Watch: NBC News Airs Jewish Mourner’s Prayer to Memorialize Pittsburgh Victims

TEL AVIV – In an unusual move, NBC ended its Nightly News on Friday with the Jewish mourner’s prayer recited by a cantor in honor of the 11 victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.

The network displayed the names and photos of the victims along with scenes from this past week in Pittsburgh as Cantor Avi Schwartz of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York said the Kaddish.

The show’s host Lester Holt said the gesture was inspired by the “powerful” cover of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the largest newspaper serving the Pennsylvanian city’s metropolitan area, which ran a front-page headline containing a part of the Jewish mourner’s prayer on Friday, hours after the victims were buried.

The headline translates as “may His great name be exalted and sanctified.”

“On this first Sabbath since the shooting we asked Cantor Avi Schwartz of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York to help us honor them by reciting the Kaddish,” Holt said.

“May their memories be a blessing,” Holt concluded.

Jodi Kantor, an investigative journalist for The New York Times, said the headline was “The ultimate tribute to the victims. A statement that Jews belong.”