97-Year-Old Rose Mallinger Was ‘So Full Of Life’ And Attended Synagogue Every Week
Image by Getty Images
Correction Appended
Rose Mallinger was 97. But she sure didn’t look or act her age.
Chuck Diamond, a former rabbi at Tree Of Life, said Mallinger, who was the oldest victim of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, would never miss a service.
“She was a synagogue-goer, and not everybody is,” Diamond told the Washington Post. “She’s gone to the synagogue for a lifetime, no matter how many people are there,” Diamond said.
Diamond, said Mallinger’s son was a classmate of his.
Rose Mallinger lived nearby in the heavily Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood and was a regular sight on the street and at a local grocery store.
“I feel a part of me died in that building,” he told the Post.
Brian Schreiber, the president of the Jewish Community Center of Pittsburgh called Mallinger a “fixture of the congregation.”
Schreiber told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Mallinger was a vibrant woman who seemed much younger than her age.
“You’ve never met a more vivacious 97-year-old,” Schreiber said. “She was just so full of life. She had so much energy.”
Mallinger’s daughter, Andrea Wedner, 61, was also worshipping at Tree of Life and was wounded in the rampage. She is expected to recover.
Rose Malinger was 97 years old. Born in 1921. Saw & survived so much. Yesterday, murdered in her sanctuary. Praying on Shabbat. The Jewish day of rest. Know her name. https://t.co/uHNXnIAbYF
— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) October 28, 2018
The chief medical examiner of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County released the names of the 11 victims of the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh Saturday:
Joyce Feinberg, 75
Richard Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Cecil Rosenthal, 59
David Rosenthal, 54
Bernice Simon, 84
Sylvan Simon, 86
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69
With Reuters and JTA
Editor’s note, October 30, 11:40 a.m.: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that Rose Mallinger was a Holocaust survivor.
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
