By COLlive reporter
The final days of Pesach will mark the first anniversary since an anti-Semitic gunman stormed Chabad of Poway in California and attempted to murder the many Jewish people present.
While it has been a full year and the world is now distracted by the coronavirus pandemic, Chabad of Poway’s founder Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein continues to relive those horrific moments.
He is spending Pesach in his native Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn where his brother Rabbi Levi Goldstein, a veteran educator, continues to battle the effects of the coronavirus.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t live with the anguish of the pain and suffering that we had that day,” Rabbi Goldstein said in a video message on COLlive.com on Monday.
He said that watching Lori Kaye HY”D being killed by the gunman in front of his eyes is an event he continues to mourn.
“The physical pain and metal anguish is something that I live with,” he admits, “but did not paralyze me in life. On the contrary, it gave me the opportunity to realize and appreciate the gift of life… the greatest gift wasn’t to be alive but to give life to others.”
Even after losing 2 fingers, Rabbi Goldstein pressed forward with a positive message of spreading light over the darkness in the world. He says it is a message that the Rebbe wrote to him personally in a letter.
“After the shooting, I appealed to the world to fill up the synagogues and Chabad houses the following Shabbos,” he says. “This year, we are not going to be doing that. While we can’t do so physically, but we are going to fill ourselves with the spirit of our shuls.”
But even while the world is in isolation and shuls are shut, Rabbi Goldstein is imploring the public to make the final days of Pesach “a day of hope and dedication.”
He says that “the expression of love, unity and the amount of Mitzvos and Shabbos candles that were lit in memory of Lori is so appreciated and has certainly broken through the gates of Heaven.”
This year, on the first anniversary of the shooting, he is asking people “to reach out to every woman and girl you know to light candles again and welcome the final days of Passover” with a prayer to Hashem that He “bring us the salvation and that moshiach is going to come.”
VIDEO:
Yisroel Goldstein’s brother
Levi Goldstein
Needs a huge Brocha and refuah to wake up
Please say tehilim
Chaim Levi Ben chana priva
How is Rabbi Levi Goldstein?
Hoping for good news, we keep davening for him. Besuros Tovos!
The Rebbe never mentioned yene machle by name as noted by Rashi in Gmara Nedarim Amud 41 . It is stated there that naming a disease gives it koach
May we immediately see this virus Weaken and disappear
B”h bchasdei hashem there is good news
Reb Levi has turned the corner and is on his road to recovery – still critical and needs our tefilos now more then ever But there are positive signs of optimism after a long month of touch and go
Yesher koiach for all the tefilos may all those who need the brocho have a refuah shleima – moshiach now