Poway’s Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein: a brush with death leads to a new life

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein in the sanctuary at Chabad of Poway, June 13, 2019 in Poway, California. He was shot in the hands when a gunman opened fire at the synagogue with an assault style rifle on April 27, on last day of the Passover holiday, during Sabbath services. Lori Gilbert Kaye, a member of the synagogue, was was killed during the attack, and others were also injured.

The bullets were meant to kill Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein. Instead, they gave him new life.

“I’m a new person,” the rabbi said, his hands mangled from injuries suffered April 27, when an anti-Semitic gunman attacked Chabad of Poway. One worshipper, Lori Gilbert-Kaye, was killed. Three others were wounded, including Goldstein. His right index finger was shot off and the bones in his left index finger were shattered.

Those wounds are obvious, thanks to the blue bandages wrapped around his hands. Less evident, at least at first glance, are the changes that occurred inside.

“I’ve been a rabbi 33 years,” Goldstein said. “I’m human, I’ve made mistakes. But I’m a different person now. I’m more patient, more understanding, more appreciative.”

He’s also more visible. Once the low-profile leader of a small synagogue, Goldstein has become a global symbol of courage and religious freedom. Since the assault on his congregation, the 57-year-old rabbi has spoken at the White House, the United Nations and gatherings of Jews in Poland, Brazil and Connecticut.

“Anti-Semitism, we need to realize, is not just about the Jewish people,” Goldstein told the U.N. General Assembly in an emotional address June 26. “It is about civilization. Do we want to live in a world of blood and tears, or do we want to live in a world of love and beauty?”

Friends say his entire life led him to this moment in the limelight. But the new demands, as an inspirational figure and as leader of a beleaguered synagogue, have taken a toll. In the wake of the attack, new security measures have been taken, often at additional cost. Yet Chabad of Poway’s congregation has been shrinking for a decade.

“Which means smaller revenues,” the rabbi said. “The struggle is great, trying to keep the thing going.”

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, senior rabbi of Chabad of Poway synagogue in San Diego, Calif., addresses the United Nations General Assembly meeting on combating antisemitism and other forms of racism and hate in the digital age, Wednesday June 26, 2019 at U.N. headquarters.

Millimeter from death

On a recent morning, employees of an Orange County firm stood in Chabad of Poway’s lobby, applying a clear polymer film to the windows. If a bullet strikes a window, explained Triad Security’s Tony Jackson, the glass won’t explode across the room, cutting everyone in its path. Instead, the film will hold shattered glass in place.

“It gives them time,” Jackson said.

Triad donated this service, but the synagogue’s new realities include hefty new bills. In the month after the shooting, Chabad of Poway spent $15,000 on guards. While that tab has since been dropped to $6,000 a month, more expenses are coming. Goldstein estimates he needs $1 million — the equivalent of Chabad of Poway’s annual budget — to remodel the bullet-pocked interior and erect a low exterior wall.

“Not a fortress-looking barrier,” the rabbi said, “but something that’s artistic.”

These financial burdens come at a challenging time. Like many houses of worship, Chabad of Poway has seen regular attendance drop, as elderly members have passed away while their children and grandchildren are less inclined to attend services. Goldstein hopes to attract a new generation of worshippers by gradually turning over his duties to his son, 29-year-old Rabbi Mendel Goldstein.

“If I want to attract young people, I need young blood,” said the senior Rabbi Goldstein. “We are working on a transition. I’m becoming rabbi emeritus.”

Some financial assistance is coming from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which approved a grant for upgraded fencing, windows and cameras.

“We’re soliciting bids now,” Goldstein said.

The events of April 27 scarred more than this building. As the faithful gathered for services marking the final day of Passover, a 19-year-old self-proclaimed white supremacist entered the lobby, screaming obscenities and firing a rifle. Lori Kaye, a member of the congregation, was shot dead in the lobby. Bullet fragments struck a man and a girl.

Goldstein, who had greeted Kaye moments before, turned to see the gunman aiming in his direction. As a chaplain for the San Diego County Sheriffs’ Poway substation, Goldstein owns a firearm and a permit to carry a concealed weapon. This morning, though, he was armed only with his faith and reflexes.

The gunman, whom police have identified as John Earnest, fired.

“I was a millimeter away from death,” Goldstein said. “Bullets hit both hands. He kept shooting and I kept moving.”

The rabbi burst into a room full of children, including two of his grandchildren. With other adults, he shooed the youngsters outside, to neighboring houses. Back at the synagogue, he found that the gunman had fled — several men had rushed him, and Earnest’s gun apparently jammed — leaving worshippers in shock and tears.

Wrapping his bleeding hands in a prayer shawl, Goldstein climbed onto a chair and delivered an impromptu sermon.

“In every generation they will rise up against us,” he said, quoting from the Hagaddah, a text from the Passover seder meal, “but God will spare us.

“Don’t give in to evil! Don’t give in to darkness!”

He repeated this defiant message during a TV interview he gave from his hospital bed the next morning; then outside his synagogue, 24 hours after the shooting; then from the White House, less than a week later; and at the U.N. General Assembly last month. Stressing the unity of humankind, he urged everyone to be “even greater agents of light.”

These messages, Goldstein said, were inspired by the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Known as The Rebbe, Schneerson was the seventh leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

“I grew up in his synagogue,” Goldstein said. “He was my rabbi, my mentor. He’s been a father figure to me.”

