As heavy rain and strong winds swept through a Montreal park Wednesday evening, members of the city’s Jewish community and others remained in place to remember Michel Mizrahi, the 68-year-old bystander killed in last week’s shooting that also killed a city police officer.
The gathering marked the end of shiva, the seven-day Jewish mourning period, and brought members of the Jewish community together to offer comfort to Mizrahi’s family, who travelled to Israel to bury him.
The event also included a tribute to Montreal police Const. Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, who was fatally shot while responding to the attack on June 22 outside a Hilton hotel in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood.
The alleged gunman also died.
In an interview, Rabbi Yisroel Bernath said Chabad Montreal and the Mizrahi family chose the location, which was near the site of the attack, to transform a place marked by violence into one of remembrance and solidarity.
“For the Jewish people … marking that place is not necessarily about the past but the future,” Bernath said. “Coming together, being together, standing shoulder to shoulder, and then looking towards the future.”
Police said the suspect opened fire outside the hotel before exchanging gunfire with responding officers. Quebec provincial police continue to investigate the shooting, while Quebec’s police watchdog is investigating the police intervention, as required whenever someone dies during a police operation.
After Mizrahi’s family travelled to Israel following a ceremony that took place on June 24 to mourn Mizrahi, Bernath said many members of Montreal’s Jewish community were left wondering how they could show their support.
“There was a lot of people here in the community that felt like, ‘Here we are kind of grappling with all of this, and what do we do?’” he said. The gathering, he added, gave Montrealers a chance to show the family “that we’re here and we’re supporting them, and this is a very difficult time for all of us.”
That support extended across continents. Mizrahi’s family, who remained in Israel observing shiva, listened to the ceremony live. A large screen had been set up so attendees could see them, but strong winds knocked it over early in the evening and organizers did not put it back up.
Despite the weather, attendees remained in place, many standing under umbrellas as the ceremony continued.
For Bernath, the evening reflected something larger than a single memorial. The response from the community, he said, had been unlike anything he had witnessed in more than two decades in Montreal.
“This has really been an example of a togetherness that I have never seen before in Montreal,” he said, adding that people stepped forward to support both the Mizrahi family and the family of Benredouane.
Among those attending was Cmdr. Stéphane Rodrigue of the Montreal police’s Station 26, where Const. Benredouane worked.
Addressing the crowd, Rabbi Mendel Raskin, Mizrahi’s rabbi, urged those gathered to honour the victims through acts of kindness and compassion.
Raskin also recalled one of the many acts of generosity he said defined Mizrahi’s life. Several years ago, he said Mizrahi stopped to help a woman sitting on a bench with two children after noticing she was crying. After learning she needed groceries, Raskin said Mizrahi quietly paid for her purchases before leaving.
At Mizrahi’s funeral last week, Raskin said several people later told him Mizrahi spent his final moments urging them to leave the area or seek shelter moments before dozens of shots were fired.
“There are people in this room today who were saved by Michel,” Raskin said during that ceremony.
The Montreal police service announced Tuesday that a memorial ceremony honouring Benredouane’s life will take place July 7 at the Bell Centre, a downtown Montreal arena.
