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Victims of Jerusalem Synagogue Massacre Were Congregation's "Wise Scholars"

(New York Times) Isabel Kershner, Timothy Williams and Joseph Berger - Rabbi Moshe Twersky, 59, was one of four Jewish men killed at prayer on Tuesday morning when two Palestinians armed with a gun and butcher knives stormed a Jerusalem synagogue. He immigrated to Israel in 1990, was head of the Toras Moshe yeshiva in Jerusalem and the scion of a celebrated Hasidic dynasty. He and the other three worshipers killed in the attack - Rabbi Kalman Zeev Levine, 55, and Aryeh Kupinsky, 43, who were both dual Israeli-U.S. citizens, and Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, 68, who came to Israel from England - all lived on the same street in the Har Nof neighborhood. Rabbi Levine was born in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to Israel soon after he married. Aryeh Kupinsky was born in Rhode Island, grew up in Detroit, and moved with his parents to Israel in 1982 when he was 11. He is survived by his wife and five children, ages 5 to 16. Though he was not an ordained rabbi, Kupinsky taught religious studies and served in the rabbinate of the Israeli military. Rabbi Goldberg was born in Liverpool, England, and moved to Israel in 1993. Rabbi Yitzhak Mordechai Rubin, the rabbi of Kehilat Bnei Torah, where the attack took place, said: "We are here, standing before three sacred men, the best of our congregation, wise scholars whose blood was spilled like water. As we count the number of widows and orphans who have been added today to the nation of Israel, we tally four widows and 24 orphans all on one street."
2014-11-19 00:00:00
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