Repairing the World: Stories From the Tree of Life

Major funding for this program is provided by The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation empowering world-changing work and by the following Thank you.

[uneasy music] - I didn't hear the shots the first time.

I hear them all the time now, and I suspect I'm not alone.

So many of us, whether Jewish or not, whether from Squirrel Hill or not, whether in Pittsburgh that morning or not, hear those shots still.

They were the modern-day shots heard around the world, in our contemporary crisis of hurt and hate.

- Suspect's talking about "All these Jews need to die."

- I become frustrated about what I can do as an elected leader in a city that has now witnessed the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history.

- It's not just about anti-Semitism.

It was an attack on America.

Its foundation is hate.

crowd: White lives matter!

White lives matter!

- White supremacy, white nationalism, and racism are national security threats.

crowd: USA!

USA!

USA!

USA!

USA!

- Story of what's happened in Pittsburgh starts with some of the worst pain that you can imagine, and--and ends with some of the best and closest relationships that I could have ever hoped for.

- We will work together as one.

We will defeat hate with love.

We will be a city of compassion, welcoming to all people, no matter what your religion or where your family came from on this Earth or your status.

[applause] [uplifting music] - The Torah is referred to as a tree of life.

It's the source of who we are as Jews.

11 beautiful lives were cut down in our synagogue, but we're a tree of life.

More leaves will grow back.

More branches will grow back.

We're not letting hate close our doors ever.

[pensive music] [gentle music] - Pittsburgh's defined by the rivers, of course.

They're the three rivers.

The Monongahela, the Allegheny, and the Ohio.

- Pittsburgh has always been a city divided by race and class, but those divisions are exacerbated by literal rivers.

- Oh!

Watch this.

- The city unites around its sports teams.

- It's a--a resilient city, a blue-collar city, as people are surprised to find out that Pittsburgh is a kind city.

- It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood A beautiful day for a neighbor Would you be mine?

- Squirrel Hill actually being Mr. Roger's neighborhood is--is what you think of it.

Just, like, friendly, you know, more diverse than a lot of areas in Pittsburgh, and just very much family feel.

- I have always wanted to have a neighbor Just like you - Squirrel Hill is the center of the Jewish community.

In this neighborhood, you can find a dozen synagogues.

You can find Jewish stores.

You can find all different kinds of Jewish organizations.

- Beautiful day - I've been a member of the Tree of Life Synagogue forever, or since I can remember.

I had my bat mitzvah there.

It always felt so safe.

It's unthinkable that someone would ever terrorize that place.

[uneasy music] - There was nothing outstanding about the morning.

It just seemed to me like a--a typical morning.

I got to synagogue, give or take, 9:30-ish.

Our services start 9: 45.

While I've never heard semi-automatic weapon firing before, I'll never forget that sound for the rest of my life.

- We heard a loud crash out in the hall.

We didn't know what it was.

And then we heard gunshots.

- At that moment.

I knew this was not a drill.

- Five, every available unit in the city needs to get here now.

- I told my congregants, "Go to an exit.

If you can't find an exit, go into a closet."

- I told my mother-- I said get down, but before we could get down, we both got hit.

- 315, hold the perimeter.

We're under fire.

We're under fire.

- And when it was quiet in my house, you could hear the gunshots through the window, and I've never felt, like, more fear than I did in that moment.

- Uh, suspect's talking about, "All these Jews need to die."

- I just pulled the door with all my might and kept it pulled closed, thinking in my mind, "If he comes, what do I do?"

- Shots fired.

Give me additional resources.

Additional resources, third quarter.

[indistinct radio chatter] - The police came to knock on the door.

I just had my hands up.

"I'm Rabbi Jeffrey Myers.

I'm the rabbi of Tree of Life."

They told me, "Run for your life across the street."

[melancholy music] - Be advised, we have a surrender in progress.

- Every time one of these happens in the country, you look at the monitors in the newsroom, and you think, "Oh, thank--thank God.

It's not our turn."

And I thought, "Well, now it's our turn."

- As the mayor mentioned, we've had a tragedy here today.

The work of the first responders has probably prevented it from becoming much more tragedy than what it is.

The scene is very bad inside.

There are--there are multiple fatalities.

- We were just looking for mom.

We just wanted to find out, you know, where they took the people who got out.

- We knew that our aunt was out, but we didn't know where our grandmother was.

We didn't know where Bubbe was.

- We do not know their condition, nor do we know the condition of anybody who may have been shot inside.

There had been reports... - We saw Andrea, and her face was-- had a lot of shrapnel wounds.

Her arm was all bandaged up.

And of course, as soon as I walked in there, I burst into tears, and she did too.

And first thing she said was, "I think Bubbe is gone."

- I am a different Jew today than I was yesterday.

[soft music] - We never expected that big of a turnout.

