One Of 3 Americans Killed In Jerusalem Synagogue Attack Has Ties To Michigan
OAK PARK (WWJ) - One of the four rabbis killed in an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue Tuesday spent his early childhood in the Detroit area.
Three of the victims — Aryeh Kopinsky, Calman Levine, Moshe Twersky — were dual American-Israeli citizens, a police official confirmed to CBS News. The fourth, Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, was a dual British-Israeli citizen. All four were also rabbis.
Kupinski, 43, grew up in Oak Park and moved to Israel with his family while he was in elementary school.
The Kupinski's were members of one of the biggest Orthodox Jewish congregations in Michigan.
Abraham Schwartz, who lived next to the Kupinski's in Oak Park, told WWJ's Zahra Huber that whenever they go to Israel they make sure to visit the family.
"It's just devastating what happened," Schwartz said of the Tuesday mornings shootings in the western Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof.
Schwartz said Kupinski was always helping others.
"He was just a wonderful young man...always had a smile on his face and always something nice to say. He was just a wonderful, wonderful person," Schwartz said.
The Associate Press reports its was the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in years and was bound to ratchet up fears of sustained violence in the city, already on edge amid soaring tensions over a contested holy site.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel will "respond harshly" to the attack, describing it as a "cruel murder of Jews who came to pray and were killed by despicable murderers."
