Community Mourns the Lives of Those Lost in Pittsburgh Shooting

The local Jewish community and supporters gathered to remember the lives lost in Tree of Life Synagogue shooting.

DULUTH, Minn.- Members of the Duluth community gathered Monday to remember the lives lost during a shooting at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh this past weekend.

The Tree of Life Synagogue may be 900 miles from the Twin Ports, but the feelings expressed by the local Jewish community and members of the Temple Israel in Duluth made the distance between the cities seem much smaller.

“You must not stand idly by while your neighbor bleeds,” member of the Temple Israel Ben Yokel said in Hebrew.

That was the phrase dozens repeated in downtown Duluth Monday afternoon mourning the loss of 11 lives in Saturday’s shooting.

“If one of us is bleeding, all of us are bleeding. We can’t let that happen,” Yokel said.

Yokel lost his grandparents in the Holocaust. His parents were Holocaust survivors.

“They came to this country thinking that they would give a better life to their children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren and they never imagined that the horror they escaped in Europe would be occurring here,” Yokel said.

Alongside community leaders, who compared Duluth to the city of Pittsburgh, Yokel sang out in Hebrew moving the crowd to tears as they commemorated prior acts of gun–violence experienced at other congregations, ringing a bell for each one and ending with the most recent act.

“I am a member of the Jewish community. I’m also a member of this world wide community, and yes this was an act of antisemitism, but this kind of violence happens all over…” Andrea Gelb said. “It does happen here and happens with acts of micro–aggression and it happens with murders, too.”

Andrea is a member of the Jewish community. Her friend Elizabeth lost her nephew to murder in Haiti.

“It’s everybody and everybody needs to be a part of the solution,” Gelb said.

The two attended the ceremony to mourn, but also in hopes to see change by the hurting community.

“First… We mourn. We pray. We pray with our lips, we pray with our hearts, but after that, we pray with our hands and with our actions,” Yokel said.

Many of the congregation’s speakers condemned the nation’s lack of stricter policies regarding gun violence encouraging those who want to see change to get out and vote during November’s election.

Another service will be held at the Temple Israel Thursday at 7 p.m.