We just didn't want anyone to be alone.

Everyone coming together, no matter what religion, no matter what background, that's what Pittsburgh was in this moment.

- Once we were together, that was very comforting, and I was no longer scared.

If anything, I was hopeful.

- We're allowed to be furious, and we're allowed to be so mad that something like this could happen and grieve, but we need to take that energy and do something positive with it so that we can make sure that this never happens again.

- The attack is, first and foremost, about anti-Semitism.

In our minds, that hearkens back to the Nazis, to the pogroms, to the Spanish Inquisition, millennia of violent anti-Semitic attacks on Jews.

[melancholy music] - Pittsburgh is very small.

In Pittsburgh, almost everybody knew somebody.

Squirrel Hill, almost everybody was related to somebody.

- For the first time in my memory, so many neighborhoods coming together, shoulder to shoulder, mourning together, weeping in each other's arms.

We realized that we were neighbors on that awful day.

- A newspaper's role is to set the conversation.

Well, I couldn't sleep.

I began to think that at a moment when words fail you, that maybe you're thinking in the wrong language.

And so it just hit me.

Across the top here, we printed the beginning of the mourners' kaddish, the mo--prayer for mourners.

And in English, it says, "magnified and sanctified be your name," which is the-- kind of the introduction to the--to the prayer.

The message here is that this entire community is in mourning right now and the victims, in a broader sense, were Pittsburghers.

- Watching the rest of the community come out and stand in support was as if the whole universe was saying, "We grieve.

We grieve with you."

- My mother's funeral was the last one.

My nurse came with me because I was still on IV.

They were determined to have me be at my mother's funeral.

- Well, we would've never heard the end of how crowded it is here today.

I can already hear Bubbe right now, next to her husband, our Zayde, talking about how hard it was to find parking.

[laughter] Now is such an important time for all of us to come together.

Rose Mallinger, my Bubbe, was and will always be stronger than hate.

Rest in peace, Bubbe.

I love you.

[applause] - She represented all that is good and beautiful.

She would lead the prayer for peace every Sabbath morning.

- How do you gun down a 97-year-old woman who leads a prayer for peace every week and means it?

- I was able to confirm very early in the process the name of the accused shooter.

So for about two weeks, I just immersed myself in trying to learn everything I could about Rob.

He kind of dropped out of the real world but started leaving a digital trail.

There's a descent into this world of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, anti-immigrant sentiment, especially as that was becoming more and more a part of the normal political discourse in 2017 and 2018.

- People are coming into our country illegally.

That's an invasion.

- It's not a caravan.

It's an invasion.

- And the angry mob-- - Individuals that are invading our country, and something needs to be done about it.

- The accused was animated by this combination of hatreds.

Obviously, a hatred for Jews, but also a hatred for immigrants.

He picked a target that he believed epitomized not only Judaism-- it was a synagogue-- but also epitomized immigration because one of the congregations that gathered there was involved with efforts to resettle refugees.

[uneasy music] He had identified the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, which in his view, was bringing in immigrants who were either killing or attempting to replace his race, in his view, and he had, in his final social media postings, identified that as his motive for going in.

- When Pittsburgh happened, it was not surprising.

It was horrifying.

It was horrible, but it wasn't at all surprising to me.

It was what I was expecting.

Since 2015, I've been studying the resurgence of white supremacist activity in the United States.

People would say to me, "Look, people say a lot of bad stuff online."

And I would say, "If you get into this social media space, "the things that people say I believe they mean, "and you should take them at their word "that they mean this and that they will do harm to other human beings."

And that's what happened.

You could see things evolve in the online social media sphere.

There's just this onslaught of anti-Semitism, and it's all bound up in this resurgent white power movement.

- None of us are safe unless all of us are safe.

- I understand he had to come because this was a crisis and it was his job to show up with his family.

So when he did come, we joined the rally and sang peaceful Jewish songs.

[crowd singing] - The massacre on this particular synagogue had broad implications for all of us.

And this solidarity is us speaking very loudly to say we don't want hate speech here.

[cheers and applause] - I can't say more for how the community helped us during all of this.

It just--it meant a lot that people appreciate that the officers are willing to risk their lives to help people.

[string music] - Pittsburgh is a very special place.

There's a level of unity here in solidarity that isn't in other cities.

- That interfaith work has really shown its power now.

all: He guides me along the right paths for his name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will-- - We are family.

- We've gotten support... - A member of the African American-- - Generous, unstinting support... - Not because you are our neighbors.

- From every sector of society.

- We had offered that if the Jewish community wanted, we'll do anything.

You know, if it's standing in front of their services and protecting them.

If it's, you know, calling this out.

If it's buying them groceries.

If it's showing up to every funeral in [inaudible].

Whatever it would be, we made those offers that night.

