Rabbi Killed in Jerusalem Terror Attack Has Deep Ties to Oakland County

Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, one of four men killed in an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue during Tuesday morning prayers, has deep ties to Oakland County, where he spent his childhood and was a member of one of the largest Orthodox Jewish congregations in Michigan.

Kupinsky, 43, spent his early childhood Oak Park and moved with his family to Israel when he was an elementary school, the Detroit Free Press reports. Kupinsky was one of three Americans, all rabbis, killed in the bloody attack when two Palestinian cousins armed with meat cleavers and a gun stormed the synagogue.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the attack, the deadliest on Israeli citizens in more than three years and the worst in Jerusalem since 2008, as “pure terror” that “simply has no place in human behavior.”

Michael Zwick of Huntington Woods told the Free Press the murder of his childhood friend “was a terrible thing to hear.”

Zwick was in Israel just two weeks ago and worshipped with an English-speaking congregation, just as Kupinsky regularly did, which “made this even more personal,” he said.

Kupinsky’s parents often returned to the metro Detroit area, Zwick said.

Kupinsky, the father of five, worked with computers and prayed regularly at the synagogue, NBC News reports. His death is not the first tragedy for the family. His daughter died about two years ago at age 13, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

The Yeshiva World said Kupinsky regularly worshipped at the synagogue and “was known to never refuse anyone seeking assistance in any form, always seeking ways to assist others.”

The attack stunned metro Detroit Jews.

Beverly Phillips of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metro Detroit said it is “terribly sad and really horrifying that innocent worshippers were so barbarically attacked and actually slaughtered in their synagogue.”

Rabbi Michael Cohen of Young Israel of Oak Park, where Kupinsky worshipped as a child, said the attack “brings the violence in the Middle East very close to home,” according to the Free Press.

“We all take every act of violence against anyone that we related to very personally,” he said. “That this was committed in a synagogue and that it was committed against one of our own brings the issues of the Middle East, of the conflict,…to a very personal level.”

The other Americans killed in the attack were Mosheh Twersky, the grandson of renowned Boston Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik, and Cary William Levine, who grew up in Kansas City, MO, according to the NBC News report.

Kupinsky, Twersky and Levine all have dual citizenship in the United States and Israel. A fourth person killed in the attack, Avraham Goldberg, was a British national.

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The Times of Israel photo of funerals for rabbis killed in attack on Jerusalem synagogue via Twitter, ‏@nightingalern