While Goldstein recalls little of what he said or did in the 24 hours after the shooting, he knows why he responded the way he did.

“I went into Rebbe mode,” he said.

Opening doors, shoveling snow

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement was born in the Russian town of Lubavitch, almost 250 years ago. Transplanted to the United States in the 20th century, this branch of Orthodox Judaism is now based in the Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. This is where Goldstein grew up, in an apartment two floors below the Rebbe’s residence.

The Goldsteins kept a kosher household, yet one that was open to the outside world. Zalman Goldstein, Yisroel’s younger brother, remembers their parents welcoming guests to their Shabbat meals, everyone from hippies to scientists, often drawn to Crown Heights by curiosity about the spiritual leader living upstairs.

Young Yisroel idolized the Rebbe, Zalman said, “just like a kid would be into a sports figure or a movie star.”

Saturday mornings, the boy would rise early and hurry to the temple, eager to open the door for the Rebbe. In the winter, he shoveled snow in front of the synagogue. Some teens skipped temple or spent Friday nights at the movies. Not Yisroel.

“He was one of those kids who was all in,” Zalman said.

This devotion was encouraged by Goldstein’s father, also a rabbi. As “Uncle Yossi,” Yosef Goldstein recorded albums of Jewish-themed stories for children and hosted a radio program. Like the Rebbe, he believed that Judaism should engage the world in a joyful, positive way, rather than retreating into isolated communities.

In 1950, Rabbi Schneerson sent emissaries to Morocco, establishing the first of what are now 3,500 Chabad institutions around the world. One of those institutions, Camp Gan Israel of Poway, gained a new employee in 1981.

“I always had the ambition to be a foot soldier in the Chabad army,” Yisroel Goldstein, and the Poway summer camp was his first campaign. Within two years, he was the camp’s director.

When the senior Chabad representative in San Diego, Rabbi Yonah Fradkin, asked Goldstein if he would open a Chabad center in Poway, Goldstein replied that the decision did not belong to him. It belonged to the Rebbe.

He wrote a letter to Schneerson: “I told him it was my life’s dream to be a trailblazer. Very quickly I got the response: Yes.”

President Donald Trump looks on as Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein speaks during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, May 2, 2019.

Circumcision in Auschwitz

The next years were busy ones. In 1984, Goldstein was ordained as a rabbi. In 1985, he met Devorie Weiner. In 1986 the couple secured the Rebbe’s blessing and married.

That same year, the congregation bought an acre of land. Chabad of Poway soon moved from a rented storefront into trailers parked on that empty lot, while money was raised for permanent structures.

On Sept. 10, 1997, the complex — a sanctuary, meeting rooms, offices and a school — was dedicated.

The rabbi and his wife built a family, five sons and a daughter, and a following. Chabad of Poway was a peaceful haven, and few could have predicted the April 27 shooting.

People who know Goldstein, though, say they could have predicted his response.

“The rabbi’s message, the way he took up this role,” said Lilac Cohen, a Chabad of Poway volunteer, “he had prepared his whole life for this.”

The shooting occurred on a Saturday morning. On Monday morning, President Trump called Goldstein. Later that day, the rabbi was being interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. On Thursday, he was a guest of the White House, visiting with the president and First Lady, as well as Vice President and Karen Pence.

“It was like we were old buddies,” Goldstein said of Trump. “He took me into the Oval Office, showed me around. He allowed me to talk to him and we discussed anti-Semitism.”

While Trump has been criticized for praising “both sides” in the 2017 Charlottesville, Va., clash between white supremacists and protesters, as well as his 2016 campaign’s use of anti-Semitic imagery, Goldstein said he trusts the president.

“He was genuine, it was real,” Goldstein said of their conversation. “I felt his sincerity, I felt his truth. It was heartwarming.”

Two days later, at the invitation of Russia’s head rabbi, Yisroel and Devorie Goldstein met with hundreds of young Russian Jews traveling in Poland. This trip involved tours of the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps and a Shabbat dinner where seven couples proposed to each other — and two men had a different proposal for Goldstein.

Would he accompany them to their circumcision?

“We went right to the doctors’ office in Auschwitz,” Goldstein said.

Before leaving Poland, the rabbi received an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a gala in Jerusalem.

“We just couldn’t do it, we were exhausted,” he said. “And I had to get back to my congregation.”

In San Diego, the invitations tapered off — for awhile. In June, they picked up again. He spoke at a forum on hate at the University of San Diego. At a Jewish convention in São Paulo, Brazil. At the United Nations, where his speech included comments the Rebbe had drafted but never had a chance to deliver before the General Assembly.

Dressed in his customary dark coat and black hat, he asked about the initial impression he made to this global audience.

“The first thing that comes to mind is that I look like a Jew,” he said. “But you know what? I look just like you. Each one of us needs to look at each other as a human being.”

This week, he’s on the East Coast, marking the 25th anniversary of the Rebbe’s death. He plans to return to San Diego this week, but his attention will be focused on the world.

He calls his next project “A Billion Good Deeds,” a non-sectarian initiative encouraging positive actions. His assailant had found an ugly, dark community on the Internet; the rabbi insists that the same technology can spread light.

“We want to improve the world, we want the global world to have a paradigm shift,” he said. “Not just talking about good deeds but doing good. Let social media, instead of promoting hate, let people start promoting the good things they have done today.”

And if that campaign requires travel, the rabbi’s ready. He’s accumulated some frequent flyer miles.