PENNSYLVANIA
The Jewish Chronicle
by Toby Tabachnick, Senior Staff Writer
David Menachem Gordon was a lone soldier in the Israel Defense Forces during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge when he went missing one day in mid-August. Two days later, he was found dead, with his rifle beside him.
Gordon, who served in the Givati Brigade, lived for a time in White Oak with his family before making aliyah. He was a student at Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh from 2008 to 2010, and his parents, Ruth and Jacob Gordon, were members of the Orthodox Gemilas Chesed Synagogue.
But it was Gordon’s childhood in Detroit — where he was sexually abused from within the Orthodox community when he was 9 to 11 years old — that arguably had the greatest impact on the trajectory of his life.
David’s mother recounted his story to a packed auditorium at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh Sunday night as part of a program sponsored by Jewish Community Watch, a nonprofit founded in 2011 to combat child sexual abuse (CSA) in the Jewish community, and to help victims. JCW is based in New York.
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