SUPPORT FOR TRAUMA VICTIMS
Violent acts differed but trauma left behind shared
The JCC in Squirrel Hill made banners for traumatized communities across the region and United States.
As people filtered through the Jewish Community Center doors in Squirrel Hill for exercise or other activities on Friday morning, many of them put their signatures on three identical banners declaring, “The JCC of Greater Pittsburgh Stands with You.”
The banners were destined to be sent to representatives from three communities facing very different traumas — the Jewish community of Monsey, N.Y., scene of a machete attack wounding several at a Hanukkah party; and churches in White Settlement, Texas, where a gunman killed two worshippers at a church before being shot to death, and in nearby Wilkinsburg, scene of the fatal shooting by police of 24-year-old Romir Talley. Activists have questioned the shooting by police, who said he had fired at an officer, who then returned fire.
The circumstances of the violence in the three locations vary significantly, but what they have in common is that they left behind traumatized communities, say organizers of the banner-signing effort.
The project was organized by the JCC’s Center for Loving Kindness, which aims to spread the “idea that ‘neighbor’ is a moral concept” and not limited by geography, said the center’s Melissa Hiller. The JCC is in a unique position to support other traumatized communities given its position at the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, which experienced the deaths of 11 worshippers in the anti-Semitic attack on three congregations at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018.
“Believe it or not, all three of these are already out of the main pages of the news cycles,” she said. “The news cycles are lightning speed because things are happening every day. However, being a community that has experienced mass violence, we know full well” that the trauma endures far longer.
A separate trio of banners was being signed at the JCC’s South Hills branch, Ms. Hiller said.
Signers said they were more than willing to pick up a marker and add their names to the banners.
“Since things had happened here, we can identify with what’s going on in other cities,” said Peter Baum, of Squirrel Hill. It was a “message of support,” he said, from “people who have been there.”