Uncategorized
As trial begins in Tree of Life massacre, Pittsburgh’s Jews struggle with what to reveal and what to conceal
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — On Friday afternoon, Squirrel Hill was suffused with spring breezes and pink dogwoods, and alive with the movement that typifies the coming of Shabbat.
Toddlers scrambled up the jungle gym in the JCC playground, while the chatter in cafes was about a looming storm that could soak the walk to synagogue on Saturday. Murray Avenue Kosher was emptying out of challahs.
Barely present, at least on the surface, was any indication that Monday morning would hold a turning point in the community’s greatest trauma. That’s when jury selection was to begin in the trial of the man accused of shattering Shabbat on Oct. 27, 2018, with gunfire. His massacre of 11 worshipers, in a synagogue building a 10-minute stroll from the downtown of this leafy, heavily Jewish neighborhood, was the deadliest-ever attack on U.S. Jews.
But behind the scenes, there are clear signs that the trial’s proximity is being felt. Maggie Feinstein, the director of the 10/27 Healing Partnership, which provides post-traumatic therapy for the community, said that as the trial nears, requests for treatment have spiked.
“The trauma cues that for a while bothered us right after the shooting — for some people it might be ambulances, for other people it might be media, for some people it might be the sound of multiple police cars — you get to a place where they don’t bother you as much,” she said. “But the increased media attention and the increased awareness of this upcoming trial for a number of people is bringing back for them that maybe they didn’t do their own healing the first time around.”
A Starbucks in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh is decorated with a memorial for the victims of the 2018 massacre at the city’s Tree of Life synagogue, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
There were three congregations in the building: Tree of Life and New Light, both affiliated with the Conservative movement, and Dor Hadash, which is Reconstructionist.
The 11 victims were brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, couple Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Rose Malinger, Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger. Seven were from Tree of Life, three were from New Light and one was from Dor Hadash.
For their families, their friends, their congregations and their broader Jewish community, the legacy of the massacre is a deep-seated longing for control, a longing to never have to think again of the gunman and of the anguish he left in his wake, while grappling with tender memories of the dead, of the decades spent in celebration and in prayer in the building.
Who narrates this story, the gunman or his victims? That struggle now looms as the alleged gunman goes to trial. The community is wrestling with questions such as where and whether to put the bullet-riddled artifacts, whether to worship at the site, whether to even speak of the massacre and how and whether the gunman lives or dies.
”We believe strongly that this antisemitic attack should not stop people from practicing and being Jewish,” Feinsten said. “For a lot of people, that’s an active choice that they have to work at. It doesn’t come easily after feeling unsafe in that environment to then work to find safety in it. But a lot of people have chosen to do that.”
On Friday, Feinstein was organizing support services for families who would, if they so choose, be sequestered in a separate room in the court where they could view the trial. (Family members may also ask to be seated in the courtroom.) She assigned six therapists to be present with the families.
Compounding the revisited trauma of the event, the families are divided over whether the gunman, should he be convicted, deserves the death penalty. The accused has a lawyer, Judy Clarke, known as “the attorney for the damned” for her determination to keep her clients from execution.
What’s clear is that the Jews of Squirrel Hill are taking the trial on with their characteristic spirit of collaboration. The community has hired public relations specialists to handle media inquiries ahead of the trial, in part to safeguard locals from being pressed to answer questions that could harm them or shatter the sense of unity. Congregants reached by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency dutifully deferred to the list of approved contacts on a list distributed by a PR agency.
On Friday afternoon, signs of unity that flooded the city in the immediate aftermath of the shooting were still visible. In a tobacconist’s window a sign with the slogan “No place for hate/Stronger than hate,” which had proliferated throughout the neighborhood after the attack, remained propped up next to a flag and an ad for the lottery. A Starbucks had on its window white paint drawings depicting “love,” “kindness” and “hope” in English and in Hebrew, alongside symbols: the Star of David, a heart and a dove.
A tobacconist window includes a poster of the “No Place for Hate” slogan that proliferated after the Tree of Life Massacre in 2018, in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
Representatives of the community talk about “doing Jewish” as a means of coping, including redoubling the very activities — allying with the city’s Black minority and advocating for immigration, refugees and gun control — that fueled the rage of the alleged attacker.
