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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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Jewish New Yorkers rally outside Park East Synagogue, 2 weeks after anti-Israel protest there
(JTA) — Hundreds of New York City Jews and their allies braved the cold Thursday evening for a rally outside Park East Synagogue, where pro-Palestinian protesters had demonstrated two weeks prior shouting chants like “Globalize the Intifada” and “Death to the IDF.”
Thursday’s demonstrators carried signs distributed by organizers that read “Proud New Yorkers, Jews, Zionists.” Others brought signs from home with messages including “Proudly Park East” and “Anti-Zionism is Jew hate is not OK.” Messages from speakers focused mostly on the protesters’ rhetoric and embracing Israel as an important part of Jewish life.
“This evening we come together representing the scale, strength and diversity of our incredible New York Jewish community,” said Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, which spearheaded the rally. “And we gather outside the sacred space that was so violently targeted a few weeks ago.”
In referring to “sacred space,” Goldstein was using the language that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani used when he responded to the protest in a way that many of his Jewish critics found disappointing. But if it was meant to be an allusion, Goldstein didn’t say. In fact, no one mentioned Mamdani directly from the speaker podium as a number of Jewish elected officials and community leaders addressed the crowd and denounced the rhetoric used by the protesters.
Joanna Samuels, CEO of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, came the closest with comments that appeared to allude to criticisms of the incoming mayor, a longtime and staunch devotee to the pro-Palestinian cause.
“The great leaders of our city have sought to unite people of all backgrounds around broad common goals,” she said, adding that New York’s greatest leaders “have not been ideologues.”
“Our great leaders have had the maturity and discipline to get rid of divisive language and rhetoric in service of their love of our city and their love of New Yorkers,” Samuels said. “I invite all of our leaders and our future leaders to uphold these values, and to demand them from those who speak in your name and on your behalf.”
The rally, which also featured a performance by the musician Mastisyahu, drew both critics and allies of Mamdani in politics. It represents a show of force as Jewish leaders in the city ready themselves for Mamdani’s inauguration on Jan. 1, when the city will go from having a mayor who prides himself on being pro-Israel to having one who has called for its boycott.
Mamdani was asked about the pro-Israel solidarity rally at an unrelated event earlier on Thursday.
“On those who are rallying today, and on Jewish New Yorkers across the five boroughs, I look forward to being a mayor for each and every one of them, and each and every person who calls the city home,” Mamdani said. “And being that mayor means protecting those New Yorkers, it also means celebrating and cherishing those New Yorkers.”
A spokesperson for Mamdani said two weeks ago that he would continue to “discourage” the language used at the Park East protest. But speakers on Thursday called out the protesters in far more explicit terms, saying they used antisemitic rhetoric.
Those speakers included Mark Levine, the comptroller-elect who traded endorsements with the mayor-elect, and will be one of the most powerful officials in the city government alongside Mamdani.
“We are out here in the cold to denounce the hatred that was directed at our fellow Jewish New Yorkers outside of this synagogue,” Levine asserted. “It is never OK to call for the death of anyone, as these protesters did. It is not OK to obstruct and threaten people entering a house of worship, as these protesters did.”
Levine himself has been the subject of protests by left-wing groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, which endorsed Mamdani and, like the mayor-elect, opposes Levine’s intention to invest city funds in Israel bonds.
Levine also defended attendees of the event inside Park East, which was organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a nonprofit that facilitates North Americans’ immigration to Israel, saying, “You can be interested in immigrating to a country even if you don’t agree with every policy of the government of that country.”
He added, “And in the case of Israel, one of the most common reasons people are interested in immigrating is to flee antisemitism, which is on the rise in New York and America — a fact perhaps lost on the protesters, who were busy trying to make the attendees feel unsafe.”
Jewish State Assembly member Micah Lasher, who is running for Congress in the 12th district which includes Park East, commended Levine on social media for his “powerful words.”
Lasher arrived at the event alongside Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Jewish state senator and incoming Manhattan borough president who endorsed Lasher in October.
