‘Crisis fatigue’ and fear grip Jewish community after Washington attack
Pittsburgh Jews shaken by D.C. attack, echoing pain of 2018 synagogue shooting
Martin Gaynor awoke on the morning of May 22 to the news of another deadly antisemitic attack, this time in Washington, D.C. Two Israel Embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were gunned down on March 21 by a pro-Palestinian activist, who allegedly told police, “I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza.”
Gaynor, a former member of Congregation Dor Hadash who survived the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, felt “a deep frustration and disappointment” upon hearing the news.
“It’s been almost seven years since 10-27-18, and it feels like as a nation we didn’t learn anything from it,” he said. “Antisemitism is getting worse and worse, and I would’ve thought — and certainly hoped — that after 10-27-18, collectively as a country, we would’ve seen where resentment, fear, anger, hatred, bigotry lead. And it feels like, no, we didn’t.”
While the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s antisemitism was inspired by white supremacist ideology, the murderer of the Israeli embassy staffers appeared to be motivated by far-left anti-Israel politics.
“People are exploiting this for their own ends, both on the left and on the right, so, to me, that’s not just disappointing and frustrating, it’s very upsetting,” Gaynor said.
While news of the murders of Lischinsky and Milgrim was traumatic for Jews worldwide, Jewish Pittsburghers may have been particularly impacted, having lived through the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, when 11 Jews from three congregations were brutally killed during Shabbat services.
“I think the words that keep coming up are ‘horror,’ ‘disbelief,’ ‘disgust,’” Feinstein said. “You know, this strong desire that if you have to go through something that’s terrible, that you hope nobody ever has to again — never again. And then when it happens, how crushing that feels again, because you think, as bad as it was here, you wish that nobody ever feels that. And so I think, what does that emotional space feel like? I think it can feel like anger and a lot of sadness.”
It can also feel like fear, she said.
Jewish Pittsburghers, Feinstein said, navigated feelings of fear and security concerns following the 2018 attack here, but chose to gather en masse again for holiday services, knowing that while safety issues are real, they could still “push through.”
“I think, unfortunately, we have to flex the same muscles again,” Feinstein said. “We have to remember how to choose joy, choose gathering, choose community.”
The news of the Washington murders was “triggering,” Gaynor said, but he does not feel less safe than he did before this newest antisemitic attack occurred.
“For some time I have accepted that, as a Jew, I just have to face facts that my safety and the safety of others is threatened anytime we’re in identifiably Jewish places, or if we appear identifiably Jewish,” he said. “That’s not new, so I don’t know if I feel any less safe now than I felt before. I can see how other people would feel that way. There’s no question it’s threatening. It’s very triggering for me and I suspect for other people who lived through 10-27-18, or people who lived through similar events.”
Tree of Life Congregation’s Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers, who survived the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, was celebrating his installation as president of the Cantors Assembly when he heard about the Washington murders.
“We read at the conclusion of Psalm 24, ‘You transformed my mourning into celebration,’” Myers said in an email to the Chronicle. “Alas, I must reverse the nouns to read ‘You transformed my celebration into mourning.’ As I was celebrating my inauguration as the 38th president of the Cantors Assembly, a gunman murdered two young Jews outside of the Capitol Jewish Museum. What makes this deed more insidious is that both had left an event that promotes Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and more aid into Gaza. Any movement that births violence and murderers should be of great concern to all Americans, for not one of us is safe.”
Protecting Jewish Pittsburgh
Local law enforcement is proactive in ensuring the safety of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, according to Shawn Brokos, director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.
“The terrorist attack happened Wednesday evening, and Thursday morning I received an early morning phone call from the acting commander of Zone 4, assuring us that there would be additional patrols throughout the Jewish community as it relates to Pittsburgh,” Brokos said. “He and several other commanders had met and said that this is what they need to do in an abundance of caution.”
Brokos said she was “grateful to get that call,” because, typically, she is the one to call law enforcement when events like this transpire.
“They beat me to it, which shows the level of concern for our community and our Jewish organizations,” she said. “So I think that is again a nod to the collaborative relationship we have with law enforcement.”
Independent of that, however, “We do remain in a heightened threat environment,” Brokos stressed. “We have seen a series of concerning social media postings, flyers, recent court cases, which are all very much indicative of the heightened antisemitism that exists, coupled with the hatred or animus directed at Jews or those who support Israel.”