- Wasi Mohamed and his community started a GoFundMe page.

I think they've raised $1/4 million for the victims.

What a beautiful message to the world.

- What I've seen from your community and this love is that there's enough of it and that it doesn't just have to be a moment, that we can keep going, that we can keep these bonds, and we can build a more unified Pittsburgh, a more unified country.

- 11 seconds in memory of the 11 victims at the Tree of Life.

[string music] - It affected the whole community, not just the Jewish people.

It affected the whole community.

- At this time, please stand and join in a moment of silence for the victims, their families, and all of those involved.

- We are stronger than hate.

Our diversity is our strength.

- The line "stronger than hate" and the logo was created because of our strong connection to our sports teams.

- I spent 13 years playing Pittsburgh Steelers as number 99.

My wife and I decided to stay in Pittsburgh because of the community.

- I worked at the Steelers for ten years.

Brett Keisel and his wife Sarah are--are family to my family.

They are part of our family.

And that day, Sarah was with me within a half an hour of finding out.

- I remember getting a phone call from my friend, Michele, and she said there's a active shooter.

I said, "Are you safe?"

And she said, "I'm safe, but I don't know "about my brothers.

We haven't heard about my brothers."

- I was protective of them my entire life and knew that they had some disabilities, but at a time when probably most parents were maybe institutionalizing their children if they had disabilities, my parents embraced it, and they mainstreamed them.

When we were little, my grandma used to take me and Cecil and David to Tree of Life every Saturday morning.

They helped create a minyan, which is a group of ten people so the service could take place.

Cecil was considered the mayor of Squirrel Hill.

He knew everybody's business.

David was a lot quieter.

David spent most of his time at the firehouse, and they totally brought him in as one of the guys.

We didn't realize how many people they truly knew and how many lives they affected.

There are nine other souls that were lost that day that were so good to my brothers.

- It makes you wonder, like, how this stuff even gets going.

I remember asking Michele, like, "You know, why--why do people say and do "things against Jewish people?

"Like, what is it?

Where--where did it come from?

Like, where's it from?"

- My parents would tell me about anti-Semitism.

I'd be like, "Oh, my God.

They're so dramatic.

It's not real."

Just because it was a relic of World War II and I was growing up in this silo of acceptance.

And I remember the first time I ever heard of anti-Semitism besides the Holocaust was during the Charlottesville rallies, and I was, like, so struck because I just never experienced that or seen that.

- It was a wake-up call to Holocaust educators because we realized we were leaving students with an impression that anti-Semitism could be dated to the years of the Holocaust, nothing before and nothing since, when in actuality, it's been ongoing across these thousands of years.

And it's violent and dangerous at every point in history.

At the time of the plague in Europe, in medieval times, Jews were blamed for the plague.

Jews are blamed for everything, and Jews have been scapegoats throughout history.

Jewish control of everything that's happening around us according to this ideology.

Jews behind the scenes, the puppet master, pulling the strings.

And it--I mean, it's part of the history, and it's part of our present, but this is the conspiracy theory that really underpins anti-Semitism.

- There's anti-Semitism from the far right and from the far left.

And we have to fight back against--against both.

At the root of it, especially on the right, it comes from a hatred of the other, and Jews are the other and always have been seen that way.

- The night of the torch march, I was on the University of Virginia campus.

We heard them chanting "Jews will not replace us."

The Great Replacement theory, this notion that people of color are being brought into predominantly white countries to replace the White people, has become a mainstream thing.

- Think about it.

It is a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats.

- To replace the old America with a new America who is not coming into the country legally.

- And you start seeing people saying, "Oh, well the center of this global conspiracy is the Jews."

This conspiracy theory has been a gateway to a deeper racism, a deeper anti-Semitism, a deeper anger at perceived others, and I think it's absolutely dangerous.

[eerie music] - Good morning.

We are starting our unit on Holocaust literature themes, how that is relevant to today's world.

And we're starting our unit out by discussing an event that happened here in Pittsburgh, the Tree of Life shooting.

One of the things that's mentioned often in the study of what happened at the Tree of Life is the word anti-Semitism.

- So, like, I believe, like, it's against, like, the religious, like Jewish and how, like, Nazis think it's wrong or--not even Nazis, but how other people think it's wrong.

- Okay, good.

Let's look at the definition on the board.

It's the belief or behavior hostile towards Jewish people just because they're Jewish.

- It was just simply because of their faith, and they were these Jewish people praying in the synagogue, and the shooter just targeted them.

- And how do we know that?

How do we know that's true?

- So it said that on social media, and he discussed, like, crazy, like, conspiracy theories that were not true about how it was all fake-- like, the Nazis-- and how they didn't kill 6 million Jewish people.

- Okay, thank you.

And we have evidence of that through his social media accounts.

