PITTSBURGH (RNS) — On a blocked-off street behind the Jewish Community Center in the bustling heart of Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, roughly 1,000 people stood shoulder to shoulder Monday (Oct. 7) to commemorate the Hamas massacre in southern Israel a year ago. Some waved Israeli flags or held images of hostages. A wide diversity of Jews prayed, sang and remembered the 1,200 Israelis killed and 250 abducted into Gaza.
“This display of unity tonight represents community members with different Jewish observance from different geographies within the Pittsburgh region, different ages. This is what our Jewish community is all about,” said Jeffrey Finkelstein, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, which hosted the event.
As the sun set on the brisk, clear evening, Michal Alon, a nurse who survived the attacks in Israel last year, shared her account of being shot three times by a Hamas militant while visiting a military base. Though she is not from Pittsburgh, Alon said she was “thrilled” that so many members of the Diaspora were present to acknowledge the gravity of Oct. 7.
An hour earlier, and just two miles west in a park bordering Squirrel Hill, about 150 assembled on a grassy hill for an interfaith vigil that was equally solemn.
“Tonight is a vigil to honor the martyrs that have fallen, that have been killed by Israel’s invasion of Gaza during the past year,” said Mia Suwaid, a University of Pittsburgh student who co-leads the university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The event began with a speech by Karim Alshurafa, a local Palestinian who listed the names of more than 20 family members killed in Gaza over the last year. Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war of retaliation on Gaza.
Karim Alshurafa, left, addresses an interfaith vigil at Schenley Park, Oct. 7, 2024, in Pittsburgh. (RNS photo/Kathryn Post)
In many ways, the two events exemplify the broader tensions that have enveloped the city over the last year between defenders of Israel and those who stand in solidarity with Palestinians, some of whom are also Jewish. In August, a proposed ballot measure that would have barred the city of Pittsburgh from conducting business with entities that have ties to Israel was ultimately withdrawn, but not before the threat of legal challenges by Jewish leaders concerned that the proposal could endanger synagogues and Jewish organizations. Groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace have hosted several Palestinian liberation rallies in the Oakland neighborhood — home to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University — as members of Pittsburgh’s Jewish communities continued to meet in nearby Squirrel Hill every Sunday for a vigil calling for the rescue of Israeli hostages.
In August, two Jewish students wearing yarmulkes were attacked by a man wielding a glass bottle and wearing a kaffiyeh on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus.