To some extent they mean it, of course. But this time for me, for Margaret and me, it's more personal than usual. Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh was once our home.
The candlelight gathering Saturday night after a heavily armed anti-Jewish ultra right bigot shot up a Squirrel Hill synagogue during services, was held on the corner of Murray Avenue and Forbes Avenue, a spot I know very well. My heart is there with them now.
News stories rightly emphasize that many Jews live in Squirrel Hill, the historic center of the Jewish community well beyond Pittsburgh, and at least some stories also mention that it is now a very diverse area, as it has been for decades. I'm sure many of the people at the memorial were not Jews but there to bear witness to solidarity with their neighbors.
I lived in Squirrel Hill in the 1990s. Margaret and her children lived near its northern edge for longer than that, close to Wilkins Avenue where 11 people were shot dead and others injured. I lived at its southern border, but at the foot of the steep hill that forms Murray Avenue, the neighborhood's commercial center.
Though it is likely I have some Jewish ancestors, I was raised Catholic. I have never been more comfortable in a neighborhood than I was in Squirrel Hill. I walked up Murray Avenue, and then up Forbes nearly every day. People in Arcata are courteous. People in Squirrel Hill were friendly, in a personal way.
A CBS affiliate story included a brief interview with the rabbi who until this year ran the Tree of Life, where the gunman attacked:
Meghan Schiller: Did you ever as rabbi think that you were gonna have to deal with this?
Diamond: “I thought about it all the time, I have to tell you. When I was there, in the back of my mind, I always have the thought of something like this happening and what I would do, unfortunately, because of the world we live in.”
Or at least the country we live in. The times we live in.
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