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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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In a legal settlement, UC Berkeley offers a dance scholar a position it denied her because she’s Israeli.
(JTA) — (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — For more than nine months, UC Berkeley has failed to honor a legal settlement with an Israeli dance scholar who was denied a teaching position due to her nationality.
In response to a J. inquiry, a university spokesperson said the delay was caused by “internal miscommunication.” The university now promises that the scholar, Yael Nativ, will receive the job offer she was guaranteed in the December 2025 settlement “no later than the week of Sept. 28.”
“We deeply regret this unfortunate delay and look forward to welcoming Dr. Nativ back to our campus,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in a statement.
Nativ said she received an apology for the delay and the promise of an imminent job offer in a Sept. 21 email from a university administrator.
“It’s always a surprise when I get emails from them because the correspondence was so little to none,” Nativ said. “I’m so tired of this case.”
Nativ, a sociologist specializing in Israeli dance, taught in UC Berkeley’s dance department during spring 2022 as a visiting professor through the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Her course focused on contemporary dance in Israel through social, political and cultural perspectives.
The institute invited Nativ to reapply for another year of teaching. But after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, SanSan Kwan, chair of the dance department, informed Nativ that she would not be rehired. In November 2023, Kwan told Nativ in a WhatsApp message: “My dept cannot host you for a class next fall. Things are very hot right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
The university’s civil rights office investigated the matter and concluded that Nativ was discriminated against based on her Israeli identity.
Nativ sued the university, with representation from the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, in August 2025. When the two sides settled the lawsuit in December 2025, the university acknowledged its wrongdoing and committed to apologizing to Nativ and inviting her back to campus.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons apologized to Nativ over Zoom on Feb. 3, but no job offer arrived.
The lapse was publicized by Malcolm Feeley, a retired UC Berkeley Law professor, who wrote about Nativ’s case in a Sept. 16 article in the Jewish Review of Books.
“Justice delayed is justice denied. This is justice delayed in the extreme,” Feeley said in an interview. “It takes a concerted effort of badgering to get [the university] to move an inch.”
In a statement to J. following the publication of Feeley’s article, Mogulof said the university hadn’t sent Nativ a job offer due to a misunderstanding among administrators about who was responsible for doing so.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin will personally ensure the offer will come within the next two weeks, according to Mogulof.
Nativ went on to work as a research fellow at Ben-Gurion University in Israel after she left Berkeley. She said her main goal since the lawsuit has been to hold UC Berkeley accountable, not to land a job.
“It wasn’t urgent for me to go [back to campus]. It’s more about making a point, getting my justice,” she said. “But if they invite, I will consider.”
This story was first reported by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In a legal settlement, UC Berkeley offers a dance scholar a position it denied her because she’s Israeli. appeared first on The Forward.
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The choice in Michigan between El-Sayed and Rogers is one all American Jews have to make
Sometimes the most important part of making a decision is articulating what the decision actually is. What are the choices?
So it is in Michigan, where Jewish Democrats are asked to choose between Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat who is against providing military aid to Israel and who campaigned with leftist streamer Hasan Piker, and Mike Rogers, a Republican and an election denier who would help keep the Senate in the hands of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, and who is presenting himself as the choice for Jews offended by El-Sayed. Either Rogers wins; El-Sayed wins without Jewish support; or El-Sayed wins with Jewish support. Those are the only possible outcomes.
Two groups have shown two different ways of dealing with this choice. The first, “Nonnegotiable Michigan,” a group of Jewish Michiganders including rabbis and cantors, has listed five “baseline needs,” or “nonnegotiables,” for their support, which include “Jewish sovereignty in Israel” along with full and safe participation in American life for all Jews including Zionists and a vision for a better Middle East.
The second, Michigan Jews for Democracy, has pledged its support for El-Sayed while noting some reservations and concerns. As one signatory, David Jaffe, put it in a statement released along with Michigan Jews for Democracy’s declaratory letter, “I am a proud Jew. I’m voting for El Sayed despite our disagreements, to support domestic policies that reflect Jewish values. I’m voting against grave threats to the safety of Jews and to American democracy. Rogers unquestioningly supports an authoritarian administration, its arbitrary arrests, its white Christian nationalism, and myriad terrible policies that have never in history been ‘good for the Jews.’”
In other words, one group has said the Democratic candidate cannot count on their support because of their disagreements with him, while the other has said that he has their support despite them. One is trying to get a candidate to say what they want to hear before the election; the other, that they will support him in the election and hope to be a “voice at the table” after.
Jewish groups are, of course, not the only ones who have grappled with such questions (“Nonnegotiable” calls to mind the “Uncommitted” movement to press for a ceasefire in Gaza and to end military aid to Israel from the 2024 presidential election). But to consider these two specific groups together is to consider a choice that an increasing number of Jewish Democrats — which is to say, the vast majority of American Jews — all over the country can expect to be making soon if they haven’t already had to.
