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PITTSBURGH (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) — Squirrel Hill is a lot of things to a lot of people.
A place to work. A place to go to school. A place to worship.
Home.
And a place that welcomes all comers.
Squirrel Hill didn’t become the region’s most diverse neighborhood by accident.
After all, Fred Rogers — who lived on Beechwood Boulevard — made it known worldwide asking, “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
“Squirrel Hill is my most favorite place to live,” Ellen Goldman, 61, said Sunday afternoon while shopping at the Giant Eagle on Murray Avenue. “I’ve never seen a community with so much acceptance of new people. It’s just a great place to live.”
But on Saturday, the vibrant neighborhood nestled between two of the city’s great parks became a place of tragedy.
A gunman opened fire in the Tree of Life Synagogue, killing 11 people and injuring six more, including four police officers.
Squirrel Hill is the center of the region’s Jewish community. It’s the location of many of the city’s historic synagogues, the Jewish community’s weekly newspaper and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh.
For decades, Jews of all denominations passed each other every Saturday morning on the sidewalks of this neighborhood, offering a remark of “Shabbat shalom” or “good Shabbos” even if they didn’t know each other. Generations of families and friends come together to celebrate the Sabbath and the holidays.
That’s not to say that members of the Jewish community here are strangers to tragedy. The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh is located just over the border in neighboring Greenfield. A Holocaust memorial – 6 million pop tabs inside glass blocks shaped into a Star of David – sits outside Community Day, a Jewish grade school.
This latest tragedy, though, is different.
Chuck Diamond, who was rabbi at the merged Tree of Life/Or L’Simcha Congregation up until two years ago, said as he stood across the street from the targeted synagogue on Sunday that it’s something that the Jewish community will have to deal with together.
“It becomes part of who you are. It becomes part of the community that we’ve experienced this awful act together, and hopefully it will make us stronger as we move together. That’s what I hope, and that’s what I think will happen,” said the man affectionately known to many here as Rabbi Chuck.
“Pittsburgh is an amazing community — Jewish community, non-Jewish community — we have wonderful leaders of the Jewish community, wonderful politicians,” he said. “It’s a good, solid place. I raised my kids here, and I was raised here. And so I really believe in it.”
And so the community began moving together Sunday — with support from neighbors and all over the globe.
Laura Cwynar, 35, of Oakmont and Colleen Sullivan, 33, of Marshall, along with her 5-year-old daughter Layla, were among the hundreds of people who placed flowers, candles, cards and other tributes to the victims in several memorials near the synagogue.
“I think it’s really important to show our support and the love we have,” said Ms. Sullivan, who has no connection to Squirrel Hill or its Jewish community, but nonetheless felt compelled to come out. “We’ve seen a lot of hate, and it’s important to show the community that we’re one.”
In Squirrel Hill’s business district along Murray and Forbes avenues, foot traffic was consistent with any rainy Sunday, especially one when the Steelers have an afternoon game.
“I’m impressed by how the community is responding,” said Will Fagan, 24, of Point Breeze, who works at Amazing Books on Murray Avenue. “The vigil that was held [Saturday night] was a pretty nice display of community, which is always nice to see.
“Even from being open today, things seem kind of normal,” he said. “Really, if I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t have thought anything had happened [Saturday].”
All over Squirrel Hill, though, there were people with stunned or tear-streaked faces moving amid the bustling middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhood. Restaurants were busy, and people sheltered themselves from rain as they waited at bus stops.
All was quiet around Tree of Life, though, save for the humming of emergency and news vehicles and the hushed talk of those gathered nearby.
City officials embraced neighbors. Friends cried on each others’ shoulders. There were some smiles and laughter, but muted.
Rabbi Jamie Gibson, of Temple Sinai, another of Squirrel Hill’s synagogues, had tears in his eyes as he embraced Rabbi Diamond outside Tree of Life.
Rabbi Diamond said “the job of a rabbi is … to take care of our congregants. We have to take care of the community.”
The hug from Rabbi Gibson, though, was the kind of comfort that Rabbi Diamond said he needed himself.
The kind of comfort that the rabbi, like his community, will need to move forward.
“I’m feeling sort of empty inside,” Rabbi Chuck said. “I’m feeling like a part of me may have been killed in there also.”
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