A special ceremony was held this past weekend at the Limmud FSU Conference in Minsk, the biggest Jewish event in Belarus, in memory of Lori Gilbert-Kaye, who was murdered last week in an anti-Semitic shooting attack at the Chabad synagogue in Poway, near San Diego, USA.
600 people attended the event, who recited the Kaddish prayer and lit memorial candles. The event was initiated by the founder of Limmud FSU, Chaim Chesler and the Chief Rabbi of Minsk and Chabad Shliach, Rabbi Shneur Deutsch.
Alon Shoham, Israel’s ambassador to Belarus, also spoke about the growing incidents of anti-Semitic attacks taking place around the world and said that “we all should be alert, because as we’ve witnessed just last week, an attack may occur where you least expect it.”
Rabbi Deutsch recited a prayer in memory of Lori Gilbert-Kaye, and said, “We have listened here together to the words of Rabbi Yisrael Goldstein who was wounded in the attack, and the heart is simply torn apart. Lori was murdered just because she was Jewish. We must continue to do everything in our power to prevent the terrible hate crime that took place in San Diego from happening again.”
Chaim Chesler delivered a message of harsh condemnation of the incident in particular and against crimes of hatred and racism in general: “It is important to us that from here, the largest Jewish event in Belarus, on the lands of which some of the worst crimes of the Holocaust took place, a strong message and a fervent and loud cry be heard – never again! Anti-Semitism and hatred have no place in human society. We have to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and do everything possible, whether large or small, to prevent further tragic incidents like the one in which Lori Gilbert- Kaye was killed.”
Photos: Limmud FSU
