The following comes from the Chabad Jewish Center of Gloucester County.
Our hearts are shattered by the heinous and horrific attack on our brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh. We mourn the 11 holy souls who were so cruelly torn from our midst, and pray to G-d to provide strength and comfort to their shocked and grieving families. Their unfathomable pain is shared by the entire Jewish people and all people worldwide.
We further pray for the complete and speedy healing of the injured, of the survivors and of the entire Pittsburgh community.
No words can possibly describe this pure evil. Jews who gathered in Synagogue to pray and celebrate Shabbat were killed for no reason other than the fact that they were Jewish. Again: While praying! On Shabbat! The killer’s bullets were aimed at us all. “All Jews must die,” he yelled while opening fire.
What is the remedy to such senseless hatred?! What can we possibly do to eradicate it?
The Lubavitcher Rebbe of righteous memory answered this a number of times, with clarity and conviction: Wanton love.
Cold-blooded, fanatical, baseless, relentless hatred can be uprooted from its core only by saturating our world with pure, undiscriminating, uninhibited, unyielding love and acts of kindness.
Now, more than ever, we need to spread love and unity; positivity and light.
We must continue to walk to our synagogues proudly, and even as we grieve and mourn, we must increase exponentially our acts of goodness and kindness.
Therefore, we, at Chabad of Gloucester County, are organizing a candlelight vigil for the wider Gloucester County community to come together to remember the victims and stand together in solidarity against any form of bias and hate. We will be joined by freeholders, state legislators, faith leaders and members of all communities from across the county.
The vigil will take place on Oct. 30 starting at 7:30 p.m. at the 9/11 Memorial in Mullica Hill (18 South Main St., Mullica Hill).
For more information e-mail [email protected] or call 856–733–0770.
