Rabbi Mosheh Twersky with NYC ties killed in Jerusalem synagogue attack; remembered for 'integrity,' 'humility,' his Bronx associates say

Rabbi Mosheh Twersky stayed up past midnight Tuesday, as he did most days, studying the Torah, his nephew said. Hours later, he and three other rabbis were killed when Palestinian terrorists stormed a Jerusalem synagogue during morning prayer in one of the city's deadliest attacks in years.

An Israeli police officer who responded to the scene also died Tuesday, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Twersky, 59, a Boston native whose mother lives in the Bronx, moved to Israel in 1990. He headed Yeshivas Toras Moshe in Jerusalem, a religious seminary for English-speaking students.

His religious roots ran deeper. Twersky's father was renowned Rabbi Isadore Twersky, founding director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University, and his grandfather Joseph Soloveitchik was a leading modern Orthodox rabbi.

"He had the purest and most sincere commitment to the service of God, and always conducted himself with the utmost integrity and humility," said the victim's nephew Samuel Rosenblatt, 23, a Harvard postbaccalaureate student and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher.

In the Bronx, where family members live and worship, Mosheh Twersky was remembered as a devoted scholar. Rosenblatt said his uncle would give up his lunch break to hold daily study sessions.

"He was just a special person. Very sincere," Rabbi Asher Bush of Rockland County, a former classmate at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University, said in an interview outside the Riverdale Jewish Center in the Bronx, where Twersky's brother-in-law Jonathan Rosenblatt is senior rabbi. Mosheh Twersky's brother, Mayer Twersky, is a rabbi at Yeshiva University.

Bush said his classmate was continuing the family tradition of "great teachers" and "leaders of the Jewish community."

The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem identified the other American victims as Aryeh Kupinsky and Kalman Levine. The fourth synagogue victim was Avraham Goldberg, who is British.

Rosenblatt said his sister, Rebecca, 21, studying at Hebrew University, learned of the attack early and sent text messages to the family. She didn't learn the victims' names until later. Rosenblatt said family members left for Israel Tuesday. "They were just broken," he said.

Rosenblatt, who studied in Israel and visited his uncle on the Sabbath when he was younger, said he would bring his friends to meet Twersky because he wanted them to see his uncle's integrity "firsthand."

Twersky's yeshiva students usually trickled into his home, sitting around the kitchen table, mostly discussing the Torah. And Twersky often stayed up until 2 a.m. studying the Torah.

His nephew said, "He held himself to the highest standard . . . The only recognition he was really looking for was from God."