The attacker allegedly was driven in part by the partnership between Dor Hadash and HIAS, the Jewish refugee aid group, and the congregation’s sponsorship of refugee families.
“We have, if anything, doubled down on our commitment to immigrants and refugees,” said Dana Kellerman, the chair of the communications committee at Dor Hadash. “We are currently coming up on the end of our first year working with a new resettlement program to resettle a Congolese immigrant family in Pittsburgh, and we have every intention of when the year commitment is up of working with a second family.”
Kellerman said the shooting had “honestly become part of the background of our existence at this point.” In keeping with her congregation’s rules aimed at protecting their community, Kellerman declined to talk about the day of the massacre, the death penalty or about details of the trial. But she was open about the ways in which her congregation has leaned into the values it has long held, and that the gunman so reviled.
“We have become louder and more public about practicing our Judaism,” she said. Now, she said, the congregation incorporates advocacy for refugees into its service, with liturgical readings on immigration.
There are other changes. “We even have hats now! We have baseball caps!” Kellerman said with a smile, unearthing a photo of herself in a white cap with “Dor Hadash” and a stylized Magen David in blue, standing alongside gun control advocates.
“Previously we all would have shown up as our individual selves, and now we show up in our Dor Hadash baseball caps,” she said. “Mine kept blowing off.”
Steve Cohen, the co-president of New Light, said the congregation’s relationship with Black churches in the city has reached new intensity since the massacre. The congregation’s rabbi and congregants who know Hebrew partner with the churches to analyze sacred texts in the original.
“We would bring our Tanachs [Hebrew Bibles], and the Christian congregation would bring their Bible and then we would talk about the Proverbs and go through it, not just what the intention of the author was, but how different ways the same words can be translated in order to imply different things,” he said. “And so we went through the whole Book of Proverbs with the Rodman Street Baptist Church, and this past winter, we did the selected Psalms with the faith and Destiny Church on the north side.”
The interior of the new sanctuary of the New Light congregation, four and half years after a gunman massacred three of its congregants, in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
New Light took its cue from survivors of the 2015 attack on the Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, Cohen said. Leaders of New Light traveled to the church and heard from its elders that it was not enough to tend to the traumatized individuals, but to the community; they emphasized outreach, bringing congregants back in.
“That’s a lot of the reason why we have an outpouring of members who never attended shul now attending shul,” he said.
Feinstein, too, said she had an intensification of religious and ritual observance among her clients: more frequent attendance at Shabbat services, forming a daily minyan, finding a study partner for daily Talmud study.
Kellerman said the community has become closer; she sees it in congregants who linger. “It shows up in things like people showing up for Friday night services, and hanging out to chat or getting on a little early to chat,” she said.
A rendition of architect Daniel Libeskind’s plans for the interior of the new Tree of Life synagogue. (Tree of Life)
In the days leading up to the trial, the community bid farewell to the most salient relic of that painful day: the hulking synagogue building on the corner of Wilkins and Shady that has stood empty since then. All three congregations have decamped to nearby synagogues, leaving behind the chain-link fence draped with paintings from children across the country wishing for strength.
“Nobody has been meeting in the synagogue since the day of the shooting,” said Carole Zawatsky, the Tree of Life CEO who is overseeing the plans to replace the building. The only people to have been inside at all, she said, were survivors and “special friends” — donors to the rebuilding and politicians.
Zawatsky said it is wrenching to even contemplate returning for some. “You can walk through the building and see where the gunman was destructive,” she said. “You can see where the gunman was apprehended, where the gunman opened fire. It’s devastating to witness.”
But some intend to: Tree of Life lost seven congregants but plans on returning once the building is rebuilt as a museum and education center focused on the dangers of extremism.
On Sunday, the Tree of Life congregation had an outdoor ceremony to say “L’hitraot,” Hebrew for “until we meet again,” to the building as it has existed up to now.
