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Long-delayed Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial to begin Monday, igniting pain, fear and hopes for closure
(JTA) — Every Thursday, Brad Orsini gets on a conference call with dozens of other security specialists who, like him, focus on preventing threats to American Jews. But in a few days, and for the coming months, the conference call won’t just address the dangers of the present and future. It will also deal with events that occurred more than four years ago.
That’s because next week marks the beginning of the trial of the gunman who is accused of killing 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018.
Orsini, who oversaw the city’s Jewish communal security on the day of the attack in the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, hopes to find a sense of closure in the alleged shooter’s prosecution. But he also knows that the trial threatens to broadcast the white supremacist ideas that lay behind the attack, and continue to pose risks for Jewish communities. And he worries that, in addition to providing a possible pathway for survivors and victims’ families to move into the future, it could also thrust them back into a painful past.
“It’s long overdue,” Orsini said. “This has been looming large over the Pittsburgh community and, quite honestly, the Jewish community in the nation. We’re all looking toward finishing this trial and prosecuting this actor for what he did.”
At the same time, he added, “This trial is going to reopen wounds that this community has suffered for almost five years now, and it’s going to have the ability to retraumatize many people in the community. And we have to be concerned about that.”
Beginning on Monday, those countervailing emotions and expectations will come to bear as the deadliest antisemitic attack in American Jewish history is litigated in court. The trial, which will begin with jury selection, is expected to last about three months. Few doubt the guilt of the accused shooter, Robert Bowers, whose name is hardly uttered by Jewish residents of Squirrel Hill. But what remains unclear is what the trial will mean for American Jews — and for the families most directly affected by the attack.
Some hope for the defendant to get the death penalty — even though that will mean prolonging the legal ordeal — while others have advocated against it. Some hope for the trial to shed light on the threat of white supremacy, even as renewed attention on the attack could inspire other violent extremists. And some hope the trial will help them move past the tragedy, even as they know it will be difficult to hear the details of the shooting laid out in court.
“The country is going to have to undergo this unprecedented trial of the country’s worst mass killer of Jews,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “It’s going to be really hard, so I think our community is really going to have to buckle down and brace ourselves.”
The attack on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, 2018, killed 11 people from three congregations, all of which met at the same building, and injured six others, including four police officers. The defendant faces 63 criminal charges, including hate crimes and murder charges. He has pleaded not guilty. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty — a choice some relatives of victims are vocally supporting. Previously, leaders of two of the three congregations that suffered the attack had opposed the death penalty in this case.
“This massacre was not just a mass murder of innocent citizens during a service in a house of worship,” Diane Rosenthal, sister of David and Cecil Rosethal, who died in the attack, told local journalists, according to reporting by the Pittsburgh Union Progress. “The death penalty must apply to vindicate justice and to offer some measure of deterrence from horrific hate crimes happening again and again.”
For the survivors and families of victims, the trial will likely be especially painful. Some told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle that they intend to take time off work, delay a vacation or be away from family for an extended period of time to be present at the proceedings.
“I want to see justice happen, but at the same time, I hate to think about the families having to potentially see images of what happened and things of that sort,” Steve Weiss, who survived the attack, told the weekly Jewish newspaper. “I’m sure they have mental images, but to have to actually see photos of victims and things of that sort I think can really be difficult for them.”
One thing few people question is the shooter’s guilt, despite his plea of not guilty. He offered to plead guilty in 2019 in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, but prosecutors, determined to pursue capital punishment for the crime, rejected the plea.
It was the same thing that had happened in the case of the man charged with killing nine Black worshippers in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015. But there, despite the rejected guilty plea, the trial took place a year and a half after the attack, and the shooter was sentenced to death. (In an illustration of the length of death penalty cases, his latest court proceeding happened in October, and he has not yet been executed.)
In contrast, the Pittsburgh trial is not starting until four and a half years after the shooting there. Part of the reason for the delay stems from the work of the defense team, which has pushed back the trial through various court filings. The alleged shooter’s lead attorney, Judy Clarke, has defended a series of high-profile attackers: the Unabomber, the attacker in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics bombing and the Boston Marathon bomber, among others. According to Pittsburgh’s local CBS affiliate, her singular goal is to avoid the death penalty for her client.
