Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Pittsburgh Jewish Family Names Newborn After Poway Victim Lori Gilbert-Kaye

A couple from Pittsburgh named their newborn daughter after Lori Gilbert-Kaye, who was killed in the attack at the Chabad of Poway synagogue, COLlive reported.

Judah and Chaya Cowen, who are affiliated with the Chabad movement, welcomed Noa Leah into the world on Friday, utilizing Gilbert-Kaye’s Hebrew name, Leah. The couple told COLlive that the decision “just felt right,” as Gilbert-Kaye exemplified someone “that every parent would want their child to turn out to be like.”

“We actually had a different name picked out, but when we learned about Lori, we decided that to name our baby after her just felt right, especially since it was still during the Shiva,” said Judah Cowen.

Noa Leah is the fifth baby for the couple, who said they were shaken by the shooting in the San Diego suburb late last month. It hit “really hit close to home for us,” Judah Cowen said, recalling the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh six months ago, where 11 were killed at prayer.

A friend wrote on Facebook that Gilbert-Kaye was “a jewel of our community a true Eshet Chayil, a Woman of Valor. You were always running to do a mitzvah [good deed] and gave tzedaka [charity] to everyone.” Gilbert-Kay’e own Facebook page features posts raising funds for groups and individuals in need.

“It was an honor for us to name our child after her,” Judah Cowen said. “Klal Yisroel [the Jewish community] really is connected, and to us, Lori really felt like family. We hope that by naming our daughter after her, it should bring, at the very least, a little solace and consolation to her family, community, and all of Klal Yisroel.”

Alyssa Fisher is a writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.