16 S UNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021
ON THE MORNINGof Oct. 27, 2018, my hus-
band and I were getting ready to take our
daughter to the pediatrician’s office a few
blocks down the street from the Tree of Life
synagogue in Pittsburgh. Suddenly, our
phones erupted with the news that there
was an active shooter there, and that the
Reconstructionist congregation where we
spent our High Holy Days, Dor Hadash
(one of three congregations sharing space
at Tree of Life), was apparently one of the
targets. We burst into tears that came not
entirely from shock and surprise, but from
exactly its opposite. I felt the cold, familiar
dread of inevitability. As a Soviet Jew who
emigrated 40 years ago from a country
that never considered its Jews truly Rus-
sian, I was reminded once again that some
things never change: You can’t out-immi-
grate antisemitism.
But what happens to a Jewish neighbor-
hood in the wake of a shooting that be-
comes a national news story? This ques-
tion animates Mark Oppenheimer’s
“Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue
Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood,”
a poignant, deeply researched account of
the Pittsburgh Jewish neighborhood in the
aftermath of tragedy. Oppenheimer sets
the scene with details even those familiar
with the story might forget. The shooter
was particularly incensed by Dor Hadash,
a progressive congregation participating
in the National Refugee Shabbat, an initia-
tive organized by HIAS. What he came
upon when he invaded the building was a
custodian and 21 of the most regular mem-
bers of three congregations, including the
smaller New Light, all sharing one roof to
save costs in an era of dwindling member-
ship. Many of the people preparing for Sat-
urday worship that morning were elderly,
frail and most in need of community care.
Oppenheimer’s propulsive narrative
spans a full year after the attack as Pitts-
burghers bury and mourn, organize anti-
hate rallies, field the onslaught of national
news media and a tsunami of “trauma
tourists”: then-President Donald Trump,
movie stars, out-of-town clergy, student
delegations, New Yorkers, medical clowns
and therapy dogs. “I was curious to know
how people dealt with the aftermath of
mass violence,” Oppenheimer writes.
“When the cameras and the police tape
were gone, what stayed behind?”
Oppenheimer paints the portrait of an
urban neighborhood that never ceded its
tightknit Jewish population to the suburbs.
The question of why “white flight” never
occurred in Squirrel Hill comes up in inter-
views with a number of scholars, many of-
fering contradictory opinions. Oppen-
heimer writes, “Everybody has a theory,
which means that nobody really knows.”
He does a lovely job of bringing the
essence of this charming, walkable place
to life: kibitzing folks bustling between the
Jewish-owned Giant Eagle supermarket,
the kosher shop on Murray Avenue, the
corner Starbucks on Shady Avenue, used
and new bookstores, cafes, Asian bakeries
and an array of ethnic restaurants, “one of
the most diverse places in very white west-
ern Pennsylvania.” Alongside them are
multiple Jewish congregations represent-
ing a variety of denominations, nestled
among leafy, tree-lined blocks.
How “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”
became the site of the most deadly anti-
semitic attack on American soil and what
happened afterward unfold with the preci-
sion of the best suspense stories. We learn
how the rabbis whose congregations
shared Tree of Life’s building were pushed
into an unwelcome spotlight even while
they processed the trauma of their close
encounter with death and the murder of
their congregants.
Oppenheimer gradually widens the cir-
cle of his inquiry toward others who, shar-
ing “the common urge to do something,”
were critical to how the event was later
memorialized: the “amateur crisis re-
sponder” and his one-man organization
Crosses for Losses, which erected wooden
memorials (though in the shape of Stars of
David this time) with the victims’ names;
the graphic designer who created the ubiq-
uitous “Stronger Than Hate” logo; the high
school students who mobilized the grass-
roots vigil filled with music and candlelight
that provided photographic iconography
for national media; an Iranian college stu-
dent in Washington, D.C., who, on a whim,
started a GoFundMe page that raised mil-
lions of dollars for Tree of Life; and the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette executive editor
who devoted the front page of the newspa-
per to a headline in Hebrew script, the first
four words of the Mourner’s Kaddish, a
move that may have hastened his depar-
ture from the job.
Not all assistance was equally welcome,
and some came at an enormous emotional
and logistical cost to the mourners. How can
a community bury its dead while also accom-
modating the lodging and dietary needs of
elite New York City school groups, Baltimore
rabbis, holy societies and other visitors who
simply couldn’t stay away? And what about
the question of how to allocate fairly among
the various affected cogregations the mil-
lions of donated dollars? And the most
daunting long-term decision of all: what to
do about the building itself?Oppenheimer explains why the site has
remained untouched since the tragedy.
Synagogue engagement has not changed
much despite good intentions; “submari-
ner Jews” may still surface for the High
Holy Days, but all the money and national
coverage haven’t attracted more congre-
gants. As a local rabbi starkly put it to Op-
penheimer, “Tree of Life’s members will do
everything for the 11 dead except show up
in their place.” In May of this year, the syn-agogue announced that they had hired the
architect Daniel Libeskind (also mar-
shaled for the rebuilding of the World
Trade Center site) for the design of its new
complex. But at the end of “Squirrel Hill,”
Tree of Life’s Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers
strikes a note of caution: “Of what value is
this task — the endless meetings, the costs
associated, the commitment from commu-
nal partners — if so many of our members
find no value entering the Tree other than
as submariner Jews?”
As a former religion columnist for The
New York Times and host of a popular pod-cast, “Unorthodox,” for Tablet, an online
magazine, Oppenheimer is sympathetic to
the ways Jewish culture stands at the
crossroads of proud resistance and self-
protective withdrawal, bold activism and
self-effacement. The people he highlights
are treated with a knowing, affectionate
wink, a landsman’s recognition. He wards
off critique of his own role in journalism’s
equivalent of trauma tourism by delving
into his father’s family’s deep roots in
Squirrel Hill, though he himself grew up in
Massachusetts and currently resides in
New Haven, Conn., as the coordinator of
the Yale Journalism Initiative. (For ac-
counts by local writers, see Beth Kissileff
and Eric Lidji’s anthology “Bound in the
Bond of Life: Pittsburgh Writers Reflect on
the Tree of Life Tragedy,” published by the
University of Pittsburgh Press.)
Three years after the antisemitic killings
that thrust the Tree of Life synagogue into
the national consciousness, it still stands
cordoned off by a wire fence. Since I drive
past it every day, I often pause at the long
traffic light and contemplate the many pan-
els of student art that brighten the wire
fence encircling the desolate site. “Stronger
Together,” one poster says, and “#heartsto-
gether” and “You Are Not Alone.” Just this
morning, I lingered on one such piece of art
that said, “Rebuild Together.” Eventually, at
the corner of Wilkins and Shady, the light
turned green. 0Sitting Shiva
The aftermath of the most deadly antisemitic attack in American history.
By IRINA REYN
SQUIRREL HILL
The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and
the Soul of a Neighborhood
By Mark Oppenheimer
320 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $28.95.
Visitors at a makeshift memorial outside the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
IRINA REYNis the author of the novels “What
Happened to Anna K.,” “The Imperial Wife”
and “Mother Country.” She teaches fiction
writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
What happens to a Jewish
neighborhood in the wake of a
shooting that becomes a national
news story?