“We are grateful to God for the thousands of blessings that have passed through these doors,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, the rabbi who sheltered congregants and alerted police, said at the ceremony. “We cannot, we must not, permit one day … to define us, nor outweigh all the good.”
The new center is being designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect who designed the master plan for the World Trade Center site reconstruction in New York and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
But Dor Hadash and New Light decided their moves were permanent in part because families of their victims swore never to return to the building.
New Light is now ensconced in what once was a secondary chapel at the Beth Shalom synagogue, as if it has been there for decades: Plaques honoring past donors and presidents adorn the walls of the sanctuary. The only signs of the massacre are the 1,000 paper cranes Pittsburgh’s Japanese community gave the congregation, reflecting a Japanese tradition that folding cranes will make a wish come true. They hang at the entrance to the sanctuary, unexplained by any plaque. There is a stained glass monument to the three victims at the cemetery where they are buried.
Even with Tree of Life’s commitment to return, many questions remain about what that will look like. The congregation has yet to decide what objects will stay in the sanctuary, what will stay in storage and what will be part of a separate exhibit, Zawatsky said.
“The first work that’s had to be done for the synagogue is ‘What are the things that need to be saved and go into storage during construction?’” she said.
In some ways, she indicated, the work of rebuilding could bear some resemblance to the balancing act that the community will have to navigate during the alleged shooter’s trial.
“We are thinking deeply about how you exhibit some of these materials,” Zaslavsky said, “in ways that are both teachable moments and don’t retraumatize.”
—
The post As trial begins in Tree of Life massacre, Pittsburgh’s Jews struggle with what to reveal and what to conceal appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Two Argentine Jewish Tourists Assaulted in Milan as Antisemitic Incidents Surge Across Italy
A protester uses a pole to break a window at Milano Centrale railway station, during a demonstration that is part of a nationwide “Let’s Block Everything” protest in solidarity with Gaza, with activists also calling for a halt to arms shipments to Israel, in Milan, Italy, Sept. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Two young Argentine Jewish tourists were violently assaulted in Milan by a group of North African migrants after being targeted for wearing kippahs, in one of the latest antisemitic attacks amid a relentlessly hostile climate toward Jewish communities across Europe.
According to Italian media reports, the two 19-year-old Argentine tourists were attacked late Sunday night outside a 24-hour supermarket in Milan, a city in the northern part of the country, at Piazzale Siena after leaving the store when a group of about 10 people approached them.
After spotting the kippahs worn by the two young men, the attackers began shouting antisemitic insults, including “f**king Jews,” before violently assaulting them, leaving one of the victims with a broken nose.
Authorities and emergency responders were quickly dispatched to the scene following the attack, with police and paramedics providing assistance before transporting the two victims to a local hospital.
Local law enforcement has now opened a criminal investigation into the assault, reviewing surveillance camera footage and analyzing cell phone data from areas surrounding Piazzale Siena.
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) strongly condemned the incident, describing it as a sign of rising antisemitic hostility and calling for renewed efforts to safeguard Jewish communities across Europe.
“This disturbing incident highlights the very real dangers Jews continue to face in public spaces across Europe simply for expressing their identity. Antisemitic violence must be confronted with the utmost seriousness,” EJC said in a statement.
“Authorities must ensure that those responsible are swiftly identified and brought to justice. No one in Europe should fear being attacked for being visibly Jewish,” it continued.
Two young Jewish tourists from Argentina were violently assaulted outside a supermarket in Milan after being identified as Jewish by their kippahs.
The attackers first hurled antisemitic insults before punching the victims, leaving one with a broken nose.
This disturbing… pic.twitter.com/Ch0IzlgWt4
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) March 4, 2026
Amid heightened tensions tied to the recent US-Israeli joint military campaign against Iran, Walker Meghnagi — president of the Jewish community of Milan — called on authorities to strengthen protection for Jewish schools and synagogues.
“We must remain vigilant. We have asked the prefect to increase surveillance around our schools and places of worship, as well as to safeguard our freedoms, but we cannot isolate ourselves,” he said.
