Florida School Shooting Claims Jewish Victims — Community Plunged Into Mourning
Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — The Jewish community in Parkland, Florida held a healing service after a mass shooting at a high school attended by many of the teenagers in the community.
Rabbi Bradd Boxman of Kol Tikvah, a Reform congregation in the town inland from Boca Raton, said he knew of at least four Jewish high school students among the wounded, including three from his congregation. They were in area hospitals and had undergone surgery.
“A huge number went to that school,” he said of his congregants.
A gunman identified as Nikolas Cruz armed with a semiautomatic rifle killed at least 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday, police said. Another 17 wounded were in local hospitals, the New York Times reported. Cruz, a former student at the school, was in custody.
Health professionals who gathered at Kol Tikvah walked the high school students through the beginning stages of coping with the trauma, Boxman said. “Within our own community we have many mental health professionals to rely on,” the rabbi said, and many of them rushed to the synagogue to set up counseling services. “It was a place to come for refuge.”
“We just pulled together as a community, the surrounding congregations, to be there for our kids and families, getting the kids to have an opportunity to speak to their experience and begin the healing process in the community,” said Geri Pomerantz, the president of Kol Tikvah.
The session lasted 3 1/2 hours, and was organized by Kol Tikvah and other synagogues from nearby towns, as well as the local Jewish federation.
The synagogue will open up to families on Thursday, as schools in Parkland will be closed, Boxman said. “The children will be able to come and be there with counselors,” he said. “On Shabbat we’ll have a service of healing and unity.”
There were no reports yet on whether there were dead among the Jewish students, although Yeshiva World News reported Wednesday evening that at least one student, a girl, was still missing.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