The heightened threat environment, she said, “is not a new posture for us,” but what is new are additional patrols and more armed guards at Jewish events.
‘Crisis fatigue’
Following the murders in Washington, Brokos received an influx of calls from concerned community members inquiring about security. She described the calls as “anxious and fearful.”
While stressing that “there are no known threats to our community,” she acknowledged that there have been cases “where somebody may not be on law enforcement radar and they pose a threat.”
“But on the other hand, we have worked so long and hard to make sure all of our organizations are physically as safe as possible, and we’ve done so much training with our organizations, and we have such a close working relationship with law enforcement, that I know that we are doing all we can.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel and launched the current war, there has been “prolific targeting of the Jewish community,” Brokos said, “and we see it here in Pittsburgh probably more so than other places.”
She recalled the stolen We Stand With Israel signs, the desecration of those signs, the desecration of Jewish buildings, the Nazi flags waved over the Liberty Bridge, the antisemitic flyers and “the multiple individuals who’ve been arrested federally for hate crimes or conspiring against Jews.” All this followed the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, and five years later, the three-month trial of the murderer. The trauma, she said, has been “cumulative.”
“I think it becomes a bit of crisis fatigue,” she said.
Dangerous rhetoric and the confluence of hate
State Rep. Abigail Salisbury, who serves Pennsylvania’s 34th District, has been a strong voice against antisemitism. She believes that the proliferation of anti-Zionist rhetoric may be inspiring acts of physical violence, such as the Washington murders.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people are not able to distinguish between the actions of the nation of Israel and its leaders, and Jews as individual humans, and I think that it starts to get blurry for some people,” she said. “Some people are not able to think clearly and make good decisions. So, I think that, unfortunately, it creates a bit of a risk for people such as ourselves, who are going about our daily lives, because people seem to believe that we somehow are controlling the actions of Israel.”
Salisbury said she’s been “shocked” by the social media posts of people who condone the Washington murders.
“It seemed as if they really believe that these people deserved it,” she said. “I saw some comments where people said that this was their fault because they were complicit, and that this has no danger for your average Jew — that this is just for people who are complicit in genocide. But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that the person who committed these murders walked through and interviewed every single person on their position on foreign policy, or talked to them about what they think of the Israeli military actions, or things of that nature. Somebody just showed up at what they assumed to be a Jewish event full of Jews and killed two people.”
Salisbury noted the confluence of far-left and far-right antisemitism, when hate coming from seemingly opposite political camps begins to look the same.
“We used to think it was like a spectrum from left to right, sort of along the axis, but a lot of people now talk about the ‘U,’ like a horseshoe of the political spectrum, so that the far left and far right are closer together at the bottom of the horseshoe, and then everybody else is up top,” she said. “I think it’s sort of an interesting metaphor visually. I’ve had to think about why some people have startlingly similar opinions, but are very far apart on what we consider the axis of political spectrum.”
Brokos also spoke of a confluence of anti-Jewish ideologies.
“This is that confluence we’ve seen between this far-right ideology, which is really the white supremacy rhetoric, and then the far-left, which is this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, very much pro-Palestinian supporters,” Brokos said. “And both sides are using this grievance narrative that they have to justify, whether it’s verbal assaults or in the case of Wednesday night, fatal assaults, directed at the Jewish community.”
Salisbury acknowledges that she has gotten pushback for advocating strongly against antisemitism. While most of the criticism comes from outside the Jewish community, some has come from within.
“I’ve definitely had some people who were in the Jewish community go after me online because they think differently politically,” she said.
“It’s not as if the Jewish community is a monolith on these things,” she continued. “Generally I think people have been positive, with the exception of a few people who are very entrenched in certain viewpoints.”
That criticism will not deter Salisbury from speaking out.
“Oh, I have a big mouth and I don’t intend to shut it soon,” she said. “I don’t know that I can.”
Despite the continuing antisemitism crisis, Gaynor is clinging to hope.
“I do believe things will get better,” he said. “It’s just a question of when, and how bad they get before they get better. I think that we all need to do whatever we’re capable of to try it make things better, and personally, I’m not going to give in. I’m not gonna stop doing what I’m doing. I’m not gonna stop going to shul. I’m not going to stop going to [the kosher market] or anything. I will not let that happen because then those people will have won. And I will not let that happen.” PJC
Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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