MARK OPPENHEIMER: SQUIRREL HILL A COMMUNITY REDISCOVERS ITS HEART

The shattering of the peace of Shabbat on the morning of October 27, 2018, felt like a flashback to a different century, a different country, a different Jewish existence.

Twenty minutes of gunfire by a man searching for Jews to murder. Eleven left dead. A community terrorized, shaken to its core.

But once the white nationalist assassin was apprehended and our brothers and sisters in the tight-knit Pittsburgh community of Squirrel Hill buried their dead, the media disappeared and the nation’s attention moved on to the next horror, the next crisis . . . while Squirrel Hill’s Jews were left to wade through agonizing dialogues and messy confrontations as they sought to muster the resilience needed to move past despair.

On the third anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews on US soil, Mark Oppenheimer joins us to speak about his new book, Squirrel Hill, a moving account of the collective grief, love and support that allowed the community to face a less certain future.

Former religion columnist for The New York Times, Mark Oppenheimer has written for the nation’s leading magazines and authored two books. He currently hosts Tablet magazine’s podcast Unorthodox, the #1 Jewish podcast on iTunes, and is coordinator of the Yale Journalism Initiative.