised his hands to protect himself and lost one of his fingers in the shooting.] Miraculously the gun jammed."
"[Lori Kaye was a] pioneering, founding member [of the congregation]. Lori took the bullet for all of us. She didn’t deserve to die."
Congregation rabbi Yisroel Goldstein

"I thought I heard shots, but I thought maybe it was a car. Then I heard it again, and I heard people screaming. I started to run outside and my wife yelled at me to call the cops instead."
"This kind of thing is getting too common. There's too much hate in the country right now."
Jake Padilla, Poway resident

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, center, arrives for a news conference at the Chabad of Poway synagogue, Sunday, April 28, 2019, in Poway, Calif. A man opened fire Saturday inside the synagogue near San Diego as worshippers celebrated the last day of a major Jewish holiday. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)

"We completely deplore what he [synagogue attacker John Earnest, a church congregant] did. It is not part of our beliefs, our practices, our teachings in any way."
"Our hearts, our prayers, our tears go out to the victims. To all those wonderful neighbors at the synagogue, we pray for them."
"We believe in lifting high the love of Christ to all people -- men, women, old and young from every tribe and denomination. This is a complete surprise. He was quiet, kept to himself, sweet guy. We had no idea. This a surprise to all of us."
Zach Keele, pastor, Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church

How sweet this 19-year old man is can be disputed. He was inspired, it seems, by a manifesto posted on the online message board Schan that the gunman in the mosque attack n Christchurch, New Zealand had posted. Leading John Earnest to post his own anti-Semitic screed on the same site before his armed attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue yesterday. The messages he received as a lifelong congregant of the Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church of equality and love evidently made less of an impact on his belief system than did that of a brief encounter with a message posted by a pre-massacre psychopath.

The concluding day of Passover was the day chosen for John Earnest to display his rejection of the message of love in favour of a more exciting message of hatred. He had evidently practised by setting fire to a mosque in Escondido, California a month before. Two men did their utmost to stop the carnage at the synagogue, one a new member of the Chabad congregation, an off-duty Border Patrol agent Jonathan Morales, as well as former soldier Oscar Stewart, who attempted to tackle the gunman when his gun jammed.

Mr. Morales was enjoined by the Rabbi to bring a weapon with him when he decided to join the congregation for Passover, to celebrate his newly-discovered Jewish roots, taking him from El Centro California to Poway. "We never know when we will need it" -- the protection -- he advised Mr. Morales presciently. As for 51-year-od Oscar Stewart, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department had praise for his intervention, when he rushed toward the synagogue after hearing gunfire, to confront the attacker, and deterred his intention to leave.

This was the point at which an off-duty Border Patrol Agent came on the scene, firing at the attacker's vehicle as it drove off. The gunman then called the California Highway Patrol with his location in Rancho Bernardo on Interstate 15 where a police officer en route to the synagogue, saw the gunman as he pulled over, exited his vehicle and surrendered to the police officer, his rifle sitting on the front passenger seat of his car. Had his AR-15-type weapon not malfunctioned there would have been more dead than 60-year-old Lori Kaye who had tried to shield Rabbi Goldstein.

There was no official guard stationed at the synagogue, with around a hundred people at the Passover service. When he entered, the gunman shouted that Jews were ruining the world. A young Israeli girl of 8 was wounded as well as a young man and the rabbi. Rabbi Goldstein had attempted to reason with the attacker before being shot in the hand. In the event, Lori Kaye's husband was also at the synagogue for the end-of-Passover service. A physician, he began tending to the wounded. And when he reached her, to attempt CPR, realizing it was his wife, he fainted.

"Apparently, God was looking after us because we got there a little later than normal."
"As we were getting out of the car, we heard gunshots. I thought maybe someone was stepping on those little plastic bubbles."
"She [Lori Kaye] can't do enough for people around her. If you are sick, she brings you food. She's a wonderful, wonderful person."
Nancy Levanoni, 80, Chabad congregant

A vigil for the victims of the Chabad of Poway shooting.

Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images