“We are Italians and deserve to be respected as such. We are a free people, and we will not hide — we must stand firm in defense of our freedom,” Meghnagi continued.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Italy has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to newly published figures, antisemitism in Italy surged to record levels in 2025, reflecting a broader climate in which Jews and Israelis across Europe have faced harassment, vandalism, and targeted violence.
In Italy, the Milan-based CDEC Foundation (Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) confirmed that antisemitic incidents in the country almost reached four digits for the first time last year.
Of 1,492 reports submitted through official monitoring channels, the CDEC formally classified a record high 963 cases as antisemitic, according to the EJC and Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), the main representative body of Jews in Italy.
By comparison, there were 877 recorded incidents in 2024, preceded by 453 such outrages in 2023 and just 241 in 2022.
Uncategorized
New York Judge Overturns Disciplinary Sanctions for Columbia University Students Who Occupied Hamilton Hall
Protesters gather at the gates of Columbia University, in support of student protesters who barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall, in New York City, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
A New York state judge has overturn disciplinary sanctions imposed on a group of anti-Israel protesters who illegally occupied Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and interned janitorial staff while destroying property to protest the Israel-Hamas war, raising concerns that colleges may be deprived of the power to punish severe misconduct perpetrated by students who claim to be advancing progressive causes.
Twenty-two current and former students, all of whom contested their punishments anonymously, may soon walk away without being held accountable following Judge Gerald Lebovits’s ruling last Friday that Columbia’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious.” Lebovits went further, citing the students’ concealment of their identities with masks and keffiyeh scarves as evidence that the university lacked evidence to determine that they were actually in Hamilton Hall despite that they had been arrested on the scene by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
“In the disciplinary proceedings against the 22 Columbia students, the sole evidence that they were present in Hamilton Hall during its occupation was a report reflecting that petitioners had been arrested,” he wrote. “No evidence was offered in the disciplinary proceedings of actions taken inside Hamilton Hall by any particular student, as opposed to the conduct of the group of occupiers as a whole.”
Lebovits, after arguing that the group should not be disciplined even as he described their infractions, then argued that illegally occupying Hamilton Hall is “decades-long tradition.”
He continued, “Others might see the occupiers’ actions as manifestations of an ugly hatred against Jews, using rhetoric about Gaza mainly as a pretext. But the task for this court is not to decide between these perspectives, or to opine on the moral or political issues implicated by the actions of the parties to this proceeding.”
In a statement shared with The Algemeiner on Wednesday, Columbia University noted that Lebovits’s vacating the disciplinary sanctions does not take effect for 30 days, during which time university lawyers may pursue other legal avenues.
“The order does not take effect for at least 30 days, and no student who was disciplined for the occupation of Hamilton Hall can return to campus at this time,” a university spokesperson said. “Columbia is considering all of its options, including seeking a stay of the order and appealing the decision.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, in April 2024, anti-Israel agitators occupied Hamilton Hall, forcing then-university president Minouche Shafik to call on the NYPD for help, a decision she hesitated to make. During a search of the scene, the NYPD found a number of disturbing items, including “gas masks, ear plugs, helmets, goggles, tape, hammers, knives, ropes, and a book on TERRORISM [sic].” Police also found signs which said “death to America” and “death to Israel.”
During the same period, a group that calls itself “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD) commandeered a section of campus and, after declaring it a “liberated zone,” lit flares and chanted pro-Hamas and anti-American slogans, according to numerous reports. When the NYPD arrived to disperse the unauthorized gathering, hundreds of students reportedly amassed around them to prevent the restoration of order.
“Yes, we’re all Hamas, pig!” one protester was filmed screaming during the fracas, which saw some verbal skirmishes between pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist partisans. “Long live Hamas!” said others who filmed themselves dancing and praising the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian terrorist organization.
Beyond the occupation of school property, Columbia has produced some of the most indelible examples of antisemitism, pro-jihadist sentiment, and extreme anti-Zionism in American higher education since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. Such incidents include a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
In July, interim then-university president Claire Shipman said the institution would hire new coordinators to oversee antisemitism complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Shipman also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups while delivering a major blow to the anti-Zionist movement on campus by vowing never to “recognize or meet with” the infamous organization CUAD, which had serially disrupted academic life with a number of other unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
However, Columbia University has retained a professor, Joseph Massad, who celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — where the Palestinian terrorist group sexually assaulted women and men, kidnapped the elderly, and murdered children in their beds — allowing him to teach a course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaking to The Algemeiner in January, Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Asaf Romirowsky said that Massad’s remaining on Columbia’s payroll is indicative of the university’s hesitance to enact meaningful and lasting reforms.
