Families of Pittsburgh synagogue victims to get $3 million from donated funds
Tree of Life synagogue, Pittsburgh Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — The three congregations housed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue will distribute more than $5.4 million donated in the aftermath of the deadly October 2018 shooting there.
In a news release Monday, the congregations announced that they planned to distribute just over $3 million to the families of the 11 people killed in the attack by a lone gunman and two seriously injured worshippers. Another $1.2 million will be directed toward the rebuilding of the Tree of Life building.
Most of the remaining funds will go to support memorialization and honoring first responders, as well to the two congregations that rented space in the building, Congregation Dor Hadash and New Light Congregation.
The funds were donated between the attack on Oct. 27, 2018, and the end of April 2019, and are separate from those collected by the Pittsburgh Jewish Federation’s Victims of Terror Fund, which were distributed by April 2019.
The distributions were based on the recommendations of an independent committee convened by the federation that delivered its report in February.
“One of the principles that guided the committee’s deliberations relative to the funds received by Tree of Life was ‘shalom b’bayit’ — the need to arrive at recommendations that would foster healing in the congregations, among victims’ families and harmony throughout the wider Jewish community,” said Barbara Caplan, co-president of New Light Congregation.
The post Families of Pittsburgh synagogue victims to get $3 million from donated funds appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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
