’You’re not killing him’: Jewish mother tells how she shielded son during Belleville synagogue shooting

As the thunder of gunfire erupted outside the Sons of Jacob synagogue on Sunday evening, Sharlene Weitzman, one of roughly two dozen congregants inside, thought first of protecting her son, Finn Luke Weitzman, who had accompanied her to mark the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day for the Jewish community.

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“I wasn’t going to let my child be killed at 19 years of age for being a Jew,” she told National Post in an exclusive interview three days after the shocking shooting near the modest shul in a quiet Belleville, Ont., neighbourhood.

“You can kill me, I’m 59, but you’re not killing him.”

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Weitzman pushed her son down against concrete and used her body to shield him, with her arms wrapped around him. So determined was she to safeguard his life, she said if a shooter had come through the close-by doors of the synagogue at that moment, she was “ready to pounce.”

Thankfully, Weitzman, her partner Jennifer Aronson, nor any of the others sheltering from bullets hitting the stained glass of their synagogue that evening were forced to act.

Const. Jeff Smith of the Belleville Police Service was already on the scene and returned fire when suspected shooter Sean Ward of nearby Quinte West arrived and opened fire with a shotgun, according to the Ontario Special Investigations Unit (SIU). The 13-year veteran officer was struck during the shootout, but was joined by another responding officer not yet identified, and both were able to stop the shooter.

Smith remains in Kingston General Hospital in critical but stable condition while Ward, a 29-year-old former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, died there on Tuesday.  Ward had been released from the CAF in 2022, with a source telling Global News it was over his refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, adding that Ward also “spouted” antisemitic conspiracy theories, including one that blamed the Jewish community for the pandemic disease.

Weitzman said another jarring thought came to her mind amid the chaos, one that she’s not been able to shake: a vision of what it would look like if it turned out like the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel.

“That ‘what if’ is the real killer, and that to me is what I need to fight against because there’s a literal war of hatred and I believe that the people, the institutions, the systems running that war want Jews to live fearfully and I refuse to,” she said.

Weitzman said it had been about 10 years since the family had attended a service at the Sons of Jacob and returned now because it seemed as if new life had been breathed into the assembly and they wanted to show their support.

But not without hesitation.

“I sensed it before we went. I asked my partner if we should go,” she said, highlighting an ever-present and yet intangible sense of danger they were inherently aware of as Jews.

“Every Jew who went to shul on Yom Kippur around the world, I tell you, was worried that it would be their shul that was shot at.”

Determined not to lose their faith and give in to fear, especially on Yom Kippur, they ventured out. At the synagogue, they were among the first arrivals and acted as unofficial greeters, re-introducing themselves as other congregants arrived.

As people began to make their way inside the sanctuary for Rabbi Oded Peles’s service, a few minutes later than anticipated, Weitzman said they heard “three enormous banging noises” that at first sounded like someone using a battering ram to gain access, but what she now believes was the first of the shotgun blasts.

Weitzman shielded her son, Aronson went to assist an elderly woman and everyone else lay down on the floor or found shelter somewhere else as a gunfight ensued for the next few minutes.

Someone inside called 911 and stayed on with dispatchers throughout the ordeal, but it did little to quell immediate fears inside the temple.

“I think what was most terrifying for everyone, beyond the fact that the gunfire was hitting the window, was that there was a shootout and we didn’t know if there was a shootout towards us and it was two or three shooters shooting at us and they were going to come in or if it was the police defending us,” she said. “We just didn’t know.”

Weitzman believes at least one bullet came through into the sanctuary because one of the candles on the Yahrzeit wall, a memorial installation honouring deceased congregants, was extinguished.

Photos from the scene shared by congregants Eva and Doug Lobel show well over a dozen bullet holes in the windows along one side of the sanctuary wall. Peles later told The Canadian Jewish News that 50-year-old stained glass behind the pulpit where he would have been leading prayer was hit with 23 bullets.

“Thank God we were a few minutes late and we took extra time lighting the Yontif candles,” he told the outlet. “We got extra candles and maybe by lighting the candles, extra four candles, saved our lives.”

Peles, the CJN reported, is from Israel and was visiting the synagogue for the second straight year. Asked if the incident would deter him from returning, Peles said it wouldn’t.

“It’s like almost asking, ‘Are you not going to come to the Holy Land because we have rockets?’”

After the cacophony of gunfire ended, synagogue president Norm Weddum bravely ventured to a window and saw a significant police presence, Weitzman said. It was another 25 minutes before they had contact with police, who kept them in the security of the sanctuary while sweeping the building and neighbourhood, during which time “they gathered around the table and held hands and prayed.”

They were soon bused to the local police station for interviews before being sent home.

Days later, with the adrenaline well out of her system, Weitzman said she believes that Ward came there to “massacre all of us” and would not have survived but for the “grace of God and the police.”

The investigation is being led, at this stage, by the SIU, which is mandated to look into the circumstances of a police shooting. Spokesperson Kristy Denette wouldn’t speculate on whether it was a targeted attack against Jewish people during a Monday press conference, but said “common sense would say that probably was the case.”

“Let me be very clear, hate and violence have no place in our community. Every person deserves to feel safe when attending a place of worship, gathering with loved ones, or participating in community life,” added Belleville police deputy chief Sheri Meeks.

For Weitzman, however, there’s no doubt in her mind that “this was a premeditated, full-on terrorist attack.”

“Stop telling us Jews that we’re overreacting. Stop telling us it’s not antisemitism, ‘It’s not all about you. Oh, where there’s smoke, there must be fire. If people hate you, there’s a reason,’” she said.

“But I’m not Benjamin Netanyahu. I’m not the leader of the government. I’m not Mark Carney. I’m just a Jewish mom trying to raise my family in the community that we’ve been in for 25, 30 years.”

This wasn’t Aronson, Weitzman and her son’s first scary incident related to their Jewish roots. While in Jerusalem for an educational event with Israeli scholars last year, the couple were forced to briefly take cover in a bomb shelter as Houthi missiles were defeated by Israel’s Iron Dome. Her son had to do the same last year while visiting Eilat during his Reverse Shinshinim, a gap-year service that gives non-Israeli-born high school graduates a chance to immerse themselves in Israeli life.

“I don’t think he has any false beliefs about his safety anymore,” Weitzman said.

She commended police for their heroics Sunday, especially Smith, whose injuries she said “brought a great deal of attention” to the seriousness of the situation.

“I am hopeful that people, especially those who can protect us, as we just evidenced, do now understand the gravitas that this is a real threat and it’s everywhere.”

Weitzman said they plan to return to the synagogue in the future.

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