But in many other ways, the parallels between the Charleston trial and this one are clear. Both concern shootings by alleged white supremacists in houses of worship, tragedies that have become gruesome symbols of a national rise in bigotry. In both, the culpability of the defendant was assumed before the trial began. Like the Pittsburgh defendant, the Charleston shooter has been lionized by white supremacists, including some who cited him as an inspiration for their own violent acts.
And in both cases, there is an understanding that a conviction does not heal the wounds opened by the shooter.
“This trial has produced no winners, only losers,” said the judge in the Charleston shooter’s trial, Richard Gergel, according to the New Yorker. “This proceeding cannot give the families what they truly want, the return of their loved ones.”
Still, some who are watching the Pittsburgh trial closely hope that it will bring new facts and connections to light. Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit that spearheaded a multimillion-dollar victory in a civil trial against the organizers of the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, hopes that the Pittsburgh trial illustrates the links among different white supremacist shootings — such as the attacks in El Paso, Texas; Christchurch, New Zealand; and at a synagogue in Poway, California.
Those attackers spouted similar conspiracy theories and referenced other recent violent attacks in their manifestos. Spitalnick said that the accused Pittsburgh shooter allegedly communicated with the organizers of the Charlottesville rally on the social network Gab, which is known as a haven for right-wing extremists.
“Trials like this can really be illustrative of how deep the poison of white supremacy and antisemitism goes,” she said. In the Charlottesville trial, she said, “The reams and reams of evidence… really helped pull back the curtain on what motivated the defendants, how they operated, the tools and the tactics of the movement, the conspiracy theories at its core.”
There’s also the possibility that, with the attack resurfacing the shooter’s motivations, and putting him back in the spotlight, it will act as an inspiration for other white supremacists. In the years following the synagogue shooting, Pittsburgh became a kind of pilgrimage site for the defendant’s admirers — leading to continued harassment of local Jews.
“We’re giving a platform to an individual who is a Jew hater, who wanted to kill all Jews,” Orsini said. “What does that spark in other like-minded people? We need to be very cognizant throughout this trial on what kind of chatter is going to be out there on the deep dark web, or even in open portals.”
In the face of concerns about retraumatization, Greenblatt said the ADL is preparing resources on how to discuss the trial with students and amid the Jewish community.
“To relive the horrors of, the grief of, the event — this thing being constantly in the news — it’s going to be hard to avoid, it’s going to be difficult and it could be grisly and upsetting,” Greenblatt said. “I would much prefer this trial didn’t happen — I would much prefer this crime never happened, I would much prefer that those people were all still with us today — but this is where we are.”
He added, “If there might be some ability to raise awareness among the non-Jewish population of what we’re facing, [that] would be of value.”
One potential challenge for American Jews as a whole, Spitalnick said, is that federal prosecutors don’t necessarily share the needs of Jews who will be following the proceedings. While the trial will conjure a mix of emotions for Jews locally and beyond, she said, prosecutors will be more focused on the nuts and bolts of what happened that day and the details of the accused attacker’s actions and motives.
“We’re going to probably spend a lot of time hearing from the prosecution about what motivated him, but it’s not through the lens of what we as Jews think about when we think about Jewish safety,” she said. “It’s through the lens of making the case that this guy did what he did motivated by this extremism and hate… It’s going to be very deliberate and tactical and precise, versus where we as American Jews have been thinking about this from a deeply personal, communal safety perspective.”
The deliberate and detailed work of prosecutors, however, may not be at cross purposes with the emotional needs of Jews, Orsini said. When the trial ends, he said, the establishment of Bowers’ guilt may itself prove to be transformative for how Jews relate to the tragedy, in Pittsburgh and beyond.
“The fact that this individual has not been fully brought to justice… and is not convicted yet of this mass shooting — in some way, yes, that closure and finality will be done at the end of this trial,” he said. “The community can kind of regroup and truly become resilient once this phase is over with.”
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What happened during the 2025 Israel-Iran war? A timeline.
(JTA) — The U.S.-Israeli military attack on Iran that launched early Saturday morning comes eight months after the last Israel-Iran war, in June 2025.
As we wait to see what happens in the current war, here’s a look back at how the 2025 conflict played out, from uneasy tensions to U.S. intervention to a grim death toll for Israelis.
- April 2024: First exchange of missiles between Israel and Iran in the 45-year history of the Islamic Republic:
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May-June 2025: Tensions built in the weeks and days leading up to the attack, with the international community condemning Iran’s failure to abide by past nuclear agreements. Diplomatic efforts stalled as officials on all sides signaled that a direct confrontation was possible.
