San Diego Rabbi Who Got Shot On Pulpit Served As Sheriff Chaplain

The rabbi who got shot in Poway, California served as a chaplain to the county sheriff’s office. Image by wikipedia

By Helen Chernikoff April 28, 2019

The San Diego rabbi who was shot in the hand during Shabbat services — but insisted on finishing his sermon — has also served as the county sheriff’s chaplain.

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein is a rabbi with the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which emphasizes outreach and education to other Jews, and as chaplain tended to the “spiritual needs” of Jews on the force, according to the webpage CrownHeightsinfo.com.

“He continued his speech,” Minoo Anvari, a congregant whose husband was inside the synagogue, told CNN. “We are strong. We are united. They can’t break us.”

Goldstein was taken to the hospital in stable condition.

As chaplain, he for many years counseled deputies regardless of faith who required help healing after witnessing shootings or child deaths. He explained that witnessing tragedies on the job, including shootings or child deaths, can be traumatic. Often, deputies require counseling to help them through the healing process, and Goldstein makes himself available, regardless of the deputies’ creed.

Poway mayor Steve Vaus told CNN that the bloodshed could have been worse, but for training and shooter drills the congregation had undertaken recently: “They were being proactive, they were ready,” he said.

Goldstein took the chaplain’s job in 2006; by that point, he’d already ministered to the Jews of San Diego’s Poway suburb for 20 years, since he left Brooklyn at age 24.

“I’m on a mission,” Goldstein said back in 2006. “This rabbi is not a business, not a career. It’s a mission. I’m a guy from Brooklyn sent out to do good in this part of the world, and try to bring people as much as possible back to the fold. And it’s going very well.”

Goldstein’s father was an important aide to the founder of the Lubavitch movement, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, according to the Daily News.

Contact Helen Chernikoff at chernikoff@forward.com or on Twitter @thesimplechild

Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at chernikoff@forward.com and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.

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