Groups combating rising antisemitism in Pittsburgh, nationally

May 28, 2023

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Antisemitic fliers passed out in a park and placed on car windshields.

Swastikas painted on the sides of buildings and etched into playground equipment.

Bomb threats to synagogues.

Slurs shouted at Jewish worshippers.

The Anti-Defamation League documented all of those incidents in Pittsburgh during the last few months of last year.

This summer, during the trial for the man now convicted of killing 11 congregants in a Pittsburgh synagogue, antisemitic fliers and stickers appeared throughout Squirrel Hill, the center of Jewish life in the city.

“I really thought we kind of put this history behind us. But I guess I was naive,” said Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, a refugee resettlement. “To see antisemitism flaring up across the world and in our own country, to see synagogues becoming fortresses, it’s really distressing.”

Incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise locally and nationally for at least eight years, statistics show.

Last year, there were more than 3,500 antisemitic incidents in the United States, a 36% increase over 2021. It was the highest number recorded since the Anti-Defamation League began tracking incidents in 1979.

A record-high number of incidents were reported nationally three times in the past five years, the organization said.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said there were 146 antisemitic incidents in the city during the first six months of this year — already surpassing the 122 incidents reported all of last year. There were 82 incidents in 2021 and just 27 in 2017, the year before the Pittsburgh synagogue attack occurred.

“I think the whole world changed after Tree of Life,” said Marcia Bronstein, regional director of the American Jewish Committee in Philadelphia. “No one ever thought we’d see a mass shooting like that in America.”

‘Visibly Jewish’

The increase in antisemitism has caused some Jews to grow wary of outwardly displaying their faith.

One American Jewish Committee intern was comfortable wearing his kippa, or yarmulche, in public in Pittsburgh where he grew up, but not at college in Philadelphia, Bronstein said.

“He doesn’t want to become a target, and he wants to be safe,” she said. “That’s heartbreaking.”

Others display resolve, even defiance.

“I’ve seen antisemitism, but we didn’t change anything. We kept on being Jewish,” said Rabbi Yisroel Altein, a Brooklyn native and spiritual leader of the Orthodox group Chabad of Squirrel Hill.

Altein is what antisemitism experts call “visibly Jewish.”

A Squirrel Hill resident since 2004 and a father of six, Altein is bearded and wears a yarmulche and tzitzit, which are fringes or tassels on the ceremonial garments of Orthodox men.

Altein said people sometimes yell Jewish slurs at him on the street in Pittsburgh. He said it doesn’t faze him.

“I’m from New York,” he laughed. “We scream at people.”

“I’ve seen people in response to antisemitism wanting to take off their kippa,” said Laura Cherner, director of the community relations council for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. “On the other hand, I’ve also heard from people that in response to antisemitism say, ‘I’m going to wear a kippa or a Star of David,’ really leaning into it.”

Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, a patriarch in the Orthodox community who is often called Pittsburgh’s longest-serving rabbi today, sees bonds among Jews and non-Jews in the city as antisemitism grows.

“Our Jewish community, and the wider community, is one of unity, mutual respect and support, and the community has a long history of that,” Rosenfeld said. “The degree of this cohesiveness is something unique to Pittsburgh, even in the United States.

“The shooting only revealed that cohesiveness and made it even stronger. We can’t obsess with evil and darkness. We need to bring light to the world.”

Jews can’t combat antisemitism alone

Noah Schoen grew up Jewish in Squirrel Hill.

He attended services at Congregation Beth Shalom and joined USY, a Jewish youth group. During the summers he went to Camp Ramah, a Jewish camp about two hours north of Toronto.

After college in New York City, Schoen moved to Boston. The synagogue shooting brought him home, where he co-founded an oral history project on the incident. He helped interview more than 100 people.

“There was a profound need for listening,” said Schoen, 30, an antisemitism educator who now lives in Greenfield. “We’d say, ‘What has this been like for you?’ and people would talk for two hours.”

He was touched by city residents’ solidarity in the wake of the shooting.

“The story I grew up with (was) only the most extraordinary humans would stand up against antisemitism,” Schoen said. “But here in Pittsburgh, people stood up and said, ‘We are horrified.’

“A lot of people in Pittsburgh thought this was an attack on them, and they wanted to do something about it.”

Several experts said battling antisemitism starts with Jews and non-Jews alike.

“I believe change begins from the bottom up and begins with people and, above all else, with education,” said Alon Milwicki, a senior research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center, who studies the topic.

Jews can’t combat antisemitism alone, the American Jewish Committee’s Bronstein said. Only 2% of Americans are Jewish. Worldwide, she said, the numbers have still not surpassed what they were before the Holocaust.

“It’s a societal problem,” Bronstein said. “That’s something that needs to be understood. Parents need to understand all their children have a role to play in stopping it.”

Jews and police in Pittsburgh historically have had a good relationship, police Chief Larry Scirotto said. The department follows up on every security concern and threat “in a meaningful and engaged way.”