Both politicians had endorsed Mamdani in the general election, as did Assemblymember Alex Bores, one of Lasher’s opponents in the 12th district; Sen. Liz Krueger, who is Jewish; and City Council Member Gale Brewer, who were all present. Meanwhile, another notable attendee — Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League — has had an antagonistic relationship with the mayor-elect, who is the subject of the ADL’s “Mamdani Monitor.”
While Mamdani was alluded to in Samuels’ remarks, some attendees said they felt that he should have been discussed explicitly.
Aaron Herman, a former New York City resident who commuted in from White Plains, in Westchester County north of the city, said he and his rabbi were discussing the subject.
“He brought up to me, like, ‘There’s one thing that was missing during this incredible rally: No one actually mentioned our mayor-elect, Mamdani,’” Herman said. “The mayor-elect said something wrong. It needs to be addressed.”
Herman shared a video he took at the rally of Rabbi Avi Weiss, the founder of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, in which Weiss noted that Mamdani had not been mentioned. “We’re 15 minutes into this rally and I’ve not heard the word Mamdani,” Weiss said. “He’s the problem. … I’m so proud of this rally and the people who planned it but don’t be afraid to stand up to the challenge that we face in the future — and that is the mayor elect, Mamdani.” He then sought to lead others in the crowd in chanting, “Mamdani, we are Israel.”
Still, Herman and other attendees said they appreciated the event altogether, which brought Jews from around the city to the Upper East Side. Buses were chartered from areas like Riverdale, a Bronx neighborhood with many Israeli and Orthodox Jewish residents.
“It was nice to see everyone come together,” said Allison Levy, who was also among the pro-Israel counter-protesters outside the Nefesh B’Nefesh event. “I wish we could do this more often because it seems like we’re really divided, so it was nice that people showed up — especially considering how cold it is.”
The rally included performances from Jewish musician Matisyahu, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel, and Park East Synagogue’s youth choir. Park East’s 95-year-old senior rabbi, Arthur Schneier, spoke, imploring lawmakers to implement a law prohibiting protests directly outside houses of worship.
Schneier’s son Marc, also a rabbi, has urged Mamdani to support such legislation, to which Mamdani’s team has expressed openness. Lasher co-introduced a bill banning protests within 25 feet of houses of worship on Wednesday.
Other speakers included Rabbis Joseph Potasnik and Sara Hurwitz of the New York Board of Rabbis, and 92NY’s David Ingber. Potasnik is one of five rabbis sitting on Mamdani’s transition committees.
Police blocked off the entire block of 68th Street between Lexington and Third avenues, accompanied by security from Hatzalah and the Community Security Service, Jewish security groups. Multiple speakers commended the NYPD, which had previously drawn criticism for not properly responding to the initial protest, leading commissioner Jessica Tisch to apologize at a Park East Shabbat service.
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JD Vance rejects claims that antisemitism is growing inside the GOP, breaking his silence on the topic
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he does not believe antisemitism is surging inside the Republican Party, pushing back on prominent conservatives who have raised alarms about hostility toward Jews among young right-wing activists.
“I do think it’s important to call this stuff out when I see it. I also, when I talk to young conservatives, I don’t see some simmering antisemitism that’s exploding,” Vance told NBC News in an interview marking his first year in office.
Vance said antisemitism is wrong, stating that “judging anybody based on their skin color or immutable characteristics, I think, is fundamentally anti-American and anti-Christian.” (Vance himself is a convert to Catholicism who recently said he hopes his Hindu wife chooses to become a Christian in the future.)
Vance added, “In any bunch of apples, you have bad people. But my attitude on this is we should be firm in saying antisemitism and racism is wrong. … I think it’s kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely antisemitic.”
These remarks amount to Vance’s most direct response to Sen. Ted Cruz and other prominent figures on the right who have in recent weeks have warned of rising antisemitism among conservatives especially after Tucker Carlson, a Vance ally, hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his podcast.
Vance’s comments land amid a larger, unresolved debate inside Republican circles over how seriously to treat the rise of explicitly antisemitic figures such as Fuentes, whose online “groyper” movement has attracted a following among young GOP staffers and activists. Jewish conservatives and other right-leaning commentators have expressed alarm at Fuentes’ influence, estimating that significant numbers of junior Republican staffers consume his content. Fuentes has described “organized Jewry” as a threat to American unity.
