Thursday, April 18, 2024
By Jeffrey Bessen
jbessen@liherald.com
Shortly before 10 a.m. last Saturday, Richard Bowers walked into the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh and opened fire.
Bowers, 46, according to multiple reports, had posted an anti-Jewish message on his Gab social media account at 9:49 a.m. that read: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Five minutes later, the Allegheny County Emergency Operations Center received a 911 call about an active shooter. Police were dispatched, and shots exchanged. Bullets from Bowers’s AR-15 assault rifle and possibly three handguns struck 17 people, killing 11 and injuring six, including four police officers. His words after being taken into custody according to police were, “All these Jews need to die.”
Bowers, who was also shot, was charged by federal officials with 29 criminal counts, including obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs — a hate crime — and using a firearm to commit murder. He also faces state charges, including 11 counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation.
Immediately after news of the shooting broke, many took to social media, especially Twitter, to react to the shooting. It was the 294th such incident this year in the United States. A mass shooting is defined as four or more individuals being shot or killed in the same general time and location.
Anti-Semitism appeared to be a motive for the shooting; Bowers targeted the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society for his ire. It is a nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees. The Anti-Defamation League has reported that anti-Semitic incidents in the United States rose by 57 percent in 2017, from 1,267 in 2016 to 1,986 — the largest increase since the ADL began tracking in 1979.
Only once since 1979 has the ADL recorded more incidents: 2,066 in 1994. Since then, the number had mostly declined. There were small increases in 2014 and 2015. Then, in 2016, the count began to rise.
The 11 Tree of Life shooting victims
— Joyce Feinberg, 75
— Richard Godfried, 65
— Rose Mallinger, 97
—Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
— Cecil Rosenthal, 59
— David Rosenthal, 54
— Bernice Simon, 84
— Sylvan Simon, 86
— Daniel Stein, 71
— Melvin Wax, 88
— Erving Youngner, 69
“This is an attack — one we never imagined would happen on American soil against the Jewish people,” Rabbi Eli Goodman, of Chabad of the Beaches, told a crowd of hundreds in Kennedy Plaza on Monday as they mourned the loss of life after the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the country’s history.
Elected officials joined local residents and religious leaders to remember the 11 worshippers killed last Saturday by a gunman in the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh.
“It is a clarion call to governments, to communal leaders, to educators and to parents,” Goodman said. “The ugliest and oldest of hatreds permitted to find expression in any form ultimately sows depraved violence.”
Some in the crowd held glow sticks in a show of solidarity with the Jewish community as speakers prayed and discussed the importance of love and unity. “We come together to explicitly demonstrate that we will not and cannot tolerate any acts of anti-Semitism, any acts of hate, based upon a person’s religious belief,” said City Council Vice President Chumi Diamond. “Our society has seen a huge rise in acts of hate against the Jewish community” — nearly 80 percent this year alone, she added. “That is why I have asked our police commissioner and acting city manager to increase patrols around all houses of worship in our city. These increases took effect immediately.”
Diamond thanked the Police Department for providing “this incredible level of comfort to those who worship throughout our city.”
“The killer’s bullets were aimed at us all,” Goodman said. “‘All Jews must die!’ he yelled when opening fire. We must work together to eradicate this evil by a policy of zero tolerance for any anti-Semitism in any form.”
“It’s time for action,” said Deacon Marcus Tinker of the Christian Light Baptist Church. “Something has to be done about the mental health issues here in America. Something has to be done about the gun violence here in America.”
He recalled six years ago, when the city came together following Hurricane Sandy’s devastation. “In the aftermath of the storm, our city came together in love and unity,” Tinker said. “Whether you came from the north, the south, the east, the west; whether you were black, white, Hispanic, Asian; regardless of whatever faith you came from, we all came together in love and unity, and America needs that today.”
Mitzvah papers were passed out to the crowd, and attendees were invited to write down good deeds they would do in memory of the Pittsburgh victims. The notes would be delivered to the victims’ families later this week, Goodman said. A collection box was available in the City Hall lobby until Wednesday, officials said.
To contribute to a second round of mitzvah paper deliveries to victims’ families, send a message to Barbara Horn at callingofthenames@gmail.com with the subject “Pittsburgh good deed.”
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