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June 13: Israel launches its attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and ballistic missile program, followed shortly by a warning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that retaliation by Iran was “expected in the immediate future.”
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June 13—: As Israel continues to pummel targets in Iran, Tehran counter-attacks, sending missiles almost nightly. Twenty-eight people are killed in Israel, including four women in an Arab town in northern Israel; a Ukrainian family that had come for cancer treatment for their daughter; and an activist at her home in Beersheba. Many others lost their homes. Flights, schools and workplaces are all massively disrupted.
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June 18: Donald Trump, who had run on a platform of opposing all war, sends mixed signals about whether he will jump in, as the Israelis clearly hoped he would. Trump tells reporters days into the conflict that “nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
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June 21: The United States joins the fight, striking three sites associated with Iran’s nuclear program, including Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan, alongside Israeli forces. The deeply buried facilities were seen as impossible to target without U.S. arms.
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June 23: Trump announces a ceasefire on social media. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claims victory following the announcement despite striking Israel in its immediate wake. Israel does not say it had acceded to a ceasefire until many hours later.
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Aftermath: The extent of damage to the Iranian regime was unclear. Even on Saturday, as Trump renewed the fight against the Islamic Republic following negotiations that he said had not been satisfactory, he said last year’s strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. But the regime was rebuilding it, he and other observers said, and Iran had reportedly stockpiled more missiles than it had before the 2025 war. And the regime remained intact, clamping down a domestic protest movement by killing tens of thousands of protesters within 48 hours last month. Trump initially threatened to strike over the mass killings but did not.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post What happened during the 2025 Israel-Iran war? A timeline. appeared first on The Forward.
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Sirens, shelters and an empty Old City: Jerusalem rattled on the first day of war with Iran
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Jacob Phillips’ first trip to Israel from his home in Germany was in 2023, to visit Holocaust survivors in Tel Aviv as part of a university program. It was cut short by the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, which forced him to leave the country.
He returned with his girlfriend this month to see the sites he missed. “Because the last trip, it was a harsh cut,” he said. “That’s why we came back, to visit the people I met here in Israel.”
On Saturday, Phillips and his girlfriend Michelle were among the very few people walking the streets in Jerusalem as another war unfolded, with Iran. The war, which began when Israel and the United States together attacked Iran early Saturday, had already sent them multiple times to shelters and scrambled their departure plans for next Thursday. Ben Gurion Airport is closed until at least March 7.
Phillips said he was in touch with the German consulate and felt safe in Jerusalem despite the incoming missiles, citing Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. He said he remained happy to be in Israel.
“I wanted to come here to learn about the Jewish experience, especially as a German, and I feel like I have gotten to see so much of it,” Phillips said.
While missile impacts rocked Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel, an eerie calm pervaded the streets of Jerusalem on Saturday, extreme even for Shabbat, as residents hunkered down at home between the sirens that indicated that war with Iran had begun anew. The sirens scattered the prayer services that dot the holy city and disrupted plans for shared meals.
The gates of the Old City were closed by Israeli police to everyone but residents. A crowd of Hasidic Jews argued with officers, petitioning for entry to pray at the Western Wall but ultimately giving up and turning back.
One resident who ventured out between air raid alerts said the assault had provided “pauses just long enough to walk up the stairs before heading back [to the shelter] again.”
Those who braved journeys away from their homes offered a general consensus that the war would be significantly worse this time around, only nine months after a 12-day war that led to the deaths of 32 Israelis. In that conflict, Iran launched more than 500 ballistic missiles at Israel and targets throughout the Middle East in retaliation for strikes that Israel initiated and the United States joined.
This time is indeed different. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are gunning for regime change and said they believed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been killed in an opening salvo. Sensing an existential threat, the Islamic Republic of Iran has already escalated its response, using its firepower against not only Israel but U.S. targets throughout the Middle East.
Richard Weiner and Rolly Feld had been in Nahariya, in Israel’s north, until Saturday morning. When the sirens began, they drove back to Jerusalem in the hope they would be safer in the city and farther from significant military targets for the Iranian regime, including the port of Haifa, which was struck by an Iranian barrage at 10 a.m.
Feld recounted that while driving down Route 4 toward Jerusalem, it felt as if they were being chased by missiles. Periodically, another batch of air raid alerts would sound, forcing them to shelter in tunnels along the highway.