- Even though I'm not Jewish, it still affects all of Pittsburgh and really, all of the world, because like I do have Jewish friends, and they were affected by this.

So that, in turn, affects me.

[melancholy music] - It's easy to say that this is a night of sadness.

I don't think that's what they would want of us, and this evening is a reminder to not be continually sad, to be grateful they were in our lives, to take the beauty that they were, to move forward with that, to make the world a better place.

To me, that's how we honor the memory of 11 beautiful people.

- Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Dan Stein, Mel Wax, Irv Younger.

May their lives always be for a blessing.

And let us say, amen.

- Well, the tragedy itself is kind of like the death in our--in our family.

It occurs, and everybody has a flurry of activity, and then the activity is over, and the reckoning with the depths of the problems begins.

- This is a community that already had begun this conversation about hate, and how do we deal with this as a society?

How do we deal with the few who are intent on causing harm and hatred for the many?

- We need to have the very public debates and discussions.

It isn't as simple as free speech, censored speech.

- When the Nazis were permitted to demonstrate in Skokie, they ended up revealing themself as clowns.

It's painful, it's difficult, but the First Amendment is a brilliant institution that can protect us.

- But David, let me come back to you on this.

So when we demonize an individual because of their race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity.

That's a lie.

Some huge number believe the lies.

Is the First Amendment working when you cannot change such a substantial number of people in our country and just convince them of the truth of certain things?

- All speech has an intended audience.

It has an intended effect.

And I think we need to reframe some of our discussions around free speech, at least from an ethical perspective.

I'm not a lawyer.

I can't--I can't speak to that.

But at least from an ethical perspective, we need to reshape these debates so that they're about the-- the freedoms, but also the responsibilities.

- When we talk about, "Hey, I can bring it back down "to the issue of all of us believing that we are not the person that made these negative things happen," and some people will say, "I don't have anything to do with that.

I'm not racist."

But if you are not speaking up, then indeed, you are a part of the problem.

And we need to be honest about that so we all can be better.

That's the message I try to get out to people.

I am an extremely tenured member of the urban league of--of the Urban League Movement.

When we look at how Jews were treated historically, how African Americans were treated, while there are differences, there was a clear understanding there.

And that understanding says what is happening to the country that we call America.

What is happening to our democracy?

- We had a white man who was at a bar like, literally downstairs from the newsroom who was saying racial slurs and posting it on his Snapchat and then went outside and stabbed a Black man to death.

We had a man who was flying a swastika flag pointed at the house of the interracial couple that lived next door.

So the majority of those events happened before the Tree of Life Shooting, and we covered them, but, like, in hindsight, it stands out as such a pattern.

- To be a Black newspaper columnist in Pittsburgh is to be well acquainted with hate in this region.

There's a lot of it, and it isn't acknowledged nearly enough.

It is not an abstraction to me.

It comes to me before dawn in the form of calls to my office phone.

Usually, a string of racial epithets let loose on the world like a scabrous jazz solo.

There is a price to pay for hate.

And if we're not careful, we're gonna keep finding out what that price is.

- We're in Steel Town.

So the Pittsburgh group, right?

It's really wonderful that all these groups, these disparate groups all here together as white men to unify again after Charlottesville.

I mean, some of us haven't seen each other since Charlottesville.

Am I right?

- Oh, yeah.

- Now, I don't know how to break this to you guys, but white people are going to be a minority in the United States.

Prepare yourselves for it.

- I grew up in a very middle-class Italian-American family.

I spent four years in the Marine Corps, 28 1/2 in the FBI.

It hit me like a ton of bricks after the shooting what it must be like to be Jewish.

To have to hear the hate speech, to receive threats, how you would feel in any minority community-- African-American community, Muslim community-- that has to put up with that intolerance.

Our goal in Pittsburgh is having every one of our communities understand and identifying the signs of hate.

And as you see on the screen, the green dots that are throughout the greater Pittsburgh area represent a police-reported, FBI-reported incident.

You'll see the mass concentration is right, right in the Squirrel Hill Area.

Beth Shalom is one of our larger congregations.

Last year, we found numerous Ku Klux Klan flyers.

You'll see these throughout the country.

In the Lawrenceville section, we saw this actual vandalism with a swastika the day after the Tree of Life Shooting.

Popped up right here in a local business.

Most of what we see is in public places, whether it's on a telephone pole, in a park.

However, there are incidents that we get that are directed at an individual.

Putting bacon over this drying rack, "You lying people are a disgrace to our community.

"You live like pigs, so you should eat it too.

Oink, oink."

So a family who was celebrating high holidays came home and saw that on their back porch.

- Best location in the USA for a white ethno-state.

[all speaking at once] - Yeah, the whole goddamn thing.

- I think that's an easy one.

Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- All right.

