Rabbi Jeffrey Myers said he won’t meet with President Donald Trump who is heading to Pittsburgh in the wake of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre.
After Myers “first said the president was welcome,” he “received a lot of email… that are not happy with those words,” he told CNN Tuesday.
“The thing that saddens me is those emails also contain hate and it just continues in this vicious cycle… that’s just not the solution,” Myers said. “We need to be better than this.”
“I have no plans at this time for any involvement” with Trump’s visit, Myers told CNN. “My attention will be with the family. I have a funeral and I must tend to their needs.”
The first of the funerals for the slain worshippers were held Tuesday.
Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz and brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal were among the 11 people gunned down by a shooter inside the house of worship Saturday.
Rabinowitz’s friends and family gathered at his funeral Tuesday morning, while the Rosenthal brothers were honored at a joint service Tuesday afternoon.
Rabinowitz, 66, was killed when he ran toward gunfire in the synagogue to try to help victims, according to his nephew, Avishai Ostrin.
“In addition to being the president of the congregation, he was a doctor, a healer … when he heard shots he ran outside to try and see if anyone was hurt and needed a doctor. That was Uncle Jerry, that’s just what he did,” Ostrin wrote on Facebook.
“Jerry was above all one of the kindest physicians and human beings in our community,” University of Pittsburgh Medical Center officials said in a statement. The hospital network said it “cannot even begin to express the sadness and grief we feel over the loss of Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz.”
Slain brothers Cecil Rosenthal, 59, and David Rosenthal, 54, never missed a service and were always at the synagogue because it was a place they felt the most safe, fellow congregant Scott Levin told ABC News.
The two brothers were developmentally disabled.
“Cecil and David had a love for life and for those around them,” according to a statement from ACHIEVA, a local organization which provides support for people with disabilities.
“Cecil’s laugh was infectious. David was so kind and had such a gentle spirit,” Chris Schopf, Vice President of ACHIEVA Residential Supports, said in the statement. “Together, they looked out for one another. They were inseparable. Most of all, they were kind, good people with a strong faith and respect for everyone.”
“All of Pennsylvania stands with the victims and their families,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf tweeted Monday as the state capitol building was lit in tribute. “We join the Pittsburgh Jewish community and Jewish Americans across our nation in mourning.”
Trump and first lady Melania Trump are set to arrive in Pittsburgh later in the afternoon.
“I’m just going to pay my respects,” Trump told Fox News on Monday. “I’m also going to the hospital to see the officers and some of the people that were so badly hurt. So — and I really look forward to going — I would have done it even sooner, but I didn’t want to disrupt anymore than they already had disruption.”
The president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump will travel with the president and first lady, a senior administration official told ABC News.
President Trump on Saturday strongly condemned the shooting in Pittsburgh as “evil.”
Early on Saturday, just a few hours after the shooting, the president said, “It’s presumed that this is a case where if they had an armed guard inside, they might have been able to stop him immediately … Maybe nobody would have been killed except for him. So it’s a very, very difficult situation.”
When a reporter asked if all synagogues and churches should have armed guards, Trump said, “I hate to think of it that way … It’s certainly an option.”