Feld said he would have preferred to continue driving, contrary to the advice of Israeli authorities who recommend pulling over and lying flat to avoid exposure to shrapnel from missile impacts.
“My wife wanted all the time to stick to the guidelines, to stop the car and stay away, and I keep driving fast then stopped in the tunnels. It’s a compromise,” Feld said.
Weiner, who grew up in Israel but has lived as an adult in South Africa, was critical of Netanyahu’s decision to launch the strikes.
“What he’s doing is horrible for the Iranian people and it’s horrible for the people over here. The government is pushing for this; the people are not.” Weiner identified himself as “something of a pacifist,” adding, “We have to look for other ways of dealing with the Iranian government, as irrational as they are. We should be supporting the people who are protesting and not trying to topple the government by killing the leadership.”
Weiner and Feld bantered back and forth on a sidewalk in the leafy neighborhood of Rehavia, discussing the possibility of further escalation and whether it was Israel’s place to intervene on behalf of the Iranian people — if that was indeed part of the calculus.
Weiner concluded, “I have a love-hate relationship with this country. I come back and this happens again. This is clearly not the answer. Many people will be killed, and it’s horrible that tens of thousands have been killed due to their dissent, but how does this help?”
The question of whether the war would succeed in the U.S.-Israeli ambition of achieving regime change in Iran was a preoccupation of many of those who were out and about.
“The chance of actual change is so low,” said Ishay, 44, a Jerusalem resident. “Like in Israel, there is such a strong contingent of those with radical beliefs in Iran. Even if the regime is toppled, who will replace Khamenei?”
Information was hard to come by throughout the day, though over time it became clear that missile impacts had been confirmed in multiple locations, including Bnei Brak, where Magen David Adom treated people who were wounded. By overnight, it was clear that one woman had been killed and another man had been seriously wounded in Tel Aviv.
The war comes as Israel prepares to celebrate Purim, a Jewish holiday commemorating the overthrow of an oppressive Persian regime, offering a powerful parallel for the current moment.
In the lead-up to the holiday, two Israelis stood talking down the street, seemingly unconcerned by the sirens, both in costume — one wearing a sombrero, the other dressed as a clown.
Yael, who lives in Rehavia, was walking her dog, Lucky, in Meir Sherman Garden Park in central Jerusalem.
“We’ve just come to expect this. I am raising my children here in Israel, but sometimes I wonder if there is a future here,” she said.
For Phillips, the fact that both of his visits to Israel have been derailed by two different conflicts did not dampen his support for Israel’s decision to launch the attacks on Iran.
“It’s time to change the regime there because of the nuclear weapons; it’s important to have this under control,” he said. “For Israel, it will be a hard time, I think, but nothing is free. You have to pay with something.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Sirens, shelters and an empty Old City: Jerusalem rattled on the first day of war with Iran appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel says Iranian supreme leader Khamenei killed during strikes on Tehran
(JTA) — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, was killed Saturday morning during a joint U.S.-Israeli strike that hit targets throughout the country, Israeli officials have announced.
In a televised address late Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “growing signs” that Khamenei had been killed during an Israeli strike on his compound in Tehran. Shortly after the address, Israeli officials told Axios and the Associated Press that they had confirmed his death.
The alleged death of Khamenei, 86, who has ruled Iran since 1989 and was one of the world’s longest-serving authoritarian leaders, would serve as a major blow to the Islamic Republic regime, which Netanyahu and President Donald Trump both said they sought to topple in the strikes.
Trump cautiously confirmed the reports of Khamenei’s death on Saturday, telling NBC News about the Israeli report, “We feel that that is a correct story.” The president also told ABC correspondent Rachel Scott, “I don’t want to say anything definitively until I see things but we believe he is, and much of their leaders are gone.”
Iran appeared to deny claims that Khamenei had died on Saturday, with Iranian state media reporting that a source close to Khamenei’s office said, “I can tell you with confidence that the leader of the revolution is steadfast and firm in commanding the field,” according to Reuters.
Khamenei reportedly appointed a deputy to succeed him ahead of the strikes. But the CIA has assessed that he may be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, according to Reuters.
Trump said he believed a large number of other Iranian officials were killed in the initial strikes, but neither he nor Israeli officials immediately named other officials they believed had been killed.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel says Iranian supreme leader Khamenei killed during strikes on Tehran appeared first on The Forward.