May 30, 2025 | 3 Sivan 5785
Candlelighting 8:25 p.m. | Havdalah 9:33 p.m. | Vol. 68, No. 22 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
NOTEWORTHY LOCAL Contentious primary
Pittsburgh reacts to O'Connor win RELIGION
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Rodef Shalom, Temple Sinai ‘Crisis fatigue’ boards approve unification plans and fear grip Jewish community after Washington attack By Toby Tabachnick | Editor
All about Shavuot
By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer
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LOCAL A new chapter for Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers
Taking on a national role
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LOCAL A mystery solved
Displaced tombstone recovered
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ittsburgh’s two largest Reform congregations are one step closer to unification. Rodef Shalom Congregation and Temple Sinai’s respective boards of trustees, in separate meetings, approved a term sheet that outlines how the congregations will proceed with a unification, according to Stephen Jurman, Temple Sinai’s president. “The brit, or covenant as we’re calling it, is really an agreement that we want to join together,” Rodef Shalom President Bill Battistone said. “While there are legal steps to be taken, we want to make sure we’re approaching it with the right kind of mentality, so brit was important.” Both boards, Jurman said, not only passed the brit, but recommended each congregation’s membership pass it, which would formally merge the two congregations. Special meetings will take place at both congregations on June 8 to accept or reject the boards’ recommendation. If approved, the new congregation would be located in Rodef Shalom’s building on the corner of Fifth and Morewood Avenues. Its clergy team will include Temple Sinai’s Rabbi Daniel Fellman and Cantor David Reinwald, as well as Rodef Shalom’s interim Rabbi David Young. According to the website Unity412, created to provide congregation members with information about the unification, after Young’s term ends in 2026, the new congregation will
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seek an assistant or associate rabbi. Drew Barkley, Temple Sinai’s executive director, will stay in his role for the newly united congregation. The congregation’s religious school will be headed by both Fellman and Rabbi Larry Freedman, the director of J-JEP, Rodef Shalom’s joint religious school with Congregation Beth Shalom, which will be invited to continue as a partner in the new school. Jurman said that students already studying for their b’nai mitzvah will finish up in whatever program they’re currently enrolled. “Eventually we’ll have one program for everybody,” he said, but noted that there will be some time before Temple Sinai’s building is sold. “There will be an element of choice but people who want to finish up their service in their existing building will be able to do that.” Those leasing space in Rodef Shalom’s building, including Tree of Life Congregation and Congregation Dor Hadash, can continue to do so. Organizations that want to continue to rent space after the unification takes place, Battistone said, will negotiate and sign a lease with the new congregation. “We have no plans of displacing anybody at the moment that has an agreement to be at Fifth and Morewood,” he said. The new congregation will adopt the pledge/dues model used by Temple Sinai. The two congregations represent a total of more than 1,300 family units, with about 680
artin Gaynor awoke on the morning of May 22 to the news of another deadly antisemitic attack, this time in Washington, D.C. Two Israeli Embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were gunned down on March 21 by a proPalestinian 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 10-2718, 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, in which 11 Jews from three congregations were brutally killed during Shabbat services. Maggie Feinstein, executive director of the 10.27 Healing Partnership, was in touch with several survivors and families of Pittsburgh
Please see Unification, page 10
Please see Attack, page 10
Rabbi Daniel Fellman and Cantor David Reinwald will be the spiritual leaders of the new congregation if Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai unify Photo courtesy of Temple Sinai
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