[uneasy music] - After all these mass shootings, it's always, "We need to do something.

We need to do something."

And then another one, "We need to do something."

And then another one.

And nobody does anything.

- Immediately after the funerals, Councilman Corey O'Connor and Councilwoman Erika Strassburger said, "We've gotta do something.

"We are going to pass not a ban, but the limiting of the use of certain types of weapons within the city."

- We say no to them.

[mob cheering] crowd: USA!

USA!

USA!

USA!

USA!

USA!

USA!

- Councilman O'Connor's life was threatened.

My life was threatened to the point where I had to call the police.

City Council went ahead anyways.

I was just so proud to be a Pittsburgher and see that the mayor and the council is gonna do something.

- The four bills are now law.

- I know this, that there hasn't been a movement in this country that has not started at the local level in a church basement or in a local city council.

All of those began by challenging existing law.

- Unfortunately, in our country, we've experienced so many mass casualty shootings that the U.S. government has created a structure to help communities recover.

- In the Jewish community center, a space was renovated specifically after the shooting so that people could come for healing.

People could find a door that they could walk through for support services.

- And seated around the table were the various organizations that had a significant role to play in helping the community recover.

- What we address here is the lived experience that people have of a threat to their self and safety.

- Good evening, everyone.

We thought that we would need to be together because tonight marks six months since the shootings up the street at the Tree of Life Synagogue, and who knew that we would need to be together tonight because of yet another anti-Semitic attack, this time in San Diego?

- The City of Poway is reeling after an attack on a synagogue there over the weekend.

- With a AR-type assault weapon, and opened fire on the people inside.

- My words of "never again" have disappeared from my language.

They've been replaced, alas, by "yet again."

And so in this, let me stand here yet again at this corner.

- You say Dayenu in frustration and anger.

Dayenu.

Say Dayenu.

ALL: Dayenu.

- It is enough.

Enough with the violence.

Enough with the hate.

Enough with the guns.

- So we're here today to talk about how to keep ourself safe.

Who do we think about?

And just yell it out.

Who--who's our first responders?

Paramedics.

Who else?

You're not saying it.

We are.

We are first responders, okay, whether you like it or not.

They know violence all too well here.

The synagogue was shot at by an individual who went on a killing spree.

So this, coupled with Tree of Life, what happened in San Diego yesterday, is really hard for our group to sit through this presentation this morning.

What we're gonna focus on today is run, hide, fight.

We're gonna commit to some form of action in case of our worst nightmare, right?

- No more gun violence in the USA.

all: Enough is enough.

- Grandparents shot while they're trying to pray.

all: Enough is enough.

- Action is part of who we are, and that for--there are a lot of ways to grieve, but for us to express our grief in a way that could make a difference helped us to deal with the grief.

- People who have experienced communal trauma-- we really believe that there's value in peer relationships.

People who understand the depths of the loss, the depths of the pain, but also the power of surviving, the power of moving forward.

[warm music] - With the help of family and friends, it morphed into a memorial garden for my mother-in-law.

The rocks represent, in Jewish tradition, remembrance of someone.

- Pittsburgh, we got this.

We got this.

- My brothers had their independent living through Achieva.

They helped with their employment, but Achieva created something called "Love like the boys," just doing random acts of kindness for people.

- And here is the hardest part of all... Is to learn, to listen, and to communicate, and help those who live in the prison of hate and isolation and bitterness and fear to somehow learn.

To somehow learn to move beyond "I am right and you are wrong."

- People that we lost that day volunteered their time very generously.

I had started attending New Life Congregation because my brother worshiped there.

He was a dentist, and he gave of himself very freely.

That day, chaos broke out, and I had to go into hiding until I was rescued.

It's the last time I saw him alive.

A group of us traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, and went to the Mother Emmanuel Church who had experienced a very similar thing.

Lives, beautiful lives, were lost because of hatred.

You know, they had a few years under their belt of the trauma that they dealt with, and they welcomed us.

They just wrapped us in love.

And it was very--pardon me.

It was very emotional.

- Just when you think you're down, and your tank is empty, God sends you an angel to help uplift you.

His name is Pastor Eric Manning.

- The El Paso shooter drove 600 miles to kill innocent people.

He believed that there is a Hispanic invasion in Texas.

He chose that Walmart for a reason.

- Almost ten months ago, when my synagogue was one of the ones attacked, I wasn't just sad.

I was demolished.

I was beyond--beyond--there were no words.

The reason I choke up, I think, is 'cause if I didn't, I would scream.

So tonight, we're gonna do a little screaming.

- We gotta protect ourself, and here's how we protect ourself.

Protect your neighbor.

Talk to your neighbor.

- [singing in Hebrew] [melancholy music] - Congressman, welcome to Pittsburgh.

- Hi.

