September 8, 2023 | 22 Elul 5783
Candlelighting 7:23 p.m. | Havdalah 8:20 p.m. | Vol. 66, No. 36 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
NOTEWORTHY LOCAL Botanical drawings inspire High Holiday reflections
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A ‘shiva to an era’: Tree of Life Widening the congregants share memories of High Holiday a bygone time gates By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer
I Rodef Shalom exhibit promotes environmental awareness LOCAL
Since that Saturday morning, Tree of Life Congregation has been displaced. An upcoming structural overhaul to the building on Wilkins and Shady avenues will convert its worship and educational spaces to a smaller sanctuary and adjacent museum. With almost five years having passed since congregants last used the building — they have been gathering in the meantime at Rodef Shalom Congregation — the storytelling event was a chance to share memories, laugh and mark bygone congregational life. “This was my home, this was my second home,” Rachel Rosen said. Her father, David Dinkin, was the congregation’s executive director, religious school principal and “sometime rabbi,” she said. Dinkin’s roles at Tree of Life afforded Rosen countless hours inside the synagogue, but much of that time ended in trouble. “I was bad,” she said. As part of the first group of girls to become bat mitzvah at the Conservative congregation,
f you have been seeking ways to observe the High Holidays beyond traditional services, you’re in luck. This year, familiar faces are trying new experiments, volunteer opportunities are plentiful and the prospects for reflection outdoors or with a song are bountiful. Rabbi Aaron Bisno spent much of the last year establishing the Center for Interfaith Collaboration, focusing on the wisdom traditions that cross religions and cultures. He wants to extend the High Holiday experience to those without a congregation and to anyone interested in interfaith collaboration. “Two Sacred Evenings” will take place on Erev Rosh Hashanah and Kol Nidre, Sept. 15 and 24 respectively, at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Bisno has created a 90-minute service for each evening. “I want to provide something for the larger community,” the former senior rabbi of Rodef Shalom Congregation noted. “I think there’s a market for Jews and non-Jews and those with blended families to have a sort of ‘greatest hits’ experience.” He likens “Two Sacred Evenings” to a report in The New York Times about longtime theatergoers opting not to purchase tickets to an entire season of Broadway shows but instead attending only the productions that speak to them. The rabbi thinks the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s 2017 Community Study points to a future that looks different than today. There are 47,000 Jewish community members in the region, Bisno noted, but according to the study, only 19% are members of brick-andmortar congregations. He thinks non-affiliated community members might be looking for an opportunity to experience the Jewish New Year. “For people who want to have the High Holiday experience, it will be the best music we have in liturgy and a really high-quality sermon,” he said. “It’s for people who want the experience of the High Holidays but simply aren’t able or willing or interested to sit
Please see Tree of Life, page 14
Please see Holiday, page 14
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Passing the baton after a quarter century
Brian Schreiber succeeded by Jason Kunzman as JCC’s CEO LOCAL
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Uncovering Holocaust history in Latvia
Robin Friedman from Point Breeze and Trudy Feldman from Squirrel Hill look over the 1981 Tolusy yearbook during the Memories of Tree of Life Storytelling and Sharing at the Wightman School Community Building on Aug. 29 Photo by Pam Panchak / Union Progress By Adam Reinherz | Senior Staff Writer
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Duquesne University professor finds hidden graves of Nazi victims Page 7
ewish people primarily tell two types of stories. There’s the Passover kind, where a narrative is repeated with slight nuance; and there’s the shiva kind, where a hodgepodge of vignettes combat an absence to tell a larger tale. After identifying the distinction, Maggie Feinstein, director of the 10.27 Healing Partnership, invited Tree of Life congregants to share the latter — and for 90 minutes on Aug. 29, inside a densely packed classroom at Wightman School in Squirrel Hill, Jewish storytellers lauded a 158-year-old congregation whose history, and building, were marred by the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. On Oct. 27, 2018, a gunman entered the Tree of Life building and murdered Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger. The 11 Jewish worshippers were members of the Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life congregations.
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