Four years ago, on October 27, eleven people were murdered in the sacred space of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We remember them with sorrow, honor, and a renewed commitment to confront hate, bigotry, and racism.
- Rose Mallinger, 97 years old, known as Bubbie (Grandmother) to everyone in the community
- Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, president of the congregation and a revered physician
- Cecil Rosenthal, 59, along with his brother David, never missed a service
- David Rosenthal, 54
- Daniel Stein, 71, beloved father and grandfather
- Richard Gottfried, 65, a dentist who treated refugees and immigrants through his clinic
- Joyce Fienberg, 75, grandmother of six
- Melvin Wax, 88, a core member of the congregation
- Bernice Simon, 84, was married at Tree of Life in 1956
- Sylvan Simon, 86, still held hands with his wife
- Irving Younger 69, father, grandfather, and former youth baseball coach
Here are two poems written in response to the massacre.
October Twenty-Seven
Reflection on Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting
By Debbie Allen
Leaves dropped, dropped dropped, dropped dropped dropped from the Tree.
First fell two, too green yet still sent swirling
down. And one acrinkle, edges curling,
tumbled toward the ground. Another, tinted
palest parchment, frail and time-imprinted,
flutter-plunged in scythed unfair farewell. Then
two with stems entwined, in tightening tailspin—
backs, incurved, set bent against the harshness—
landed spooning. Silent. Winds of darkness
took to Earth en masse the petals’ partners.
Circumspection only breaks the heart worse:
dread of want to forecast such departures.
Who Are We, Pittsburgh?
By Patricia Thrushart
Who are we then, Pittsburgh,
when hate strikes?
We are the bells of Polish Hill,
the golden ramparts of the South Side,
the menorah bright before the Synagogue,
the call for prayer by the young Imam,
the white filigree of the Hindu temple;
the nativity scene nestled in the city square;
we are everyone who worships
and those who do not;
We are the music spilling out of clubs,
the waft of fish across the cobblestones
in the Strip, sold from the bucket
of a barefoot boy fishing the Yough;
the smells of bakeries and butter,
hops and spice, pierogies, croissants and tandoori.
We dine on the food of the world, and we dance.
See us from the high hill above the brown Monongahela, among the rows of brick houses,
warmed by coal from the seams,
delivered on barges muscled
by the tiniest of tugs
through locks that mute the Allegheny’s wrath,
past towers of academia and
green spaces rising from the rust.
We are the shining spires that burst forth
at the end of the tunnel,
home to the blinding speed of the peregrine,
who dives above the bridges of yellow,
above stadiums where we gather to cheer
our gladiators, as steel flows through our veins,
fed by the grit of the mineshaft, the fire of the Bessemer that remains in our eyes as they
flash with resolve when hate closes in.