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