Democrats (and younger Republicans) are less supportive of Israel and of US support for it. Candidates will need to speak to their voters and make campaign promises that are aligned with what those voters want to hear. And Jewish Democrats will have to be honest with themselves about the limited options before them and decide for themselves whether they want these candidates to win with or without them.
Per an AP-NORC poll from this summer, about 58% of Democrats think the United States is too supportive of Israel, while roughly half think Israel carried out a genocide in Gaza. Not every candidate who makes it out of a primary and into a general election will say the same, but many will, both because of their own conviction and because they want to win Democratic votes.
For some Jewish Democrats, this presents no tension or contradiction; the same poll said that roughly three in 10 Jewish adults agree that Israel carried out a genocide in Gaza. There are American Jews for whom El-Sayed’s vision for the Middle East is not threatening but comforting and correct. But about half of American Jews rejected the idea that Israel carried out a genocide. And, as JFNA found, the vast majority of American Jews want Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state (though just 37% now identify as Zionist). Many may feel a tug of war between their support for or attachment to Israel and their liberalism.
There will be some who say that American Jews should reject the idea that this is a choice, that there is no contradiction between being a liberal Democrat and supporting Israel. That is all well and good in theory, but, come election day, voters in Michigan will make a choice between these two men. There is El-Sayed, who does not want to send military aid to Israel and who said “hurt people hurt people” after Temple Israel was attacked, referring to the fact that the perpetrator’s family was reportedly killed in an airstrike in Lebanon (El-Sayed has since apologized). And there is Rogers, who says he loves Israel and also denies the results of the 2020 presidential election (and pushed to ban abortion and opposed marriage equality, to take two examples from his record).
While Jewish Democrats can, of course, try to influence where Democratic candidates and voters are on Israel, they do not get to dictate it. They do not, in the Michigan general election, get to choose a candidate who supports democracy and also talks about how much they love and want to support Israel. They get to choose whether they want El-Sayed to win and Mike Rogers to lose and, if so, whether they want to be a part of making it happen regardless of El-Sayed’s views on Israel. Every Jewish Democrat, like every other voter, will have to make that choice, and can withhold their vote for whatever reason. But they should be clear about the reality of what they are choosing between.
There are only so many choices in Michigan. And outside of Michigan, too.
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Will today’s Netanyahu speech at the UN be his last as Israeli Prime Minister?
Benjamin Netanyahu has stood at the United Nations podium more often than any Israeli leader, using the world stage to warn about the threat from Iran, defend Israel’s policies and make his case with maps and other props.
On Thursday, Netanyahu is set to deliver his 15th address to the General Assembly, where he is expected to tout Israel’s military successes against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, push back against mounting criticism of Israel and lash out at New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has called him a war criminal. His U.N. appearances have served him politically back home. But with Israelis heading to the polls on Oct. 27 and Netanyahu facing another tough reelection fight, the question hanging over his familiar appearance at the green marble podium is: Will he be back next year?
The stakes in Israel’s election
American Jews and Washington insiders have watched Israeli elections closely from afar for decades. But the Oct. 27 Knesset election may feel unusually close to home.
After years of war in Gaza and Iran, and a right-wing government in which far-right cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have wielded significant influence, Israel’s standing in the United States has fallen sharply. Benjamin Netanyahu has become deeply unpopular among Democrats and American Jews, and many find themselves caught between a strong emotional attachment to Israel and growing discomfort with the actions of its government.
That makes this election more than the latest referendum on Netanyahu. Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is seeking a seventh term after surviving political crises that repeatedly appeared likely to end his career, most significantly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
The election could help determine Israel’s direction after years of growing divisions over the Palestinians, the power of the religious right and Haredi parties and the future of the country’s democratic institutions. And if Netanyahu loses, a new government could try to repair Israel’s battered image in the United States, rebuild ties with Democrats and reconnect with parts of the American Jewish community — even without bringing nearly as much change in Israeli policy as some might hope.
The candidates and coalitions on the ballot
Six weeks before Israelis vote, at least 10 lists of 38 parties that submitted a slate have a viable chance of crossing the 3.25% threshold to win seats in the 120-member Knesset: The current ruling coalition, the Likud Party; the far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism party; and the Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism. Another Party competing for votes on the right is Amcha Yisrael, led by retired general Ofer Winter. The center-left vote is split among three parties: Yashar, headed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot; Beyachad, the alliance of former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid; and the left-wing Democrats, headed by former IDF major general Yair Golan. There is also Avigdor Lieberman, a headliner whose secular, nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party has been part of the anti-Netanyahu bloc since 2019.
The two Arab lists — the United List, a coalition of three Arab Israeli parties, and Ra’am led by Mansour Abbas — are generally counted outside either bloc. But their seats could determine who governs after the election. Ra’am, which joined the Bennett-Lapid government in 2021, has allied with Yoav Segalovitz, who formerly headed the Israel Police’s Investigations and Intelligence Division, to seek a role in a future government, while the United List has left open the possibility of supporting an opposition-led government.
