Two Brooklyn communities this week held tributes for Leiby Kletzky, the 8-year old Brooklyn boy who was kidnapped and brutally murdered earlier this month.
In Crown Heights, in between games of a Hasidic softball league, neighbors brought blue and white balloons onto the field, passing them out to players and spectators alike.
"We just want to show our love for the little boy that you guys lost because we as parents also feel what you feel in the loss," one woman said. She added that she wanted to "show her children how to love openly and with no regard to color or race."
They then released the balloons into the night sky.
"It was just a very special moment in a couple days of sad news," Yitzi Cole, a member of the league, told 1010 WINS. "You could just see there was a lot of love and a feeling of family in the air."
And last night in Kensington, about 300 mourners gathered at the playground of P.S. 230 on McDonald Avenue at Albemarle Road to hold a candlelight vigil, Voz Is Neias News reports.
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NYS Assemblyman Dov Hiknd, NYS Sen. Eric Adams, And NYC Councilman Brad Lander were there to pay their respects.
The family of Kletzky has set up a website in his honor. The Leiby Kletzky Memorial Fund hopes to raise $1 million for needy children and families. It raised $60,000 on its first day.
Kltezky's parents released a statement to Chabad.org Thursday, after completing shiva, the traditional Jewish week of mourning.
They thanked G-d for the "nearly nine beautiful years that He entrusted [them] with Leiby's pure soul" and thanked friends, neighbors, policeman and volunteers who assisted them "physically, emotionally, spiritually."
"We pray that none of you should ever have to live through what we did," the parents wrote. "But if any tragedy is to ever befall any of you, G‑d forbid, you should be blessed with a community and public as supportive as ours. We feel that through Leiby we've become family with you all."