How are you?

- Representative!

[all talking] - We share some of the jurisdiction for domestic terrorism.

What we're trying to do is keep us safe, but we have so many people who become radicalized over the Internet.

The platforms are just proliferating.

- A lot of these attacks start out with some form of threat, like we had yesterday on social media.

- Right.

- We need to find, where--where is the line that the First Amendment is now stepped over?

- I know I understand the--the issues with constitutional rights, and I--I love this country.

However, I think private citizens can look at these kinds of things and report them, not just hate speech, but threatening speech.

Because if it's reported, then I believe law enforcement can act.

- There is evidence about white supremacy, um, white nationalism, and--and also racism.

The--the hatred of religious groups is a national security threat.

And again, what I tie that to are words that generate violence.

Words that generate violence.

- I think, in that sense, we have a sort of deep moral responsibility not to just say, "Oh, it's free speech.

I'm not allowed to do anything."

- When people talk about, "How do we never have these kinds of things "happen again?

"And so we need to deal with the--the speech at the very end?"

And I-I always look and think, "That's too late."

We're arriving too late when we're doing that.

We need to understand.

How are people being radicalized many stages before?

- The Holocaust didn't happen overnight.

The Nazi Party was elected, and Hitler came into power.

The Nazis called Jews vermin to be exterminated and how they tested things was, does anyone speak up against what they are doing?

If no one did, do more.

Genocide builds from words to dehumanization.

So that's how these things happen.

They're less than human, but they're also so powerful we need to kill them before they kill us.

People did this.

People could do it again.

The photographs are close-up portraits of Holocaust survivors.

The exhibit is called "Lest We Forget" by the artist Luigi Tuscano.

It was his response to feeling like people don't know about the Holocaust.

16 in this exhibit are men and women from Pittsburgh.

- My mother-in-law was a Schindler's list.

She was a survivor and had literally no family.

They were all killed.

I live right down the street from the Tree of Life, and I lost two brother-in-laws and a sister-in-law got killed in that shooting.

- We see where anti-Semitism can lead when people don't say anything.

[pensive music] - You've all had your favorite meal with Bubbe.

- Yeah.

- I liked her stuffed cabbage.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Cranberry.

- I don't think any--any-- - And your cranberry relish.

- I love the cranberry relish.

- I'd make the turkey as long as she made the cranberry relish.

- And Mom tried to make cranberry relish, and Bubbe would go, "Don't eat that."

[laughter] 'Cause she wouldn't-- - She was so funny with games, too, 'cause say we were all playing a game.

She would--she wouldn't play 'cause she-- - She wouldn't play, right.

- She would be over in the corner, like, yelling the answers.

- Right.

That's what she did.

- But she would know them all.

And we're like, "Bubbe, you can't do that."

- She was everybody's Bubbe.

- I've never been really religious, but you know, I probably more proud now to be Jewish than I was before.

Whatever I can do to make sure these things don't happen again--you know, that to me is--is empowering.

- And it's hard to not be here with her 'cause she loved to be around everyone.

- And she--she just didn't deserve to go the way she did.

That's what hurts the most.

- [laughs] - It's fitting that it's him.

- Incoming.

- Peanut butter.

- We have volunteers who are coming to make blankets for our refugee friends who are coming from all over the world, looking for a new home here in Pittsburgh.

- I just wanted to join people and do something good for their families and for the other immigrants who will be moving to us here.

- No, we're not Jewish.

We're Pittsburghers, and we live in the southern part of the city, but we have a lot of immigrants in our neighborhood.

And there are people who are happy about that, and then there are people who are not as happy about that.

We think about how hard that must be.

So whatever we can do to help make them feel like they're part of the Pittsburgh community, then that's what we wanted to do.

[warm music] - One of the difficulties in the aftermath is just feeling unsafe.

I was at the Tree of Life synagogue when the attack happened.

I was able to escape, but the two people I was with, Jerry Rabinowitz of blessed memory and Dan Leger, got shot.

Sometimes it felt like it happened to somebody else.

At the same time, I was suffering from trauma.

At times, I felt like I didn't have any skin, that every nerve in my body was raw and exposed.

[uneasy music] How do I live my life here in the United States as an American, as a Jew, when there are people that are specifically targeting Jews?

Something always in the back of my mind anytime I'm at prayers on a Friday is that something could happen.

The Muslim community is no stranger to this kind of hatred.

There's been a lot of incidents.

Christchurch and the bombing in Sri Lanka.

True safety is not gonna be through having weapons.

It's gonna be through changing the sentiment in this country and the individual relationships or the foundation on which all of that is built.

[choir singing] - Calvary Head reached out to us immediately after the--the incident.

And when we were looking to our high holiday services, Father Jensen-- he says, "Anything you need, we're here for you."

