March 14, 2025 | 14 Adar 5785
Candlelighting 7:08 p.m. | Havdalah 8:08 p.m. | Vol. 68, No. 11 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
NOTEWORTHY LOCAL A campaign to fight antisemitism
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After court challenge, BDS referendum fails to reach ballot
Tree of Life to unveil new traveling exhibit, building design
By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer and Toby Tabachnick | Editor
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Pittsburghers run for seats in World Zionist Congress
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 chief executive officer 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. Please see Tree of Life, page 10
Please see Referendum, page 10
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Combatting a mental health crisis
JHF initiative has wide impact Page 3
LOCAL
Flower memorial outside the Tree of Life building after the shooting
Still from “Repairing the World: Stories from The Tree of Life”
Moishe Pod is here
By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer
C Community engagement for young adults Page 4
HISTORY A Purim primer
A few things you may not know about the holiday Page 5
arole 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
Happy
Purim!
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LOCAL
or the second time in consecutive election cycles a referendum that could have prohibited the City of Pittsburgh from doing business with the state of Israel, or companies that do business with Israel, has been defeated. During a March 7 Allegheny County Court hearing before Judge John T. McVay, Not On Our Dime and its fiscal sponsor, The Project for Responsive Democracy, stipulated that they did not collect enough valid signatures to get the referendum on the May primary election ballot. In order to qualify for the ballot, Not On Our Dime needed to submit 12,459 signatures of registered Pittsburgh voters in favor of the referendum. The anti-Israel organization submitted 21,300 signatures but more than half of those signatures were invalid. During a review process initiated by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh with its partners StandWithUs and the Beacon Coalition, 12,530 signatures were identified as defective. The decision to stipulate to the petition’s deficiencies came late in the evening on March 6, as it became apparent that the signature challenge was going to carry the day. “We’re not going to prolong the process,” Chuck Pascal, an attorney for Not On Our Dime, told McVay in court. Not On Our Dime’s stipulation came at a hearing scheduled to consider legal challenges to the referendum filed by City Controller Rachael Heisler, as well as separate challenges filed by Federation, its partners and several Jewish community leaders. Those challenges became moot when Not On Our Dime and The Project for Responsive Democracy acknowledged they didn’t have the signatures required. The Federation, StandWithUs and Beacon