Canadian native and long-time Israeli citizen Howie Rothman remain s in a coma from wounds from a giant meat cleaver in week’s savage massacre of Jews praying at a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Haredi Har Nof community.
Howie Rothman, raised in Toronto and now 53 years old, lost vision in one eye and suffered brain damage,” a Toronto woman who knows the Rothman family told Canadian media. He has undergone three operations.
Rothman and his wife moved to Israel three decades ago and have 10 children, one of them a new mother while the youngest is only three years old. He was working for the State Comptroller before the barbaric attack, in which four Jews and a Druze policeman were killed.
“Yesterday we cried; today we gather strength. My father is strong and I believe he’ll overcome this,” Zehava Farago, who gave birth to her father’s first grandchild several weeks ago, told Israei radio.
His sister, Shelley Rothman-Benhaim of Montreal, told the Toronto Sun that her brother remains “in a medically induced coma.” She added, “He was very seriously injured and has already undergone several surgeries due to the attacks to his head, eyes and arms” the National Post of Canada reported.
United Jewish Appeal member Steven Shulman told the 500-member Beth Torah synagogue during prayers on the Sabbath. “This was an attack on Jews at prayer and an attack on the Jewish people. If we don’t support Howie Rothman and Jews around the world, no one else will.”
“We don’t do this kind of fundraising; we do it for the community at large,” he was quoted by the Toronto Sun as saying. “We have made an exception in this case. Howie is a product of this community and in terms of need it’s tremendous. He has 10 children and six are still at home,” Shulman added.
“He was attacked and his life has changed forever. We had to do something. That is the essence of being Jewish.”
Pray for the recovery of Chaim Yechiel ben Malka.