Eight years after deadliest antisemitic attack in US history, Tree of Life rabbi bids farewell

PITTSBURGH (AP) — After surviving the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, after presiding over multiple funerals for his slain congregants, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers struggled to pray.

“There was this emptiness to it,” recalls Myers, of Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh.

He turned to the biblical Book of Psalms — its hymns, poetry and prayers covering “the entire spectrum of human existence and emotion, from elation to utter despair,” Myers recalled. “Something told me it’s in there somewhere, the inspiration that I need.”

He started reading all 150 chapters, in order. When he got to 121, he found words that clicked: “My help comes from God, maker of the heavens and the Earth.”

“There it was,” Myers says today. ”My faith did have the answers. It just took time to be able to find them.”

Myers, 70, is retiring this month as spiritual leader of Tree of Life, a position he had assumed just over a year before the shattering events of Oct. 27, 2018.

On that Sabbath morning, a gunman shot his way into the synagogue, shouting antisemitic invective and murdering 11 worshippers from the three congregations sharing the building — Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life.

In the nearly eight years since, the congregation has worked to grieve and heal. It endured a long-delayed trial leading to the gunman’s death sentence. It experienced the disruptive pandemic and the groundbreaking for a new building.

“My mission has come to a conclusion to the best that I could,” Myers said in an interview. “It was time for the next chapter also for the Tree of Life. It’s time to step aside so that there is space for new voices.”

Rabbi says goodbye with signature blend of scripture and pop culture

Myers plans to return to his native New Jersey to be near his daughter and granddaughter. He wants to catch up on reading, do some writing, check off some “bucket list” goals with his wife. He also plans to work more on healing his own inner wounds after prioritizing the congregation’s needs.

“As Mr. Spock says in ‘Star Trek II,’ the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” says Myers, who frequently glides between scriptural and pop culture references.

Myers similarly quoted from the Beatles and Broadway’s “Rent” in a farewell address to his congregation on July 17. He thanked congregants, clergy, public officials, the police officers who risked their lives to rescue him, some suffering serious injuries.

He recalled each victim by name. “May your memories always be for a blessing,” he said. He concluded by having the congregation join him in singing Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend.”

Members, in interviews, pay tribute to Myers and what he achieved.

“He was really just a new rabbi and hardly broken in yet, and we went through the thing that we went through,” says Audrey Glickman, a survivor of the attack. “He has steered a constant ship and taken care of everyone, and I think he has earned himself a rest.”

His journey to Tree of Life started in his childhood synagogue’s choir

Myers grew up near Newark, New Jersey, recalling summers at the beach at Asbury Park, where transistor radios were tuned to pop music stations. As a boy, he sang soprano in his synagogue choir. By his mid-teens, he was leading that choir and developing his distinctive high tenor voice — one that, in 2018, was heard worldwide as he sang the traditional Jewish mourner’s prayers for those who fell.

Myers started college as a pre-med student but soon pivoted toward his deep interests in Judaism and music. He went to school to become a cantor or hazzan, a type of Jewish clergy who leads worship.

After several years serving congregations in New York and New Jersey in the middle-of-the-road Conservative denomination of Judaism, he studied for ordination as a rabbi and came to Tree of Life. It was a small Conservative congregation, sharing its building with two others in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the heart of Jewish Pittsburgh.

Sabbath services had just begun that Saturday morning. After hearing gunfire in the lobby, he urged worshippers to flee if they were able — and those who were frail to lie down or hide. He took shelter as he heard gunshots ring out.

“I was praying,” Myers recalled on the witness stand during the gunman’s 2023 trial. “I thought about the history of my people, how we’ve been persecuted and hunted and slaughtered for centuries, and how all of them must have felt the moments before their death, and what did they do.”

He asked God to forgive him for being unable to save his congregants. He expected to die but was escorted to safety by police officers.

He was still wearing his prayer shawl.

After surviving the attack, Myers’ leadership stood out

In the days afterward, the funeral services unfolded. Alan Hausman, a lay leader in the congregation who has long worked in public safety, accompanied Myers throughout that week. Responding to deadly emergencies “takes a toll on you,” Hausman says. “And he kept going.”

With its damaged building a crime scene, Tree of Life began worshipping at a nearby synagogue, Rodef Shalom. For Myers and others, it was crucial to resume their Jewish observances in defiance of the killer’s intentions.

There were uplifting moments. Sam Schachner, the congregation’s then-president, recalls his son’s bar mitzvah a few weeks after the attacks — the first truly joyful event after Oct. 27.

Myers “could have reasonably said, ‘I’ve been through a lot. Can we postpone this?’” Schachner says. “He didn’t. He had this ability to be there for others when he was going through such pain.”

Then the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the healing. Myers led remote services from his home. But presiding over his daughter’s outdoor wedding helped, fulfilling another Psalm’s promise. “God turned my mourning into rejoicing,” he says.

After resuming in-person worship, the three congregations braced for a long-delayed trial. It began in the spring of 2023, just as Myers’ daughter was expecting her first child.

Myers told prosecutors that if the baby was a boy, he would attend his circumcision even if it conflicted with Myers’ scheduled testimony — unwilling to “let the shooter deprive me” of partaking in a key Jewish rite. Instead, a granddaughter arrived, and Myers was on the witness stand as scheduled.

The lengthy trial concluded with the conviction and death sentence of the gunman, who remains on death row.

With shared trauma, Tree of Life bonds with church shooting survivors

Tree of Life began a meaningful relationship with Mother Emanuel AME Church of Charleston, South Carolina, a historically Black congregation where a racist gunman killed nine Bible study participants in 2015. Members visited each others’ congregations, and Myers developed a bond with Emanuel’s pastor, the Rev. Eric Manning.

When Myers testified, Manning was in the courtroom. They understand each other. Manning believes it’s important to speak out against rising antisemitism and other forms of hatred — a word he refuses to utter, speaking only of “H.”

“Antisemitism is the world’s oldest disease,” he says. “It doesn’t require any sort of prescription or inoculation to eliminate. It requires people to honor the worth and dignity of every human being.”

Most of the aging and damaged Tree of Life building has been demolished. Plans for a new building, while scaled back from original designs, call for a memorial to the victims, along with antisemitism exhibits, a sanctuary and event space.

The building is slated to open in 2028, says Carole Zawatsky, who heads the nonprofit, The Tree of Life, which is overseeing the project in cooperation with the similarly named congregation.

“The memorial is there to remember each of the 11 victims. To always ground us,” Zawatsky says.

Myers was “the right guy at the right time,” says Robin Friedman, current president of the congregation. She calls it a ”bittersweet” departure.

Recently about 50 Jewish families, many with young children, joined the congregation, bringing their own energy and ideas. That has boosted hopes for the future.

Says Glickman: “We intend not to let the shooter win and not to fade away into history.”

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AP video journalist Jessie Wardarski contributed. She and Smith were among the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette journalists who shared the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for coverage of the synagogue massacre.

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