A fund has been created to cover funeral costs for the victims of yesterday’s shooting and to provide for the young orphans.
By Mordechai Lightstone for Chabad.org
The beleaguered Jewish community in the Greenville section of Jersey City has established an emergency fund to help the family of the shop owner who was killed in the JC Kosher Supermarket shooting.
Leah Minda Ferencz and her husband, Moshe Dovid, owned and operated a small kosher grocery that served the fledgling Jewish community comprised largely of Chassidic Jews. Two attackers entered the store, murdering Ferencz; Moshe Deutsch, 24; and Douglas Rodríguez in what authorities are now saying was a targeted anti-Semitic attack.
“People have been asking how they can help,” said Rabbi Moshe Schapiro, who co-directs Chabad of Hoboken and Jersey City and is heading up the fund with Greenville Jewish community leaders. “We want to make sure that the three young Ferencz orphans have whatever they need in the days, weeks and months ahead.”
Schapiro also pointed out, “the family’s source of income, the small grocery store, is completely devastated. This family needs a lot of help now.”
Yesterday’s attack also took the life of Detective Joseph Seals, a married father of five and 15-year police veteran, and injured three more. The chilling reverberative sounds of hundreds of gunshots filled Jersey City’s streets during the multi-hour standoff, and has shaken area residents.
In recent years, approximately 100 Chassidic families, priced out of Williamsburg and other Brooklyn neighborhoods, have settled in Jersey City. The JC Kosher Supermarket at 223 Martin Luther King Drive, with a small, yet visible, synagogue next door and a Chassidic school with some 40 children above, have served as a hub and the heart of the growing community.
Emergency funds are also needed to help pay for the funerals of the victims.
Allocations of funds will be overseen by Laizer Breuer (Principal, Mosodos Greenville), Moshe Eidles (Administrator, Mosdos Greenville) and Rabbi Moshe Schapiro (The Jewish Center-Chabad of Hoboken and Jersey City).
The campaign can be found at JerseyCityVictims.com