January 30, 2026 | 12 Shevat 5786
NOTEWORTHY LOCAL A trip delayed, but worth the wait
Candlelighting 5:18 p.m. | Havdalah 6:20 p.m. | Vol. 69, No. 5 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
Federation security director looks back on 2025 and ahead to 2026
Teen lacrosse players finally visit Israel LOCAL
A Mohamad Hamad were arrested for painting antisemitic graffiti at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and Chabad of Squirrel Hill. A superseding indictment from the federal government followed shortly after, connecting Micaiah Collins to the pair. Collins, who allegedly built bombs with Hamad, is the daughter of Valley View Presbyterian Church’s Pastor Chad Collins. Lubit eventually reached a plea deal with the federal government. Collins and Hamad, who identifies as a Hamas operative, are awaiting trial. Brokos said a similar pattern emerged concerning two individuals who were holding Nazi flags on area bridges. “Once we scratched below the surface, we saw that one of the perpetrators was looking to do highly vicious and violent acts in furtherance of his ideology,” she said. And while one might be disheartened by the number of antisemitic incidents that occurred in the region last year —312, compared to 283 in 2024, and 300 in 2023 — Brokos said there is a bright spot. “Our community excels in reporting and collaborating with law enforcement,
lthough calls to promote civil discourse on college campuses have intensified since Oct. 7, 2023, the University of Pittsburgh began working on the issue long before then. Now, Pitt’s Center for Governance and Markets will be able to strengthen those efforts through a four-year, $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The new initiative, called Pluralism360, is aimed at bolstering civil discourse not only across the university, but across the region. The program will be led by Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, the founding director of Pitt’s Center for Governance and Markets and a professor at Pitt’s School of Public and International Affairs. Murtazashvili has been working on issues related to civil discourse since she was in graduate school. “For me, it’s a method of how you think about the world,” said Murtazashvili, a member of Congregation Beth Shalom. “I work on different topics, but what I try to bring to everything that I do is what we call ‘value pluralism,’ or ‘viewpoint diversity.’” Recent events have amplified the need to improve civil discourse and invest in more substantive efforts, she said. “I think universities across the board — and I think we’ve seen this, especially since Oct. 7 — are really struggling to grapple with students who have very different, not just views, but values,” she said. “We see some of the federal legislation, or some of the universities, focus on civil discourse and viewpoint diversity, but I think a lot of this is often very superficial work.”
Please see Federation, page 16
Please see Pitt, page 16
‘A big responsibility’
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HISTORY A drive through Oakcliffe
The colorful memories of ‘Shai’ Miller Page 4
TELEVISION ‘The Pitt’ and Jewish Pittsburgh
Fact meets fiction Page 17
With federal grant, Pitt initiative aims to move campus dialogue beyond polarization By Toby Tabachnick | Editor
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South Hills teacher deepens Holocaust studies
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p The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and Chabad of Squirrel Hill were vandalized on July 29, 2024. Two defendants connected to the incident are awaiting trial in federal court. Courtesy photo By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer
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hen the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s community security director, Shawn Brokos, looks back on the past year, one thing that strikes her is the high number of federal arrests in Pittsburgh related to antisemitism. “Not all of the individuals were charged with hate crimes,” she said of the eight federal defendants, “but scratching below the crimes for which they were charged, there is a motivating factor of antisemitism.” Brokos said that often the initial crime appears to be somewhat minor — graffiti painted on a sign at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, for instance — but once additional information about the perpetrator is discovered, the significance amplifies. “There were many people who initially said, ‘It’s just graffiti. We get it. It’s not great but how could it rise to the level of federal prosecution?’ Well, it absolutely did. Then we learned the multiple facets below the layer as it related to the perpetrators.” In October 2024, Talya Lubit and
Senior Living
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