By Ashley Legassic

Kamloops Jewish community holding vigil for Pittsburgh

Oct 29, 2018 | 4:32 PM

KAMLOOPS — The city’s Jewish community is coming together to spread a message of love after a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue killed 11 people and injured six others.

Heidi Coleman is the President of the Jewish Community Centre of Kamloops. She recalls the look on her husband’s face when he told her about the shooting the morning of Oct. 27.

“I just couldn’t believe it, like again more people walking around with guns shooting people,” Coleman says. “This one was so awful because he was specifically targeting us, saying ‘I want to kill all the Jews’.”

After the massacre, members of Kamloops’s Jewish community began calling Coleman and asking what they should do — suggesting things like sending items to Pittsburgh.

“It’s not just the Jews talking about anti-semitism, we’re talking about racial discrimination, intolerance, were talking about gay rights and just that we want to live in harmony,” Coleman says. “So many people called me and said, ‘Let’s do something, what can we do, can we send something to Pittsburgh?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ve got to do something here’ because we have to talk about it — we can’t just let it go by. We have to come together and say where we live, this could happen here.”

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The vigil to remember the victims of the Pittsburgh shooting will be heald at the Pavilion Theatre in downtown Kamloops, Oct. 30 at 6:30 p.m.

The Jewish Community Centre of Kamloops is also taking tomorrow night to celebrate the cultural, religious and LGBTQ2S+ diversity in the city.

“I feel like the community needs to come together,” Coleman says.

by Ashley Legassic

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Kamloops Jewish community holding vigil for Pittsburgh

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