Shooting brought 'darkness' to synagogue, injured rabbi who worked on LI says

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who got his start in religious life on Long Island, was preparing for a prayer on the final day of Passover in his synagogue in California on Saturday morning when he heard a loud bang.

He turned around, and one of his congregants was on the ground, mortally wounded. A gunman wearing sunglasses was standing at the door of the sanctuary, 15 feet away from Goldstein.

He pointed his assault rifle at the rabbi and kept firing.

“I had the bullets flying right by me, bullets from a rifle flying by me with such power and energy it could destroy anyone,” Goldstein told a crowd of 250 people though a video connection Tuesday night at a synagogue in Dix Hills.

He raised his hands, and the bullets blew away parts of his fingers.

“I just got away with missing my right index finger and hopefully the other finger will survive,” Goldstein told the crowd, his hands in casts and a sling on his left arm.

Although one congregant was killed and three people injured, Goldstein called it a “miracle” more were not shot. The Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego was filled with 50 people, including children.

“Yesterday could have been my funeral,” along with that of others, Goldstein said Tuesday night.

“Other members of the shul ran and put themselves in the line of fire to save others,” he said. “We saw so much darkness but we saw so much heroism.”

Goldstein agreed to speak to the group in Dix Hills, which gathered in an act of solidarity, just three days after the shooting because of his special connection to Long Island, he said.

Starting in 1978 at the age of 16, he spent three years working with the Chabad Orthodox movement in Suffolk County as a camp counselor and youth outreach worker, mainly in Commack, Patchogue and Hauppauge, said Rabbi Tuvia Teldon, head of Chabad on Long Island.

“He was very talented. He had a very nice personality. The kids loved him. He was like a pied piper with the children,” Teldon said.

Another Long Island Chabad rabbi, Yakov Saacks, also knows Goldstein personally, and happened to be visiting San Diego when the shooting occurred. He drove to the Poway synagogue and later to the hospital where Goldstein and others were being treated.

After he returned to New York, Saacks invited Goldstein to address the crowd at The Chai Center synagogue he heads in Dix Hills to offer support.

“My roots were in Long Island,” said Goldstein, originally from Brooklyn. “There is a very special place in my heart for our fellow Long Islanders.”

“I want to thank you so much for coming together in unity and solidarity to be here with us,” he added. “It is so comforting and consoling.”

Goldstein described a harrowing encounter Saturday morning. After he was shot, he grabbed a towel to stanch the flow of blood, and ran toward a group of children standing nearby, he told www.chabad.org.

He and a visiting former Israeli soldier whisked the children to safety, Goldstein said, though the soldier and a 9-year-old girl were shot.

As congregants ran for their lives, two other men — a U.S. military veteran and an off-duty U.S. Patrol agent — charged the terrorist, whose gun jammed as he fled the building and drove off in his car.

The alleged shooter, John Earnest, 19, was eventually arrested.

Teldon said he kept mentally replaying images of the shooting.

“Coming out of the washroom and seeing somebody with the barrel of a rifle aiming at you, that film just keeps on running in my mind,” Teldon said. “It’s really hard to imagine and amazing that he really rose to the occasion the way he did.”

After the shooter fled, Goldstein got on a chair outside the synagogue, and even though he was still bleeding badly, gave the shocked congregation a speech to calm their fears and “lift their spirits,” he said.

“To see darkness and evil face to face … in our home that we built to be a house of prayer and charity and kindness and love and joy, turned into a house of darkness,” Goldstein said Tuesday.

“Our community is hurting, our community is sobbing, dealing with this terrible tragedy,” he said. But “we’re going to go stronger and better. We’re going to be so much light to the world.”