In the months leading up to and during the trial, Scirotto said, everyone in the department was hypervigilant, as was the community.

Throughout the trial, victims’ families and survivors were taken to and from the federal courthouse in Downtown with a police motorcycle and Department of Homeland Security escort.

Scirotto said it was meant to create a safe environment for those already impacted by the attack.

“It was an effort that we, as a department, thought could minimize the additional trauma they continue to face, to minimize some of that public exposure,” he said.

Growing security threats

Mark Hetfield remembers the date.

Nov. 13, 2015.

Islamic extremists attacked Paris. Thirty-seven U.S. governors responded by banning Syrian Muslims from their states.

“That, to us, was shocking — that governments could ban people from coming to their states based on where they were born or what their religion was,” said Hetfield of HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. “It was clear that people were stoking fear for political gain.”

The second change? 2018.

HIAS was increasing security in refugee hot spots: Kenya, Venezuela and Chad.

It needed a security director. The job search was halfway through on Oct. 27, 2018, when 11 Jewish congregants were killed in Pittsburgh.

It would be revealed that the synagogue shooter was motivated by antisemitism and his hatred of HIAS’ work with refugees. One of the congregations he attacked voiced support for HIAS.

Today, HIAS’ security director spends as much time on U.S. threats on the rest of the world combined.

Hetfield testified this summer in the synagogue shooting trial — the first time he’s ever spoken in court about an antisemitic event.

“Our culture at HIAS, which has always been a welcoming culture, has become really security-focused,” said Hetfield, who is Jewish. “There’s been a response to fear by blaming the other, and things have gone downhill from there.”

Things weren’t always this way, said Hetfield, who joined HIAS as a caseworker in 1989.

“There was a time when HIAS didn’t have any worries about security,” he said. “We looked at our work like motherhood and apple pie: it was bipartisan.

“All we did was welcome refugees. And what is so controversial about that?”

‘Extremists never miss an opportunity’

The Anti-Defamation League doesn’t mince words on antisemitism.

“It’s obviously alarming that we’ve seen such a massive increase in antisemitism we reported, not just in the last couple years but in the last 10 years,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism.

Segal called the synagogue shooter’s bigoted activity on Gab.com, a far-right website, “not remarkable.”

“The big difference is, five years later, that sort of violent antisemitism has grown,” he said. “It’s become a key strain in the larger hate movement. And (the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter is) looked at as someone in the center, someone who kick-started it.”

The shooter’s trial, which ran from May 30 until Thursday, sparked increased “chatter” online, with some white supremacists “encouraging people to do more,” Segal said.

“Extremists never miss an opportunity to leverage a crisis or get their message out,” he said. “The trial of the synagogue shooter was another in a long line of incidents.”

Brad Orsini also sees the surge locally.

“The Jewish community is currently facing the most complex and dynamic threat environment in the history of the United States,” he said.

Orsini should know. After serving 28 years as an FBI special agent, Orsini worked as the security head of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

In 2020, he joined Secure Community Network, or SCN, which monitors security for Jewish groups nationwide.

SCN’s numbers bear out the trend. The group tracked 13,030 active threats to Jewish facilities in 2022, and received a record 2,539 incident reports, up 25% from the year before — the highest threat level in SCN’s history, Orsini said.

Antisemitism never really goes away

One in four Jews surveyed told the American Jewish Committee they’ve experienced antisemitism.

An AJC study from 2022 showed 89% of Jews felt antisemitism was a problem in America. Of those, 82% said it had increased over the past five years.

In the United States, antisemitism never really goes away, said Milwicki of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On a 1-to-10 scale, he said, the lowest it gets here is a 6 or 7. In recent years, it’s been a 10.

The incidents he tracks for his research are pretty consistent, week to week. He noted, though, that it’s much easier to report now than it was years ago.

In May, the Biden administration developed the first U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, releasing a 60-page report on the issue. Biden called it the most ambitious effort by the American government to combat antisemitism.

“Our intelligence agencies have determined that domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy — including antisemitism — is the greatest terrorist threat to our homeland today,” Biden wrote in the report.

As part of the plan, the government laid out four pillars in the fight: increase awareness and understanding of antisemitism and the threat it poses to the United States; improve safety and security in Jewish communities; reverse the normalization of antisemitism; and build cross-community coalitions to counter hate.

Antisemitism over the years

In Pittsburgh, the first possible act of antisemitism dates to 1839 and a man named Lazarus Bellerbach.

While some suspect Jews lived at Fort Pitt as far back as the 1750s, the first formal record of Jews living in the city dates to 1838, said Eric Lidji, director of the Rauh Jewish History Program at the Heinz History Center.

A year later, Bellerbach, a Jewish peddler, was murdered as he was leaving Pittsburgh to return to his native Lancaster County, records show. The motive remains unclear.

