Shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh

A Pittsburgh newspaper has responded to last weekend’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue by publishing the beginnings of a Jewish prayer for the dead on its front page.

On Friday, the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published the first words of the Mourners’ Kaddish, a prayer traditionally recited for the dead, in Hebrew, above an article covering the burial of some of the victims of the shooting. Eleven people were killed in total on Saturday, when suspected assailant Robert Bowers stormed the Tree of Life synagogue with a gun, verbally demanding that all Jews “must die.”

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter had a conspiracy theory.

The suspected killer of 11 Jewish people in a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue frequently posted snippets of his political ideology on far-right social networking sites like Gab. He posited that George Soros, the Jewish billionaire known for contributing to liberal causes, was secretly controlling the Honduran migrant caravan, a dwindling group of about 4,000 people heading on foot to the US-Mexico border to seek political refuge from instability and gang violence as part of a wider scheme to destabilize Western democracy.

Last Saturday, about three hours before my wedding, I waited in a hotel room with my rabbi and watched cable news reports of a massacre at a synagogue not far from where we were.

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in recorded American history, was a terrorist attack aimed at the heart of the Jewish community. The shooter, who openly said he wanted to “kill all the Jews,” was sending a message: that even in America, where Jews like my grandparents had found refuge after the Holocaust, you are not and never will be safe.

In the wake of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue over the weekend that left 11 people dead, Vice President Mike Pence appeared with a rabbi at a campaign rally in Michigan — but the rabbi was a “Messianic rabbi” who’s part of the Jews for Jesus movement.

Pence sparked outrage when he shared the stage with Loren Jacobs at a rally outside of Detroit. Messianic Judaism accepts Jesus as the messiah and embraces the New Testament. As the Washington Post notes, the major Jewish denominations and Israel view followers of Messianic Judaism as Christian.

Last week, several top Democrats were targeted by pipe bombs, two black Americans were killed in what appeared to be a racially-motivated murder, and a terror attack against Jewish Americans in their place of worship that left 11 people dead.

Over the last decade, we’ve witnessed a host of terror attacks and mass shootings — in San Bernardino, in Colorado Springs, in Charleston, in Orlando, in Chattanooga, in Santa Barbara, in Fort Hood, in Santa Monica, in Newtown, in Minneapolis, in Aurora, in Oakland.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise.

On Saturday, 11 Jews were killed in a Pittsburgh synagogue, allegedly by a man who has been charged with federal hate crimes, a man with a documented history of posting anti-Semitic rants and conspiracy theories on far-right social networking website Gab.

A group of progressive Jewish leaders has a message for President Donald Trump in the wake of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue over the weekend that left 11 people dead: Stay away until you fully denounce white nationalism and stop targeting minorities, immigrants, and refugees.

Eleven members of the Pittsburgh affiliate of Bend the Arc, a national organization for progressive Jews, penned an open letter to Trump on Sunday calling Saturday’s shooting, believed to be the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in United States history, the “direct culmination” of the president’s influence.

It’s been a disturbing week of violence in the United States: A Florida man was arrested for sending bombs to 13 prominent Democrats and critics of the president; a white man in Kentucky shot and killed two black people at a grocery store in what appears to have been a racially motivated attack; a Pittsburgh man killed 11 people in a synagogue in what has been deemed a hate crime.

That’s led to questions about whether President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and divisiveness have played a role in encouraging violence or, at the very least, need some toning down. Republicans don’t want to talk about it.

President Donald Trump repeatedly called for “stiffer” death penalty laws Saturday after a gunman killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue — a familiar refrain invoked often by the president in the wake of mass atrocity.

“It’s a terrible, terrible thing what’s been going on with hate in our country,” Trump told reporters just hours after the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue ended, before saying it was time to “bring the death penalty into vogue.”

Thousands gathered for an interfaith prayer vigil at Pittsburgh’s Sixth Presbyterian Church in the hours following the mass shooting at the city’s Tree of Life synagogue, packing the pews with mourners from different congregations across the community.

Reverend Vincent Kolb, a pastor at Sixth Presbyterian, began the service by recalling the advice of the church’s former worshipper Fred “Mister” Rogers and said “it is in that spirit of neighborliness that we gather here tonight to be allies to our Jewish neighbors who have been victimized and traumatized by this tragedy,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Marylynne Pitz and Peter Smith reported.

President Donald Trump on Saturday defended holding a campaign rally for Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) just hours after a mass shooting in Pittsburgh by saying that “evil people” cannot dictate how we live our lives.

“We can’t make these sick, demented, evil people important. ... We can’t allow people like this to become important,” he told supporters at the Southern Illinois Airport. “And when we change all of our lives in order to accommodate them, it’s not acceptable.”

Saturday’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, may have been the deadliest attack on Jewish people on American soil, with 11 people dead and several others injured.

A suspect is in police custody, and witnesses told CBS affiliate KDKA he shouted “all Jews must die” during the attack.

After an attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, several foreign leaders have voiced their support for the victims and sent their condolences to a grieving United States.

What follows is a running chronological list of foreign leaders who have commented on the Pittsburgh shooting that killed multiple people and injured at least six, including at least four law enforcement officers.

President Donald Trump called the Saturday attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue “an anti-Semitic act,” his strongest comments yet in the shooting’s aftermath.

Trump is in Indianapolis to speak with the Future Farmers of America, but started his speech with strong comments on the multiple deaths and at least six injuries during a baby-naming ceremony.

Every country in the world has bigoted extremists and people with serious mental health issues that may drive them to violence. But in America, it is uniquely easy for one of these people to obtain a gun and carry out horrific tragedies like the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday.

This is, in short, America’s gun problem. It’s why we see so many of these mass shootings on a regular basis. It’s why the US has so much gun violence in general compared to its developed peers.

Multiple people were killed and injured in a shooting Saturday morning at a Pittsburgh synagogue — a shooting that comes amid an increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.

The suspected shooter, a white male, has been taken into custody after surrendering to a SWAT team at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill, a Pittsburgh neighborhood.

President Donald Trump reacted to a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday by suggesting the congregation should have had better security and saying it was time to “bring the death penalty into vogue.”

The “results” of the incident were “more devastating than anybody thought,” Trump told reporters early Saturday afternoon before leaving for a speech in Indianapolis.