GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Jewish communities around the world are feeling the impact of a hate crime that took the life of 11 people at Tree of Life, a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Saturday morning.
The shooting is one of the largest attacks on Jews in U.S. History.
While news of the deadly attack broke, Jonathan Costa, the president of Cnesses Israel Temple in Green Bay interrupted service to tell members of the congregation the news.
“We addressed it by- one, letting everybody know so that they would be more vigilant; two, double checking, we lock our doors here at the synagogue during services, double checking that everything was locked and secured; and three saying some extra prayers.”
He tells FOX 11 the already small community feels the impact even harder.
“There’s always sadness when there’s any sort of shooting disaster. Whether it be in a church or a congregation or school etcetera. It hits us a lot harder because we’re a much smaller community, and therefore eleven dead is a lot of people. It’s a large portion of the community.”
Costa said in Green Bay, there are only about 70 Jewish Families.
“If that would have happened here that would have been 15, 20 percent of our congregation. So we feel things like this very, very hard and very, very deeply.”
Mayor Schmitt spoke Sunday on the incident saying something like this impacts every community in the country.
“It’s a sad day across this country. Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh is not much different than this neighborhood here, and you look at whats happened this last year and nobody’s immune from a deranged person with a gun. It’s kind of scary too, as mayors we have to protect our cities and it’s sad and frightening to know that this can happen anywhere in the U.S.”
Schmitt tells FOX 11 safety has been on the minds of communities of various faiths in the area for a while.
“There was an interfaith meeting about six to eight months ago to address security in Synagogues and Churches, that was the meeting here in Green Bay, so the religious community in Green bay both Christian and Jewish community is aware that this is a factor we have to address so we have been upgrading our security for the past six months and we will continue too.”
The Green Bay Police Department said they’re doing extra checks at the synagogue and they have more patrol at the community Police Center right across the street.
