Oppenheimer explains why the site has remained untouched since the tragedy. Synagogue engagement has not changed much despite good intentions; “submariner Jews” may still surface for the High Holy Days, but all the money and national coverage haven’t attracted more congregants. As a local rabbi starkly put it to Oppenheimer, “Tree of Life’s members will do everything for the 11 dead except show up in their place.” In May of this year, the synagogue announced that they had hired the architect Daniel Libeskind (also marshaled for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site) for the design of its new complex. But at the end of “Squirrel Hill,” Tree of Life’s Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers strikes a note of caution: “Of what value is this task — the endless meetings, the costs associated, the commitment from communal partners — if so many of our members find no value entering the Tree other than as submariner Jews?”
As a former religion columnist for The New York Times and host of a popular podcast, “Unorthodox,” for Tablet, an online magazine, Oppenheimer is sympathetic to the ways Jewish culture stands at the crossroads of proud resistance and self-protective withdrawal, bold activism and self-effacement. The people he highlights are treated with a knowing, affectionate wink, a landsman’s recognition. He wards off critique of his own role in journalism’s equivalent of trauma tourism by delving into his father’s family’s deep roots in Squirrel Hill, though he himself grew up in Massachusetts and currently resides in New Haven, Conn., as the coordinator of the Yale Journalism Initiative. (For accounts by local writers, see Beth Kissileff and Eric Lidji’s anthology “Bound in the Bond of Life: Pittsburgh Writers Reflect on the Tree of Life Tragedy,” published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.)
Three years after the antisemitic killings that thrust the Tree of Life synagogue into the national consciousness, it still stands cordoned off by a wire fence. Since I drive past it every day, I often pause at the long traffic light and contemplate the many panels of student art that brighten the wire fence encircling the desolate site. “Stronger Together,” one poster says, and “#heartstogether” and “You Are Not Alone.” Just this morning, I lingered on one such piece of art that said, “Rebuild Together.” Eventually, at the corner of Wilkins and Shady, the light turned green.”