Melvin Wax, Killed While Leading Synagogue Service, To Be Buried In PIttsburgh

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky

Funerals will be held on Wednesday for two victims of a mass shooting at their Pittsburgh synagogue, including the man who was leading shabbat services when the attack – in which 11 worshipers died – took place.

Melvin Wax, 88, and retired university researcher Joyce Fienberg, 75, will be remembered in separate services, local media said, four days after they were killed in the deadliest ever attack on America’s Jewish community.

The first funerals for victims took place on Tuesday, when President Donald Trump visited the Tree of Life synagogue while thousands protested his presence in the city.

Wax, a retired accountant who had just become a grandfather, was leading shabbat services in the basement when he was shot and killed, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said.

“He was a gentle man. Easygoing, simple, quiet,” his friend Bill Cartiff told the newspaper.

Fienberg spent 25 years as a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center until she retired in 2008.

“She was an engaging, elegant, and warm person,” the center said on Facebook.—Reuters