Polls show neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the parties seeking to replace him have a clear path yet to the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority.
That leaves three possible outcomes for Oct. 27 amid a larger question being asked from Jerusalem to Washington: Will the Netanyahu era finally end? And if it does, how much would Israel actually change?
The most likely scenario: Anti-Netanyahu bloc wins — without a majority
Recent polls point to a familiar problem in Israeli politics — the kind of deadlock that paralyzed the country for nearly two years in 2019 and 2020. The Zionist parties opposed to Netanyahu could win more seats in this election than the bloc that made up the current coalition government of Likud, the religious right and Haredi parties, but still fall short of the 61 seats needed for a majority.
Eisenkot, who has emerged as Netanyahu’s chief rival, has floated a path to a government that does not require a majority in the Knesset.
He could attempt to establish a minority government while Arab lawmakers abstain during the confidence vote rather than formally joining his coalition. Eisenkot has carefully called this a “Zionist minority government,” saying he would make no deals with Arab parties. Netanyahu has made the prospect of an Eisenkot government dependent on the left and Arab parties a central campaign argument. He is betting that after the collapse of the Bennett-Lapid government in 2022 and the trauma of Oct. 7, even voters who want change may be wary of such an arrangement.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported earlier this month that Eisenkot’s campaign is concerned that some candidates on the slate could refuse to support such an arrangement, so he is considering internal measures to ensure that lawmakers who cannot support the government’s formation resign rather than break away.
But getting sworn in could dramatically transform the political landscape. Netanyahu would no longer be prime minister.
Eisenkot could then try to expand his government by attracting parties or members currently aligned with Netanyahu, consider a split-power government with Netanyahu, and if Netanyahu stepped aside after losing power, a new Likud leader might consider joining a government led by Eisenkot, Bennett or Lieberman.
Or the minority government could quickly fall apart, sending Israel to another round of elections. But this time Eisenkot would run as the incumbent prime minister, while Netanyahu would have to decide whether to try to return to power as the opposition.
Probable scenario: Netanyahu does it again
Netanyahu could outperform polls and receive enough seats to either block the opposition from forming a government or win an outright majority.
Netanyahu pulled off a surprise victory in 2015 and made a remarkable comeback in 2022 after losing power. In the last few years he has survived a long-running corruption trial and the failures of Oct. 7, which many predicted would end his political career. Instead, he’s kept his coalition together through a full four-year term.
Netanyahu is still considered the preferred candidate for prime minister by more than a third of the Israeli electorate and is dominating among voters identifying with the center-right.
In what would likely be the final term for the 76-year-old longest-serving Israeli leader, Netanyahu could seek a different legacy by moderating his tone and pursuing a unity government with Eisenkot or Bennett. But that would mean breaking campaign promises and abandoning some of the political partners who helped keep him in power. And his opponents would have to put aside years of deep distrust and disagreements – and justify the move in the name of political stability.
Possible scenario: The end of an era — but who becomes prime minister?
If Netanyahu’s bloc loses and he cannot find a way to stay in power, the election would not automatically make Eisenkot prime minister. Ending the Netanyahu era is one thing for the three opposition leaders. Deciding who replaces him is another.
Bennett and Lieberman come from different backgrounds than Eisenkot, with years of political experience and ambitions of their own. They could offer very different styles of leadership, with a dramatic change in tone and relationships but little change in policy from Netanyahu’s.
Bennett, 54, now polling as the head of the third-largest party, has done this before. After the 2021 election, his party Yamina won only seven seats. Yet the deadlocked political map allowed him to negotiate a rotation agreement with Lapid and become prime minister as head of a diverse coalition that, for the first time in Israeli history, included the participation of an Arab party.
During his short tenure as prime minister, he demonstrated calm and unity, and proved that removing Netanyahu would not automatically be interpreted as Israel moving left. He maintained good relations with former President Joe Biden and speaks fluent English. His stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — he opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and backs an aggressive approach toward Hamas — resonates with current Israeli public opinion. He also prioritizes military and civic service for all Israelis, an issue that has strained Netanyahu’s coalition and deepened tensions over exemptions for the growing Haredi population.
Lieberman, 68, may be the longest shot for prime minister, but perhaps the most experienced Israeli politician after Netanyahu. Serving in key government roles — leading the defense, finance and foreign ministries — in the past two decades, Lieberman has long warned about the dangers posed by Hamas and has criticized the government’s strategies in Gaza. In 2018, he resigned as defense minister over a ceasefire in Gaza, which he called “surrendering to terror.” His strong opposition to exemptions and subsidies benefiting the Haredi community has previously positioned him as a spoiler in earlier elections.
Recent polling puts his party at an average of eight or nine seats — enough to give Lieberman leverage in who leads the government.
After so many elections centered on whether Netanyahu could survive, this one may finally answer a different question: What does Israel look like without him?
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