Nonprofit worker chosen as new director for Tree of Life synagogue

After a career working and volunteering for nonprofit organizations, Barb Feige was thinking about her next step when she saw a synagogue advertising for an executive director.

The congregation was Tree of Life/ Or L’Simcha in Squirrel Hill, and the job had been posted before Oct. 27 when a gunman invaded the synagogue and killed 11 worshippers from three congregations sharing the building.

Months after the deadliest anti- Semitic attack in U. S. history, the synagogue restarted its search for a director, and the job description took on far larger and more grave dimensions. But Ms. Feige decided to apply, and she officially began work July 1.

“I really had to think about, ‘ Can I be who they need now?’” she said Friday. “And I think I can. ... I certainly wish to help them to take on so much of what they’ve been doing.”

Although the synagogue has been under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Jeffrey Myers since before the massacre, it had lacked a director to handle day- to- day activities such as maintenance and fundraising.

Synagogue members have stepped in as volunteers, but they have had to balance other obligations. She sees her job as implementing the direction set by the members.

“The vision will come from the congregation and the families and the survivors, but I will be the one to articulate the vision and move it forward,” she said.

Helping members navigate such events as this fall’s High Holidays of Rosh Hashana, beginning the Jewish year, and Yom Kippur, the solemn day of atonement, will be a particular challenge. “We want to be there for folks and make it meaningful and give folks the strength to move into a new year with some sense of renewal and healing,” she said.

Decisions on matters such as how to commemorate the anniversary of the slayings and how to use the Tree of Life building in the future, are being made in consultation with survivors and others most affected, including congregation members and the other two congregations that were displaced, Dor Hadash and New Light.

Tree of Life and Dor Hadash’s services have taken place at the Rodef Shalom Congregation in Shadyside since October, while New Light’s have been at Congregation Beth Shalom in Squirrel Hill.

Ms. Feige, 61, of Squirrel Hill, is a member of Shaare Torah Congregation, an Orthodox congregation in Squirrel Hill, where she was its first female president.

She said her parents were the sole survivors of the Holocaust in their families, and as their only child she came to feel, “I really must have a purpose. There’s a whole lot that happened for me to be here. So how can I make that mean something?”

For the Duquesne University graduate, that has meant a variety of roles, from co- founding a Jewish theater group to serving the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania for 16 years. She’s been on the boards of several Jewish and other civic groups.

“I’ve always had a socialjustice incentive,” she said, and she’s proud of work she has done in areas such as LGBT rights.

Tree of Life is a Conservative synagogue that traces its roots back to 1864.

In announcing Ms. Feige’s appointment, synagogue board president Sam Schachner said: “We look forward to working with her in the weeks and months ahead as we plan for the High Holidays, the memorials and tributes that will mark the one- year commemoration honoring the victims of last October’s tragedy, and assisting in creating and then implementing the plan for our future.”