- The normal time period where one would get to know each other just evaporated.

There was instant trust.

- I had the fake rum.

[laughter] - But Herschel Potter was quicker.

[speaks Yiddish] That's Yiddish for avada kedavra.

Lord Haman was no more.

- We--we've got to meet some fantastic people.

My wife and I are gonna be coming to--to Easter services here.

It's just been a phenomenal relationship.

- I think the only way this world is going to survive is if we continue to care enough to learn about each other's stories, and it scares the heck out of me that that seems to be getting harder to do.

- The Tree of Life Massacre forced people to cross bridges that they weren't necessarily comfortable crossing.

And once people got into the habit of crossing those bridges, you began to see a new spirit emerge.

- In the fall, we did a whole lesson around anti-Semitism and some discussions, you know, about how that has impacted the Jewish community, and today, we decided to focus on racism and redlining and voting rights.

- It's like there's a lot of African Americans and minorities that are still renting instead of buying houses.

- Okay.

- And people think it's just, like, well, we work harder than you, but like, from the beginning, from birth, like, people are set up to fail.

- So it was very productive, and, like, the other white people in our group-- they--we--like, I asked them, "Like, did you feel uncomfortable at any new point in time?"

And they were like, "No.

"Like, everything that we're talking about "is, like, factual, so it shouldn't make anybody uncomfortable."

Like, it happened in the past, and it's still happening today.

- Yeah, I find the conversation in October-- since it was centered around anti-Semitism, we talked about it, but we didn't use it as an opportunity to connect, like, Black and white communities.

- With the conversation that we had in, like, in October, that was, like, one step further.

The open dialogue with no judgment-- that's, like, important, especially for young people 'cause you grow up, and then you don't get that, and you're just like--you're back to self-segregation because you're not comfortable with people you normally wouldn't talk to.

- Oh, historical maps.

- Yeah.

- As we dealt with Tree of Life, we were adding on top of it the real and present racism that exists in our city.

September of 2019, the City of Pittsburgh released a report.

It was through our Gender Equity Commission, and it didn't paint a good picture.

- The line I will never forget said that the Black female in the city of Pittsburgh could move to any other city and be better off.

- The disparity in the systemic racism.

It's real.

You can't argue it doesn't exist.

- It was difficult for the mayor to accept as well, but that study was really a wake-up call.

[melancholy music] - Be nice if we could see everyone.

- Is that closer?

- Yeah, that's-- - We can't see you.

- There we go.

- Partake of what we have to share.

- For the Asian-American community, this has been really, really hard.

- In a local market, I was told that I should be shipped off with a virus back to China.

I can tell you there's not one Asian-American here right now, not one Asian immigrant here, that hasn't had that kind of a story.

Our Jewish community immediately, within hours, called me and said, "Tell us what you need."

Squirrel Hill, the Asian population is close to 17%.

You know, you have 14 different Asian countries represented.

- We're redefining the term neighbor.

So it's not just about someone who lives next to you, but it's someone who you actually have a moral responsibility towards and who has a moral responsibility towards you.

crowd: Black lives, they matter here.

Black lives, they matter here.

- What do we want?

crowd: Justice.

- When do we want it?

crowd: Now.

crowd: George Floyd!

Breonna Taylor!

George Floyd!

Justice!

- When do we want it?

crowd: Now!

- What do we want?

- When the tragedies in 2018 occurred, everybody said, like, let's come together.

Let's figure out what to do here.

And that was right.

That was exactly the right response.

You know, if we're gonna actually take on stronger than hate-- it's Pittsburgh-- then we have to show that now, - Right now, the house that's on fire are the houses of Black people.

There are some things that we need to fix.

We're gonna have to combine our networks to get this job done.

- We come together today as the community of faith in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

I reached out to my clergy friends, my Jewish friends.

Come and stand with us so that we, as the faith community, can make a statement.

- I stand today with Tim and pledge to George-- - Anti-Semitism exists.

We know that so deeply here in this community, but we can't say that racism and anti-Semitism are the same.

They're both equally abhorrent, but they're not the same.

And so as Jews, we need to step up.

We need to stand out.

- My faith teaches me that we're all of one parent, and we are responsible for each other.

We're all in this together, no matter what it may be.

- God bless you.

- God bless you, sister.

- The Tree of Life and George Floyd in a very horrific--well, ironic way, made it possible for people to be vulnerable with each other.

- We come together tonight to have a candid conversation about racism and anti-Semitism with our host Zach Banner.

So, Zach, I think everybody knows you play for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

For athletes to come out and speak up and to make this really crucial connection-- it's amazing.

- I didn't even know what anti-Semitism was right until I was an adult.

Like, I didn't even know.

I kept saying "Jewish community" 'cause I was so scared of saying "Jews."

And I even asked rabbi here, and he--he's the one that taught me.

