Some 2,500 people gathered on Sunday at a memorial service for the 11 Jewish worshipers slain in their Pittsburgh synagogue during Shabbat services, a mass murder the mayor called the city’s “darkest hour” while exhorting mourners to “defeat hate with love.” Several speakers addressing an overflow crowd at the University of Pittsburgh’s Soldiers and Sailors…
Correction Appended Rose Mallinger was 97. But she sure didn’t look or act her age. Chuck Diamond, a former rabbi at Tree Of Life, said Mallinger, who was the oldest victim of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, would never miss a service. “She was a synagogue-goer, and not everybody is,” Diamond told the Washington Post. “She’s…
I just moved to Pittsburgh. I’ve been checking out the congregations in my new city and went to a shul around the corner from Tree of Life Or L’Simcha a couple of weeks ago. This attack, along with recent attacks against African Americans, immigrants and the transgender community have filled me with anger and grief….
Dear Jewish Trump supporters, first let me say I’m a proud Jew and a progressive. I’ve watched with horror, but only a modest amount of surprise, as you have embraced the presidency of an unspeakable individual. You have looked aside at evidence of debauchery, ceaseless lying, likely treason and much else. Because, you have claimed,…
Etz Chaim: The Tree of Life. How painfully ironic. The metaphoric expression “Tree of Life” ( Etz Chaim in Hebrew) is a mystical symbol within the Kabbala of esoteric Judaism used to describe the path to God. Yesterday’s unredeemable act of evil within the walls of The Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburg is physically,…
There are three Conservative Jewish congregations in Pittsburgh’s heavily Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Two of the congregations, both based in the building of the Tree of Life synagogue, were attacked Saturday by an anti-Semitic gunman who killed eleven people. It is unclear when they’ll be allowed to return to their building, which is still an…
Sometimes, maybe it is the same for you, I come to shul on Shabbat and just look around. I am trying to understand the stories of all the people who have come to pray. There are the wide-eyed newcomers, so polite. There are the insiders, and the ones who came for the bar mitzvah, unmistakable…
I lived in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. I lived in Squirrel Hill. I remember the park, Frick Park- with a blue slide etched into the edge of a hill- one we used to ride down on wax paper and cardboard boxes- the relic of childhood that I rode down years later to relive the few moments…
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