Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood

Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, is one of the oldest Jewish neighborhoods in the country, known for its tight-knit community and the profusion of multigenerational families. On October 27, 2018, a gunman killed eleven Jews who were worshipping at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill—the most deadly anti-Semitic attack in American history. In this talk, Mark Oppenheimer shifts the focus away from the criminal and his crime and instead presents the historic, spirited community at the center of this heartbreak. He discusses his findings—based on 250 interviews with residents and nonresidents, Jews and gentiles, survivors and witnesses, teenagers and seniors—about how neighborhood, and religious institutions, promote resilience.

Mark Oppenheimer holds a BA in history and a PhD in religious studies from Yale, where he teaches in the English department and directs the Yale Journalism Initiative. He is the author of five books, including Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture and The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia. He was the religion columnist for the New York Times from 2010 to 2016 and has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Mother Jones, The Nation, and The Believer, among other publications. The host of Tablet magazine’s podcast Unorthodox, Oppenheimer has also taught at Stanford, Wellesley, NYU, and Boston College. His newest book is Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood, published last October by Knopf and supported by a grant from Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism.

Sponsored by Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism
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