Vance’s silence on antisemitism was a prominent topic of conversation at a recent confab for Jewish conservatives, where speakers questioned his close association with Carlson.
President Donald Trump recently defended Carlson after the podcast host interviewed Fuentes, saying, “You can’t tell him who to interview.” Carlson campaigned for Trump in 2024 and remains influential within the administration. Trump himself met with Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, later claiming he did not know who Fuentes was.
Vance has taken a similarly restrained approach. He defended Carlson’s son, Buckley, from accusations of antisemitism without addressing Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. In October, he was criticized for responding to a college student’s question about Jews and Israel without acknowledging its antisemitic framing.
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Ireland, Spain, Netherlands announce boycott of Eurovision following failed effort to oust Israel
(JTA) — Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia’s public broadcasters said they will boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest after a Thursday meeting of the European Broadcasting Union confirmed Israel’s participation.
The Thursday General Assembly meeting in Switzerland of the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the annual song competition, was convened to discuss some members’ calls to have Israel ousted from the contest over the war in Gaza and allegations of voting interference.
But despite calls for a vote on Israel’s participation, the EBU instead said that its members approved new rules prohibiting voter interference from governments and third parties. (Several countries called for an audit of Eurovision’s public voting system after Israel’s Yuval Raphael took second place last year after being bolstered by the audience vote.)
While the EBU did not reference Israel in its press release following the meeting, it said that there would be “no need for a further vote on participation.”
“A large majority of Members agreed that there was no need for a further vote on participation and that the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 should proceed as planned, with the additional safeguards in place,” the EBU said in a statement Thursday.
Delphine Ernotte Cunci, the EBU’s president, praised the decision in a statement, saying that the result “demonstrates our members’ shared commitment to protecting transparency and trust in the Eurovision Song Contest.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog wrote in a post on X that he was “pleased” that Israel will be included in this year’s competition, adding, “Israel deserves to be represented on every stage around the world, a cause to which I am fully and actively committed.”
And Golan Yochpaz, the CEO of Israeli broadcaster KAN, told EBU members during the meeting that “the attempt to remove KAN from the contest can only be understood as a cultural boycott.”
“A boycott may begin today with Israel, but no one knows where it will end or who else it may harm,” continued Yochpaz. “Are EBU members willing to be part of a step that harms freedom of creation and freedom of expression?”
But after the meeting, several public broadcasters that had previously stated their intention to boycott the competition if Israel was allowed to compete followed through on their promises.
The Netherlands’ public broadcaster AVROTROS said in a statement that it had finalized its decision to boycott the competition, citing the “severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza, the suppression of press freedom, and the political interference during the last Eurovision Song Contest.”
RTÉ, the public broadcaster of Ireland, also announced that it was pulling out of the song contest:
“RTÉ feels that Ireland’s participation remains unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk,” the broadcaster said in a statement. “RTÉ remains deeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza during the conflict and the continued denial of access to international journalists to the territory.”
The secretary general of RTVE, the public broadcaster in Spain, also criticized the EBU for declining some members’ requests to hold a vote on Israel’s participation in a press release announcing its withdrawal.
“We would like to express our serious doubts about the participation of Israeli broadcaster KAN in Eurovision 2026,” RTVE Secretary General Alfonso Morales said in an address at the meeting. “The situation in Gaza, despite the ceasefire and the approval of the peace process, and Israel’s use of the contest for political purposes, make it increasingly difficult to maintain Eurovision as a neutral cultural event.”
In her address to EBU members before the decision, the president of the board of Slovenia’s public broadcaster, Natalija Gorščak, said, “We are hostages of the political interests of the Israeli government.”
“For the third year in a row, the public has demanded that we say no to the participation of any country that attacks another country. We must follow European standards for peace and understanding,” said Gorščak. “Our message is: we will not participate in the ESC if Israel is there. On behalf of the 20,000 children who died in Gaza.”
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