An Orthodox Rabbi has said that gay people caused the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting which killed 11, adding: “I’m not sorry for this disaster.”

New Jersey Rabbi Mordechai Aderet told his followers not to go to a vigil for those murdered last Saturday (October 27) because it reportedly took place during a circumcision ceremony for the twins of two gay dads.

In a Facebook video which has been viewed more than 10,000 times since it was posted to Facebook on Sunday (October 28), Aderet said that anyone who attended the interfaith memorial was “spitting in Hashem’s (God’s) face.”

He continued: “The two men adopted a boy and did the brit milah (circumcision ceremony), and you wonder why there was a massacre? And now you want to go say Tehillim (readings from the Book of Psalms) for them?”

The rabbi also said that people shouldn’t go to pay their respects because the Tree of Life Congregation, where the shooting happened, invited other Jews to a vigil for the victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.

He referred to the 49 people killed in the attack as “those sinners, trash… that were killed in a massacre in a club. The club was a club for men to men.”

“That’s the same people that invited the people two years ago to say Tehillim for those lowlives,” said the rabbi.

Aderet, who PinkNews understands has not attended the synagogue listed on his website, New Jersey’s Congregation Ahavath Torah, in the past year, continued: “All those people who go tonight, you protest against Hashem (God).

“This is not Tehillim, this is spitting in Hashem’s face. And you like it or you don’t like it, that’s the emet (truth).”

He added: “Those people do not let Moshiach (the Messiah) come. If you don’t go on the straight… thing, Hashem won’t bring the Moshiach.”

The victims of the shooting, which was the worst anti-semitic attack in modern US history, included Dr Jerry Rabinowitz, who helped patients during the AIDS crisis.

The doctor, who practised family medicine a short drive from the synagogue, was praised after his death by one of his patients, Michael Kerr.

In a Facebook post on Sunday (October 28), Kerr described Rabinowitz’s kind treatment of people with HIV during a time in which tens of thousands died and many were scared to touch sufferers, let alone care for them.

Kerr said that “in the old days for HIV patients in Pittsburgh he was [the] one to go to.”

“Basically before there was effective treatment for fighting HIV itself, he was known in the community for keeping us alive the longest.”