Shooting rattles Russian Jewish center in San Francisco
A man fired blanks from a handgun at a Jewish center in San Francisco Wednesday, shocking a group gathered for a study session in a community space serving mainly Russian-speaking Jews.
The man entered the Schneerson Center around 7:20 p.m. in the middle of a session on the life of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, according to Rabbi Bentzion Pil, who leads the community.
The man said in accented Russian that he was from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and that he was going to start shooting.
“I thought he was joking,” Pil told J. on Thursday. “He looked like a Russian Jew.”
Located in a Richmond District neighborhood near what’s often called “Little Russia,” the Schneerson Center is a node of Jewish life for immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the Bay Area, where FSU households number between 15,000 and 20,000, according to Rabbi Shimon Margolin, who leads a local nonprofit serving Russian-speaking Jews.
After the man entered, Pil said he first asked whether he wanted to join their session. It soon became clear that was not his intention.
A jarring video of the incident captured on a security camera shows a man wearing a baseball cap, jacket and sneakers enter the room and gesture animatedly with his arms while speaking to those seated around a table. After about 15 seconds, he reaches into his jacket pocket and reveals a handgun. He appears to struggle to cock the weapon, while an elderly man makes a phone call and starts walking toward him. As the elderly man approaches, the suspect starts firing his weapon, and the elderly man crouches down. He fires in a direction away from those seated around the table, then proceeds to fire around the room while some people clutch their ears and duck. In total the suspect fires between six and eight shots. Then he leaves.
https://jweekly.com/2023/02/02/shooting-rattles-russian-jewish-center-in-san-francisco/
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