“Pittsburgh knows all too well what antisemitism looks like after enduring the largest attack against Jews in our country’s history,” said Shawn Brokos, a 24-year FBI veteran and director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. “But even prior to the events of Oct. 27, 2018, our area saw and experienced antisemitism.”

Lidji said Pittsburgh Jews in the community’s early days faced “institutional antisemitism.”

Christian “blue laws” restricted them from working Sundays. That, combined with observing Shabbat Saturday, meant making a living was tough.

Another example of institutional antisemitism was barring Jewish doctors from working at city hospitals, Lidji said. Montefiore Hospital changed that, giving Jews a place to give — and receive — medical treatment. It later moved from the Hill District, once heavily Jewish, to Oakland.

There were “coordinated attacks” on Hill District synagogues in the 1920s, where people attempted to destroy Torah scrolls, Lidji said. Newspapers reported street attacks on Jews in the South Side and Lawrenceville around World War I.

Lidji found “off-hand references” from the 1940s to people throwing bricks through an Oakland synagogue’s window during holiday services.

In 1946, vandals destroyed a sign promoting the new Squirrel Hill site of the Tree of Life synagogue, Lidji said. A group of Christian ministers paid to replace it.

More recently, Neal Rosenblum, an Orthodox Jew living in Squirrel Hill, was shot five times on April 17, 1986, as he went to pray during evening services at a Torah study center in his neighborhood, newspapers reported.

Law enforcement at the time said Rosenblum — who wore clothing such as a black fedora, associated with Haredis, an Orthodox Jewish sect — was killed because of his Jewish appearance.

In 2000, an unemployed Pittsburgh immigration lawyer killed a 63-year-old Jewish woman — his parents’ neighbor in Mt. Lebanon — then set her house on fire, the Tribune-Review reported. Richard Baumhammers, then 34, shot five more people, all ethnic or racial minorities.

Attorneys argued that Baumhammers suffered from mental illness and committed the crimes while he was delusional. Prosecutors successfully disputed that. On May 11, 2001, a jury sentenced him to death by execution.

Baumhammers has remained on death row in a state prison in Greene County ever since.

There also were broader representations of antisemitism in Pittsburgh, Lidji said.

“The Dearborn Independent,” an antisemitic publication backed by industrialist Henry Ford, tried to set up a Pittsburgh office in the early 1920s. The Klu Klux Klan was active in the area through World War II. The Jewish Criterion, a newspaper founded in 1895, frequently ran editorials about Jewish persecution.

“It’s very hard to search for these things because, a lot of times, they didn’t present as ‘antisemitic,’” he said.

“There are a lot of things like this. If you’re looking broadly at this, there have always been trends.”

‘We’re going to make this a part of the community’

JFCS stands behind the HIAS mission of resettling refugees in Pittsburgh.

Formerly known as Jewish Family and Community Services, the Squirrel Hill nonprofit started in 1937, aiding Jews fleeing pogroms and later Nazi Germany.

In the 1990s, they settled Russians. Then, Butanese and Nepali refugees.

Today, many of the refugees coming to Pittsburgh are from Syria, Congo and Afghanistan, said Dana Gold, the group’s chief operating officer.

Pittsburghers are very supportive.

“We have had wonderful relationships with landlords, who take a risk,” Gold said. “These people don’t have a job, they don’t speak English, they don’t have a credit history. But they take them in, and then they enrich the neighborhood.”

A family of Afghans recently moved to Millvale, Gold said. A year later, residents who befriended them want to start a GoFundMe page to buy a building where Millvale can house several refugee families.

“You see people say, ‘We’re going to make this a part of the community,’” she said.

Some Pittsburghers who lost family in the synagogue shooting also support refugees.

Michele Rosenthal — whose brothers, Cecil and David, were killed in the synagogue attack — said she never gave much thought to immigration. After she learned the shooter opposed settling refugees in the United States, she decided to support it.

At Thursday’s sentencing hearing, Rosenthal said that from now on, on each anniversary of the shooting, her family will donate to an organization supporting immigrants in the shooter’s name. They plan to send him the acknowledgement in prison.

“Cecil and David would have welcomed him to their synagogue, because that’s who they were.”

‘We want to say who we are’

Jewish National Fund, one of the largest Jewish nonprofit groups in the world, added the 11 synagogue shooting victims’ names to a 9/11 memorial in Jerusalem in 2019.

“The memorial was not just about the victims of 9/11; it’s about tolerance,” said Russell Robinson, the group’s president for 25 years. “We wanted to make the statement to the world that it’s not just to memorialize them. It’s to remind everyone they died because of hate.”

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto visited the site and planted an olive tree, a sign of peace. Gov. Tom Wolf also visited.

Robinson, like Altein, stands in defiance of spikes in antisemitism.

He stopped calling his organization JNF after the 2018 attack, stressing the “Jewish” in Jewish National Fund.

“I’m not going to stop. I want to be proud of who I am,” said Robinson, who is Jewish. “We want to say who we are. We are not hiding behind letters anymore.”

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