Join us November 14, 9:00 AM with Mark Oppenheimer ~ Free Event Through his words Mark paints a piercing portrait of the struggles and triumphs of one of America's renowned Jewish neighborhoods in the wake of unspeakable tragedy that highlights the hopes, fears, and tensions all Americans must confront on the road to healing.
Squirrel Hill : The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood. by Mark Oppenheimer
“Quite understandably, much of the early reporting on the Tree of Life crime focused on the alleged killer, who apparently had spent his recent life in the ugliest depths of the racist internet. He did not interest me. And the victims were eulogized at length. I was interested in everyone else… . I was curious to know how people dealt with the aftermath of mass violence…When the cameras and the police tape were gone, what stayed behind?”
Book Reviews: “…to mark the third anniversary of the tragedy, journalist Mark Oppenheimer, whose great-great-great-grandfather was one of the founding fathers of the Pittsburgh Jewish community back in 1846, offers Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood, a detailed and well-written account of the massacre itself. This book focuses panoramically on the tragedy and those it touched…Years from now, when people want to know what happened in Pittsburgh, this is the book to which they will probably turn. Oppenheimer visited Pittsburgh thirty-two times and conducted some 250 interviews in a bid to get the story right. As a result, even those who followed the episode closely will learn fresh details concerning what happened.” —Jonathan D. Sarna, Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2021
“ So, when I received the galley for Oppenheimer’s book, I opened it with a bit of skepticism and a critical eye. I read it in one sitting. If you are wondering if an outsider could hope to capture the mood — maybe even the soul — of a neighborhood to which he does not belong following an unthinkably horrific event, I tender this take: Perhaps an outsider, as it turns out, is best suited to do so. Oppenheimer’s being far enough removed from Squirrel Hill allows him to observe meaningful details that could be too close in the line of vision for natives to see as clearly.” —Toby Tabachnick, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, September 24, 2021
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