“Joseph Massad is a notorious tenured antisemite who has spent his career at Columbia bashing Israel and Zionism, a poster child for BDS and a scholar propagandist activist. Furthermore, he has shown his true colors time and time again defending Hamas and calling the 10/7 barbaric attack on Israel ‘awesome,’” Romirowsky said.
Noting that Columbia’s own antisemitism task force said in a December report that the institution employs few faculty who hold moderate views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he added, “By allowing Massad to continue teaching and spreading his venom, Columbia is only codifying the dearth of knowledge as it relates to the Middle East. It should take the finding of the report and act upon it by getting rid of the tenured radicals they allowed to hijack the institution.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
California Governor Gavin Newsom Likens Israel to ‘Apartheid State’
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a press conference, accompanied by members of the Texas Democratic legislators, at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, California, US, Aug. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday ignited controversy after suggesting it is “appropriate” to describe Israel as an “apartheid state” and questioning the future of US military assistance to the Jewish state during an event to promote his new memoir.
Speaking during a book event in Los Angeles with “Pod Save America” host Tommy Vietor, Newsom said that recent policies pursued by Israel’s current government have made the term increasingly common in international discourse. While framing his comments as reluctant, the Democratic governor said it “breaks my heart,” but argued that the trajectory of Israeli leadership leaves the United States with “no choice” but to reconsider aspects of its longstanding support such as providing military aid.
“I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately – sort of an apartheid state,” Newsom said in reference to New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman.
“It breaks my heart because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don’t think you have a choice but to have that consideration,” Newsom said.
The remarks place Newsom among the most high-profile American elected officials to publicly entertain the apartheid label — a characterization Israel has consistently rejected as false and inflammatory. Israeli officials across the political spectrum have long argued that such comparisons distort the complex security, legal, and historical realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while ignoring the equal rights afforded to Israel’s Arab citizens and the ongoing security threats facing the country.
Newsom reportedly directed much of his criticism at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, describing its policies in the West Bank and toward Palestinians as contributing to growing international unease. His comments come amid continued tensions in the region, including the future prospect of Israeli military operations against Hamas in Gaza and ongoing military conflict with Iran and its regional proxies.
Newsom also directed criticism toward the current war in Iran, accusing Jerusalem of pushing the White House to pursue military conflict with Tehran. The California governor suggested that Israel should not be trusted to lead a successful campaign against Iran, given Jerusalem’s failure to topple Hamas in Gaza. He also suggested that Netanyahu bamboozled US President Donald Trump into pursuing a war against Iran.
“They couldn’t even – I mean, we’re talking about regime change?” he said, “For two years, they haven’t even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel. So, this is, I mean, you know, I wanna be careful here, but, you know, in so many ways, that influence in the context of the conversation of where Trump ultimately landed on this is pretty damn self-evident.”
Trump was asked at the White House if Israel dragged the US into conflict with Iran and rejected the notion.
“I might have forced their [Israel’s] hand,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”
In Jerusalem, officials have frequently pushed back against the apartheid accusation, noting that Israel is a multiethnic democracy with an independent judiciary, free press, and Arab representation in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. Critics of the apartheid claim also point to the repeated rejections by Palestinian leadership of past peace proposals that would have established a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Newsom’s statements arrive at a sensitive moment in US-Israel relations. As the 2028 Democratic primary begins to set in motion, progressive voices within the Democratic Party have increasingly called for conditioning or reducing military aid to Israel. Newsom, widely viewed as a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, now appears to be navigating that internal party divide.
In a recent podcast appearance with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Newsom rejected the argument that Israel has committed a so-called “genocide” in Gaza and expressed support for the country’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorism.
Netanyahu has said in several interviews over the past few months that he intends to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.