Recalling heinous attack on Pittsburgh synagogue

My grandson was born the day after it happened. His name evokes the theme of consolation, and as his father said at his brit ceremony, perhaps this child will serve as a small consolation for what had happened.

What is the “it” that happened? I am referring to the attack on Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh — Oct. 27, 2018, exactly three years ago last week — which left 11 worshippers dead and a Jewish community devastated.

We thought America was different, which in large measures, it has been. Ours has been the safest diaspora in Jewish history.

But, not quite. Bari Weiss, who became bat mitzvah at Tree of Life, put it this way: We Jews had been enjoying a holiday from history. The holiday is no more.

We should have known when we saw the mob marching in Charlottesville, Va., carrying torches and chanting: “The Jews will not replace us!”

When a Jewish community suffered an organized act of violence, the survivors would create a record. That was the memorbuch. It was the way to remember the lives that were lost, and the life that was lost.

The memorbuch of Tree of Life synagogue comes to us from the hand of Mark Oppenheimer, a talented Jewish journalist. The book is “Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood.”

How does this memorbuch unfold before us? It is a memorbuch with three chapters — with three scrolls, if you will. The scroll of demography, the scroll of sociology and the scroll of theology.

Consider the American Jewish residential pattern: Bubbe and Zeyde come to the United States. They live in the immigrant neighborhood. Their children move to the next neighborhood — still urban, but less crowded. Their children move to the suburbs, to the Garden of Eden, with more land and better schools.

Almost every Jewish community in this country has followed that pattern. Except, the Jews of

Squirrel Hill forgot to do that.

This is what Mark Oppenheimer writes about Squirrel Hill:

Such a Jewish community exists nowhere else in the United States.

Squirrel Hill, almost uniquely in the history of U.S. Jews, had violated the rules of Jewish demography. They came, and they never left — and because they never left, the generations knew each other and loved each other.

I fell in love with Squirrel Hill.

Do you know who the most famous resident of Squirrel Hill was?

It was the late Fred Rogers.

The show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” featured the Neighborhood of Make Believe. It was a fictional place where everyone cared about each other, despite their social status or their power.

Except, Fred Rogers modeled that imaginary neighborhood on Squirrel Hill. Because that is the way people are with each other there. They are present with and for each other. What we need are ways to build that Neighborhood of Make Believe in our real lives.

As for the martyrs of Tree of Life Congregation, may their memories be a blessing, and may a more vigilant, prouder and secure Jewish community be their legacy.