Today is the 7th anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, PA. I’ve lived in the South Hills of Pittsburgh all my life. I’ve long recognized our city’s and region’s shortcomings in integrating and welcoming people of other races, ethnicities and religions though for two centuries we’ve been settled by people from nearly every country and faith on the globe to find jobs in our industries: mining, steel production, glassmaking and more, establish farms, open businesses and add their part to our big small town/little big city. Still, I have personally heard and witnessed and called people out for their anti-semitism, even today,
But a shooting this horrific, walking into a synagogue with open doors on Shabbat, looking senior and geriatric worshippers, some of them Holocaust-era survivors, in the eye and shooting them with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic pistol, all over the buildingfor about 20 minutes…but you never think this will happen in your community, until it does. It still shocks me today, in 2025.
We should always be shocked at even anti-semitic remarks. We would hope that a shooting this horrific would cause some to think twice when they deny anti-semitism in this country. Instead it’s only increased nationwide, worldwide, in the past seven years. I don’t have an answer for how to stop it, except that I will always call someone out for anti-semitic remarks or dumb jokes, which some jagoffs use to get their hateful opinion out there while telling you they’re just joking. They are not.
Here is what I wrote seven years ago after the shooting…
Many of you may know I live in Pittsburgh. This weekend our community suffered a horrible traumatic mass shooting at a synagogue in a city neighborhood, killing mostly elders at Saturday Shabbat. I am not Jewish, nor do I live in that neighborhood, but I am crushed by this hatred. As a city we are still reeling from the shooting in the Tree of Life Synagogue, about 20 minutes from where I live.
Squirrel Hill is a vibrant and diverse neighborhood but its inclusivity was patterned by the Jewish immigrants who settled here generations ago. It is as one reporter called it, literally “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” because this was where Rogers lived.
Pittsburgh is a big small town and for all the various segregation we’ve suffered in the past this one neighborhood was like magic in its diversity, seeing families walk to Shabbat in long skirts or hats without fear of retribution, and buildings with Hebrew text, as well as find Vietnamese restaurants, a real French bakery run by a person from France, a gallery with African art and more services for many ethnicities, mixed with national and international students from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh who live in rented apartments there.
On the street you can hear any language at any time. Children walk to school, and play in the parks. People are out on the streets walking to and from the last movie at the Manor Theater. Everyone talked to everyone else. I am not a city person, but I enjoyed this neighborhood with its quiet neighborhoods of tree-lined streets and beautiful houses, galleries, performance spaces, shops.
Vigils have brought us together, all races and religions; we are right at the door in times of need.
Hearing the news
I was trapping kittens in a TNR project on Saturday when this happened, with moderate to heavy rain all day I was in and out of my car as I set and checked traps and got back in to warm up and dry off. Any news I heard was disjointed until three of the four kittens were trapped and moved inside, and I settled into my car for a snack while watching the last trap. Finally hearing the full story, shocked, I forgot my food and got on my phone to look up the news. I did manage to get that last kitten trapped and inside while the group of us working on this shook our heads and tried to express how we felt about this, the fear of knowing someone like the shooter had been in our midst.
The next day, full of local and national and international news, I posted this on Facebook:
Look at the ages of the victims of the Tree of Life shooting—the youngest 54, the oldest 97—Rose Mallinger, who lived in Europe during the Holocaust, to be killed in this country known for freedom, in a neighborhood where generations had known safety in worship, this elderly worship community ripped apart, their daily security, and no doubt several long-time friends, gone, children and grandchildren losing a generation in a way that will always be a painful memory, another chapter in their family’s history. Remember these people, never forget that the fingers of hatred grip and strangle more than those who died here.
Complacency is complicity, never let hatred take hold, even in a single word.
Joyce Fienberg, 75, of Oakland
Richard Gottfried, 65, of Ross Township
Rose Mallinger, 97, of Squirrel Hill
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, of Edgewood
Cecil Rosenthal, 59, of Squirrel Hill
David Rosenthal, 54, of Squirrel Hill
(Cecil and David Rosenthal are brothers)
Bernice Simon, 84, of Wilkinsburg
Sylvan Simon, 87, of Wilkinsburg
(Bernice and Sylvan are husband and wife)
Daniel Stein , 71, of Squirrel Hill
Melvin Wax, 88, of Squirrel Hill
Irving Younger, 69, of Mt. Washington
The memory today, Stronger Than Hate
I still see the signs in people’s yards, and we still talk about it, especially now. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison. Jewish congregants in Squirrel Hill went back to services in synagogues other than Tree of Life long ago, but synagogues and other Jewish facilities all over the area increased security and have maintained that since then. I still hear intentionally provocative anti-semitic remarks and the dumb jokes the jagoffs think makes them clever. Tree of Life has largely rebuilt, determined to reopen.
Be that candle in the darkness. It’s a small move but something we can all do is let others know that anti-semitism isn’t cute or clever, and it’s not accepted. It may not change that person in that moment, but enough countering of remarks, signs, graffiti and more personal acts on a personal level can only help to cast doubt in the perpetrator’s mind. Do your part, call it out, don’t let anyone get away with even a simple act. Put your support behind your community to help stop radicalized people like the shooter before they get started.
Here are a few articles from 2018 about the neighborhood, and fundraisers, which also tell a story:
A Massacre in the Heart of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
Student Helps Raise $540K For Synagogue Shooting Victims
Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue
And current coverage:
Sidewalk Stories: Compassionate Responses to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting from Tree of Life
New podcast explores how 2018 synagogue attack affected the Jewish community—and every Pittsburgher
Read more: Essays ♦ Short Stories ♦ Poetry
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