18 May 2 • 2019
jn

KERI GUTEN COHEN STORY DEVELOPMENT EDITOR
O

ak Park native Phil Raimi and
his son Aaron, 22, stayed up
late last Friday night and slept
in Saturday morning. Raimi chose
not to wake his son to go to shul for
Shabbat services and Yizkor on the last
day of Passover — that decision may
have saved them from harm.
“I feel like it was almost Divine
intervention,” said Phil, 62, who moved
to the San Diego area in 1982. “My
mind keeps flashing back to if we had
gone to Chabad of Poway and that guy
had barged in.”
On April 27, six months to the
day of the shooting at Tree of Life
Synagogue in Pittsburgh, a teen armed
with an assault rifle entered Chabad of
Poway (20 miles north of San Diego)
and began shooting after making an
anti-Semitic slur. Alleged shooter John
Earnest injured three people and killed
one — Lori Gilbert-Kaye, a dedicated
synagogue member who was trying
to protect others. In news reports, the
mayor of Poway has called the shoot-
ing a hate crime.
Raimi, his wife, Susie, and sons
David, 25, and Aaron know Rabbi
Yisroel Goldstein, Gilbert-Kaye and
members of the congregation. The
Raimis live in Rancho Bernardo, about
eight minutes from Chabad of Poway.
David and Aaron attended preschool
there and, although not a weekly
attendee, Phil goes to minyan there
and other services and programs.
The JN reached Phil Raimi as he
was leaving a vigil for the victims at
a neighborhood church. He drove by
Chabad of Poway on his way home
and also passed where the suspect’
s car
still stood behind barricades. He noted
the bullet holes.
Raimi describes the community

as very family-oriented, a nice com-
munity of middle- and upper-middle
class families, a mixture of all kinds of
people.
“How could a 19-year-old kid who
grew up here be so filled with hate?”
he asks almost to himself.
“I suspect he might have been aware
of the ending of Passover and saying
Yizkor,” said Raimi, a technical writ-
er for a cloud computing company.
“There would be a lot more people
there than on a normal Shabbat. I
suspect that didn’
t escape his thought
process.
“It’
s shocking. You go to a shul for
so many years. You go for Pesach
and Yizkor and get gunned down. It’
s
crazy. Security has crossed my mind
… What would happen if a lunatic
came through and shot things up? I
am in shock that this happened where
I know everyone.”
He said Saturday that his wife and
Aaron were very upset by the attack;
his other son David focused his atten-
tion on gathering information on the
incident. Family members across the
country reached out to lend support
as did friends from Oak Park and
from his family’
s long association with
Congregation B’
nai Moshe.
Driven by the memory of his late
father, Saul, who was a Holocaust
survivor, Raimi says he feels strongly
about not giving in to the anti-Semitic
hatred.
“For me personally, this won’
t stop
me,” he said. “We’
ve had a difference
of opinion in the family; my wife’
s a bit
hesitant to go back there, but I’
m not
going to let it stop me. It didn’
t stop
my father and what he went through in
the Shoah.
“If we let stuff like this stop the
Jewish people, we would’
ve been
stopped a long time ago … We are not
going to let hate stop us.”
Raimi also notes that his think-
ing has changed about the Second
Amendment over the years to a less
liberal stance. This Shabbat, he said he
was thankful an off-duty Border Patrol
agent at the shul tried to stop the
shooter as he fled.
“I am against attempts to disarm
people,” Raimi said. “My father sur-
vived the Shoah and one of the first
things Hitler did was to disarm the
population … I don’
t want places of
worship to be armed camps, but it’
s
crazy to disarm people — and that’
s
the way I see it now.” ■

jews d
in
the
HATRED STRIKES AGAIN

Former Detroiter who attends
Chabad of Poway reacts to shooting.

“If we let stuff

like this stop the
Jewish people,
we would’
ve been
stopped a long
time ago … We
are not going to let
hate stop us.”

— PHIL RAIMI

‘Hate Can’t
Stop Us’

Aaron, Phil and Susie Raimi in front of a

memorial of flowers in front of Chabad of Poway

‘
We are One’

Ann Arbor nephew
of Poway rabbi shares

his family’
s reaction.

Shortly after the shooting of Rabbi Yisroel
Goldstein at the Chabad of Poway, the
horrific news made its way to his brother
Rabbi Aharon Goldstein of the Chabad
House of Ann Arbor.
“Someone came into the synagogue on
Shabbos afternoon and said they heard there
was a shooting at a Chabad,” said Aharon
Goldstein’
s son, Rabbi Alter Goldstein of Ann
Arbor. “Then we heard it was in California.
And then word came that it took place in
Poway at my uncle’
s synagogue.
“I didn’
t want my father to know about
it until after I got more details,” he said. “I
wanted to wait until after Shabbos when we
could call our family in Poway, but too many
people were coming to us with information.
When I told my father about his brother, we
knew he had been shot but was safe and did
not have life-threatening injuries.”
When Shabbat ended, they heard a chilling
account of what had taken place. “My cousin
who went to visit the family said my uncle
confronted the gunman,” Alter Goldstein
said. “He had stepped into the hallway of the
shul before starting his sermon and saw the
shooter. My uncle literally went for the gun
and was shot. Then the gun jammed.
“We need to be vigilant,” he added.
“Even in times of relative peace, we need
to remember that Jews have always been
a target. Our greatest power is being unit-
ed. Chabad’
s greatest idea is that all Jews
are one big family. This hit my personal
family, but we are all one, everywhere in
the world.” ■

— Contributing Writer

Shelli Liebman Dorfman

Rabbi Alter Goldstein and his uncle

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein

COURTESY ALTER GOLDSTEIN

RAIMI FAMILY