(JTA) – The husband of Lori Kaye, who was killed by a gunman during services at the Chabad of Poway, said he wants to prevent future synagogue shootings like the one that killed his wife by educating the world about its “inherent moral compass.” In an op-ed in Newsweek, Dr. Howard Kaye recalled how he passed out after beginning CPR on a woman after the shooting on April 27 and then realized that it was his wife.

“In trying to understand the root cause of the atrocity that took Lori’s life and, even more urgently, in seeking to prevent the next Poway from occurring, it became clear to me that Lori’s killer was motivated by anti-Semitic hatred,” he writes. Howard Kaye said he has chosen to speak out now because of the 25th yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. He wrote that his wife had been in synagogue the day of the shooting for her mother’s yahrzeit and that she had recently purchased a book by Schneerson about loss and tragedy. He has been reading it to deal with his wife’s killing. 

Schneerson, Howard Kaye wrote, worked to promote awareness of Judaism’s basic universal moral code for humankind called the Seven Noahide Laws. “Each time a murderous, twisted individual commits a crime of hate, the urgency to educate society about the basic laws of human civilization grows,” he wrote. “It holds the potential to stop the next atrocity.”

Main Photo: Howard Kaye, center, and his daughter Hannah Kaye, hug after the final letter is inked into the new Torah scroll dedicated to wife and mother Lori Kaye, who was killed when a gunman attacked the Chabad of Poway on April 27, 2019, during a celebration for the new scroll, foreground, at the synagogue on May 22, 2019, in Poway, California. (Hayne Palmour IV/The San Diego Union-Tribune via AP)