This past Monday, we marked the seventh commemoration of the 2018 synagogue attack. Hundreds turned out at the JCC to gather in community and to hold the memory of the eleven lives taken from us with love and faith. As my colleague Maggie Feinstein, Director of the 10.27 Healing Partnership recently told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, there is an important reason for remembering tragic events. “Carving out this one small window where we can put our focus is incredibly healthy for the rest of our lives.”
Each year, October 27th calls us back to remembrance and to reflect on what it means to live with purpose in the shadow of such profound loss. Along these lines, Steve Rosenberg’s October 20th article in Jewish News Syndicate states, “Hope now must be a kind of moral imaginative labor asking not only ‘how do we heal,’ but ‘how do we carry forward?’ How does the everyday reclaim its purpose when something so devastating has intervened?”
At the JCC, we wrestle with those questions every day – not only through commemoration – but through action. We carry forward by seeking connection where there is division, by creating belonging where there is isolation, and by bringing meaning and joy into the spaces where grief echoes most loudly. Every class, every program, every swim lesson, every shared meal in our JCafé – they are all expressions of a community determined to live with courage, compassion, and resilience.
Our response to tragedy has always been rooted in togetherness. In a world that continues to test our capacity for empathy and unity, the JCC stands as a vibrant answer to the question, “How do we carry forward?” We do it by showing up – for one another, for our city, and for the Jewish people everywhere.
Our response to tragedy has always been rooted in togetherness. In a world that continues to test our capacity for empathy and unity, the JCC stands as a vibrant answer to the question, “How do we carry forward?” We do it by showing up – for one another, for our city, and for the Jewish people everywhere.
May this commemoration remind us not only of what we lost, but also of what we continue to build – lives of meaning, community, and hope.
And May the names of Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, and Irving Younger, always be for a blessing.
Wishing you and your families a Shabbat Shalom,
Jason
Be sure to click HERE to learn more about in-person yahrzeit Torah study on the evening of November 8th and HERE to learn more about virtual commemorative Torah study on November 9th.
