U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism Elan Carr and U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief Ahmed Shaheed will speak at a virtual ceremony on Sunday marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting at Chabad of Poway in Southern California.
It will be hosted by the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM).
Carr and Shaheed will be joined by Jonathan Morales, who along with Oscar Stewart helped chase the lone-gunman from the building after the shooting during Shabbat services on April 27, 2019.
Other congregants will recall their experiences at the Chabad center, now led by Rabbi Mendel Goldstein, who took over after the retirement of his father, former senior rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was injured in the attack along with two others.
The online ceremony will also provide an opportunity to honor the first yahrtzeit of 60-year-old Lori Kaye, who was killed as the gunman entered the synagogue lobby.
The event will include speakers, poetry and music. It will also be a chance to discuss how to combat the increasingly violent acts targeting Jewish communities around the world.
CAM is a nonpartisan, global grassroots movement of individuals and organizations, across all religions and faiths, united around the goal of ending anti-Semitism in all its forms. Since launching in February 2019, 220 organizations and 200,000 individuals have joined the movement by signing the campaign’s pledge.
The CAM pledge draws upon the universally recognized International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism and its list of specific behaviors used to discriminate against the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
