Via Tablet Magazine:
David and Cecil Rosenthal were murdered by a gunman at Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday morning. The two brothers had lived together in Pittsburgh all their lives, and their deaths left the large crowd of mourners at their funeral at Rodef Shalom this afternoon with an overwhelming sense of loss. “Friendship,” one mourner told me, when I asked him what he had lost. “Innocence,” said another. Every seat at the brothers’ funeral, which lasted only a little over half an hour, was full. The sanctuary was full, as was the area behind the seats and on the sides, along with much of the central aisle space. So was the entire balcony. The speakers at the funeral faced a semicircular window of stained glass with a rainbow sunburst and the words SEEK PEACE AND PURSUE IT arching over the top. But there was no reflection from any of the speakers on any potential meaning of the event. No one contrasted the brothers with their murderer, and no one tried to reason through the hatred that had killed them. The eulogies were about the brothers only, two mentally handicapped men who had lived their entire lives together.