Tree of Life to unveil new traveling exhibit, building design
Exhibition tells the story of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
Carole Zawatsky arrived in Israel for a January mission the day the first hostages were released in a negotiated cease-fire with the terrorist group Hamas.
“The release was announced on the plane by our El Al pilot,” she said. “I was able to make it to my friend’s house in Jerusalem to watch them be helicoptered from the site where they were released to the hospital and be united with their families.”
She left for America the following Sunday, one day after the second group of hostages was released.
“It was a pretty incredible experience,” she said.
Zawatsky spent the week in Israel doing volunteer work that included preparing meals for the families of hostages and IDF soldiers and immersing herself in the horror of Oct. 7.
“I went to the site of the Nova Music Festival. I went to the memorial that had been created with all the cars that were burned while people tried to escape, met with hostages’ families and went to hostage square,” she said.
As part of the trip, Zawatsky stood in front of released hostage Emily Damari’s house.
“It really made me think about that fine line between bearing witness and voyeurism and how we enter sites of trauma,” she said.
That fine line is important to Zawatsky. She is the CEO of Tree of Life, the nonprofit created after the Oct. 27, 2018, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. The Israel trip, she said, forced her to think even more deeply about the work being done by her organization and “what it means to create spaces of memory and trauma.”
Last summer, Tree of Life broke ground on a new building at the site of the deadliest antisemitic attack in United States history. Since then, though, no construction has taken place.
That’s set to change in late August or early September, Zawatsky said. The look of the project, though, will be different than originally planned.
“We’re working on a building with a smaller footprint than the original design and somewhat more simplified but still very beautiful,” she said.
The organization has raised just under $41 million, according to Zawatsky.
“We worked very closely with Studio Libeskind to have a redesign that is appropriate for the programmatic use,” she said, “and to have a spectacular Libeskind building that was right-sized in terms of size, design, cost and pragmatic use.”
Daniel Libeskind, the architect designing the new building, the World Trade Center site master planner, is the lead architect on the project.
Tree of Life’s new building, Zawatsky said, will still be home to Tree of Life Congregation, one of the three synagogues — along with New Light Congregation and Congregation Dor Hadash — attacked on Oct. 27, 2018, as well as a memorial to the victims, a museum, an education center and a home for the Institute for Countering Hate and Antisemitism.
The design will be premiered at the launch of a traveling exhibit, “Lessons from the Tree of Life: Lighting the Path Forward,” running from March 27 through April 25 at the University of Pittsburgh.
Created in partnership with the Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives at the Heinz History Center, the exhibition features curated items gifted to the Pittsburgh Jewish community in the aftermath of the attack.
“It tells the story of what happened in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on Oct. 27, 2018, and walks you through that, and then what we’re going to build, so you can see the next chapter of the Tree of Life reimagined,” Zawatsky said.
The exhibition, she said, will answer questions about plans for the new building and the types of programs, events and activities that will take place there.
“We also include panels that explore antisemitism in America and some panels that are renderings of the new Libeskind design,” she said. “It’s the first time the community will have a chance to see the new design.”
About 20 objects left by those in the days immediately following the shooting will be included as part of the exhibition.
Zawatsky said the items were “left at the Tree of Life in solidarity and shared mourning with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh.”
And while the new exhibit and design might seem a long time coming, Zawatsky is quick to note that it took nearly 13 years to complete the 9/11 Museum and Memorial, and even longer — a generation — for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to open.
“We’re doing something incredibly unique,” she said. “There will be a memorial on the site to each of the 11 murdered victims and we’re inviting people to go back in and celebrate Jewish life at a place of the greatest act of violent antisemitism in America.”
The time period between the attack and the construction of the new building, Zawatsky said, has allowed Tree of Life the opportunity to create what is best for the community, the families of the victims and survivors.
More information about the new exhibit can be found on the Tree of Life’s website. PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
comments