He said, "No, you're good."

He said, "You're good."

He said "That's what we are."

He said, "I'm a Jew."

Like, you know what I mean?

And it's like there's those certain educational piece and those connotations that we have to learn.

When I was second grade, I read about the bombing of the church in Birmingham in the '60s.

The Ku Klux Klan dropped a bomb off in the middle of service on the weekend, and it killed four little Black girls.

And that same sadness, that same dark part in my heart, just burned during the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.

You don't understand that they're a minority as well.

I didn't know this until I went to USE.

- When anyone in the community is gonna stand up and say, "This is wrong," to me, that's a willing partner to extend your hand in friendship, and what can we now do to--to make change?

- And I'm in that process of learning, too, because if we're truly allies to each other, we all need to learn.

- What happens is when you kind of live desegregated lives, you know, I was in a--you know, I was in the Black community, and I was about, like, Black issues.

And to understand that, like, white supremacist violence is not just a Black issue or brown issue, but obviously, it's a Jewish issue as well.

And if we're all under attack by this white supremacist violence, why shouldn't we be in solidarity?

And once we realize that we come in solidarity of each other towards racism, against Blacks and browns and anti-Semitism, it's powerful.

Because then we're focusing on what the real problem is.

- I'm chair of something called the Welcoming Pittsburgh.

It's immigrant refugee inclusion initiative.

- [inaudible].

Go.

- I am!

all: I am!

- Somebody!

all: Somebody.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Being a child of immigrant parents, I wish somebody would've been able to be there to show me that it was okay to be who I was and not have to filter who I was.

- It was our church's need to respond in some way to help immigrants, but also, this is my way of showing these kids that, you know, people here do love them and do accept them just the way they are.

- In this program that they made for kids, there's Arabic people, there's Spanish people.

There's a bunch of other different people.

- I see, you know, the work that we're doing as creating this pipeline for our students to become engaged members of the community and to be the next generation of decision-makers.

- Oh, that's awesome.

Good job, Baraka.

- One morning, I was sitting in one of my classes, and I realized that I knew everybody's name except for a girl sitting behind me that wore a hijab and always sat quietly.

And I learned her name is Kala, and we began speaking every day, and she shared with me the negative experience that she faced in high school.

And as I talked to her other friends, they told me the same thing.

Students tugged on their hijabs.

Teachers called them a terrorist.

They were mocked in the hallways.

I-I couldn't just put my arm around her and say it's gonna be okay.

- At the core of what Global Minds is doing is creating a space, an inclusive space, in the most exclusive of places: high school.

- This is actually the first time I come in a club where there's, like, different cultures and traditions that actually, like, can connect with me and understand how I felt and what I went through.

- It's like that one place that one-- that no one asked you, "Oh, where are you from?"

- I actually am a member of one of the synagogues that was held in the Tree of Life building.

Knowing that the shooter purposely chose Tree of Life because of its connection to immi--to immigrants hurt--made the whole situation hurt even worse.

- The times that we're living in that sense of belonging and sense of community is what's really important.

- Resiliency is just walking as far as you can see and then trusting that once you get there, you'll keep walking in the direction you can find.

And I think as a community, that's how we do it.

[soft music] - My Christian friends, family, we--we were in deep mourning over what happened here.

So we still haven't forgotten them.

- The whole community.

That really was the key to my healing and to my staying sane.

- I'm not looking for the place that is currently the best for my community, currently the best for immigrant refugees, has the least amount of discrimination.

I'm looking for a place that has people that I know I can stand with, that will dig the trenches with me and prepare for anything that's coming together.

- My friends, my neighbors, the time is now.

- And committing to ensuring that these relationships grow.

That is the way that we become truly stronger than hate.

Pittsburgh's that place.

- The Eradicate Hate Global Summit is the response of the City of Pittsburgh to what happened on 10/27.

We are joining together from across the world, across the disciplines, across ideological divides not to talk, but to deliver solutions.

- We've learned that there are a lot of things that can be done before people are radicalized.

What I think we need to do is to approach the problem through multiple responses that engage all of us.

- That's right over there.

- Yes.

Yeah.

- It really does feel like something has changed.

The metaphorical and literal bridges are being crossed.

- Despite all of the challenges that we've faced as a people and through the Holocaust and just across time with anti-Semitism, we move forward, and we take action, and--and we use Tikkun Olam to do that.

all: May my heart be open to every broken soul.

- Tikkun Olam is a Hebrew concept.

It means to repair the world, to make the world a better place.

- For all humanity.

- While we are not required to complete the task, we are not absolved from trying.

I continue to see it every single day here in Pittsburgh.

all: Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream.

Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.

And let us say amen.

Major funding for this program provided by program is provided by The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation empowering world-changing work and by the following Thank you.