Pittsburgh tries to see the future through the darkness

RON KAMPEAS

The day after the killings, women gingerly entered a popular café, and hugged first responders taking a cappuccino break.

The day after the killings, congregants asked their rabbi whether it would be safe to let the kids out to play next Shabbat.

The day after the killings, Pittsburgh’s Jews opened umbrellas to drive off a rain as cold and cutting as steel. They filed into halls that have never been associated with Jewish worship, and they prayed because one of their houses of worship had been profaned by a killer swearing that he would kill every one of them.

The day after a gunman entered the Tree of Life Congregation complex in Squirrel Hill and killed 11 people belonging to the three congregations it houses, there were persistent, nagging questions.

“So G-d, why us?” asked Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life-Or Simcha Congregation, who was the last to speak at the memorial ceremony. “Why couldn’t he turn his car in a different direction?”

The rabbi asked the question every clergyman asks at each worship service: why do congregants sit at the back of the sanctuary? The stage was packed with an interfaith array of Pittsburgh’s clergy.

The laughter faded as Myers explained the deadly consequences: of the 12 worshippers in the sanctuary at the time of the shooting, the eight at the back were easy targets. Seven died, one was wounded. The rabbi was able to pull the four at the front to safety.

“Seven of my congregants were shot dead in my sanctuary,” he said, his voice thick with the guilt that haunts survivors.

The questions flew at a meeting earlier in the day bringing together local rabbis, Jewish community professionals and officials from law enforcement, as well as the state and municipality.

“Is this a trend?” the Jewish leaders asked, according to an official in the room. “Was the gunman a lone wolf? Can we expect copycats? What do we do when Jewish schools open tomorrow? Will there be extra police?” (For now, it appears, yes. A police guard was set up across the street from the Jewish community centre in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood, blocks away from the shooting, the deadliest attack on Jews in United States history.)

Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, a Chabad rabbi who attended the briefing, said key questions were unanswered – they were too open-ended to answer in the short term.

His congregants wanted to know what to do next Shabbat, a time that the Orthodox tend to allow their kids to run free in the neighbourhood. Was that safe now? Was it reasonable?

“That needs to continue,” Rosenfeld said of the free play the kids enjoy. “What do you do to make sure that fear doesn’t prevail?”

“I just hope we continue to be as welcoming,” a man said.

How do you recover?

Sunday morning was silent at first along Murray Street in Squirrel Hill, a neighbourhood packed with kosher eateries and favourite cafes. Laura Horowitz, a congregant at Dor Hadash, greeted friends at the 61C cafe as they walked in. They checked on one another. (“Where were you” when it happened?) and exchanged hugs. Two women hugged two policemen taking a coffee break.

“The cliché is that you come out stronger,” Horowitz said. “But I don’t know how you recover from the loss of place. That was where we were safe.”

Myers, the Tree of Life rabbi, drew a line to recent toxic political rhetoric.

“It starts with speech,” he said to a standing ovation. “Words of hate are unwelcome in Pittsburgh!”

But minutes earlier, there was another moment, one of recognition. Wasiullah Mohamed, the Executive Director of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, said to cheers that the city’s Muslims had, in less than 24 hours, raised $70 000 (R1 million) for the families of the dead and wounded.

Then, like so many others throughout the day, Mohamed described what he felt when he heard the news.

“I couldn’t see the city anymore,” he said. “I could just see its dark corners.” (JTA)