A TRIBUTE BORNE OF TRAGEDY
New Light memorial chapel honors congregants slain at Tree of LIfe
“It is fitting that these memorials are part of the New Light cemetery.”
— Stephen Cohen, co-president, New Light congregation
Four years after a gunman defiled the sacred ground on which the close-knit congregants of New Light worshipped, they have transformed what used to be a dirt-floor garage into a memorial chapel and tribute to Richard Gottfried, Daniel Stein and Melvin Wax.
In place of the previous dull white garage door, there are two strong, wooden double doors with six panels of brightly colored stained glass across them. Down the wall is a window, its pane, too, featuring abstract rays of light and flames.
Together, the stained glass windows tell the story of Genesis 21:1-22:24 — the portion of the Torah set to be read during New Light services on Oct. 27, 2018.
The Torah was not read that morning. Shabbat services were shattered when a gunman tore through the Tree of Life Squirrel Hill synagogue in which the congregation worshipped.
Eleven people were killed, including three New Light congregants.
“It is our duty and obligation to ensure that there is a stone that later generations can stand upon and measure,” said Stephen Cohen, co-president of the New Light congregation, on Wednesday.
It is a reference to the book of Joshua in which the Jordan River splits and the Ark of the Covenant is carried across. Joshua is commanded to erect stones along the river, and he tells people that when their children ask the meaning behind the stones, they should tell them that they are a memorial.
The stone, in this instance, is a monument at the congregation’s Shaler cemetery honoring Gottfried, Stein and Wax. There is also a Callery pear freedom tree marking the memorial. It is grown from a cutting from the only tree to survive the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
“It is fitting that these memorials are part of the New Light cemetery, filled with monuments to the many New Light families who have passed since the inception of the congregation in 1909,” Mr. Cohen said.
The chapel, part memorial and part gathering space, also acts as a museum and home to the historical record of New Light, whose founders left small villages in Romania to escape antisemitism.
Antisemitism, Mr. Cohen said, forced the congregation’s founders from their homes, and it was the root cause of the 2018 massacre that killed his friends.
“The events of 10/27 forced me to learn about the long history of antisemitism in the United States,” he said. “Antisemitism in America is different from European antisemitism. No Holocaust here. No laws restricting employment, place of residence or the right to access the courts.”
He pointed to the recent election of Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, to the state’s highest office.
“Here, antisemitism is subtler, more cultural, more words than deeds — most of the time,” he said.
The stained glass doors feature three large Stars of David on the left door and eight smaller ones on the right. The former symbolize the three New Light congregants killed in the attack. The others symbolize the others killed that day: Joyce Fienberg, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, David and Cecil Rosenthal, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, and Irving Younger.
The chapel will open to the public by appointment on Thursday.
Much of the money for the project came from individual donations that poured in during the aftermath of the shooting — more than $100,000 from those donations alone, Mr. Cohen said. Thousands of others donated to the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh and to the Tree of Life congregation, and a small portion of those funds were given to New Light through an independent committee within the federation.
Other funds came from the Sylvia and Martin Snow Family Fund, Mr. Cohen said, and John Dioguardi of Rome Monuments underwrote the cost of several monuments.
The opening of New Light’s chapel comes as they and the two other congregations scarred by the 2018 violence — Dor Hadash and Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha — continue to move forward in their own ways.
One day prior, the nonprofit organization born out of the attack announced the hiring of Carole Zawatsky to head the nonprofit governing the Tree of Life rebirth.
The reimagined physical site will be one of mixed uses — part memorial, part worship and reflection space, and part education center. It will also be home to a national nonprofit aimed at ending antisemitism. It will be called simply Tree of Life.
“This space will forever be a powerful reminder of what happened here and how the community responded in the aftermath of that day to turn it into a beacon of hope and courage,” Ms. Zawatsky said in a statement. “Tree of Life’s future is bright, and I’m excited and honored to be a part of it.”
The nonprofit will be run by a board of directors that, along with Ms. Zawatsky, will oversee the physical rebuild and public launch of the institute. She will also develop programming and exhibits for the new space and help finalize the merger of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh into the Tree of Life organization.
Michael Bernstein, chair of Tree of Life’s Interim Governance Committee, called Ms. Zawatsky’s hiring a milestone moment in the effort “to transform a site of tragedy into a site of hope.”
In the four years since the attack on the synagogue, plans for its rebuild have changed and grown. Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who survived the attack, pledged early on that his congregation would rebuild. The hiring of Ms. Zawatsky, he said Tuesday, “solidifies (Tree of Life’s) place in our Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the wider Pittsburgh community, and as a leader on the world stage.
“Antisemitism is not only a Jewish problem,” he continued, “it is an American problem.”