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Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood
Top of the pile
85
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
75/100Critics
94/100Scholars
Author:
Mark Oppenheimer
Publisher:
Knopf
Date:
October 5, 2021
A journalist offers a portrait of Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, where a gunman murdered eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue on October 27, 2018 in the most deadly anti-Semitic attack in American history.
What The Reviewers Say
... a poignant, deeply researched account of the Pittsburgh Jewish neighborhood in the aftermath of tragedy.
His compelling exploration of its impact on the community is by turns searing and compassionate. It is an emotionally draining terrain, flecked with occasional, unexpected pockets of consolation. But in placing this hate crime against our country’s patchwork canvas of faith, politics and violence, Oppenheimer provides a powerful meditation on the changing meaning of community and belonging in an age of disconnection and isolation.
If you are wondering if an outsider could hope to capture the mood—maybe even the soul—of a neighborhood to which he does not belong following an unthinkably horrific event, I tender this take: Perhaps an outsider, as it turns out, is best suited to do so. Oppenheimer’s being far enough removed from Squirrel Hill allows him to observe meaningful details that could be too close in the line of vision for natives to see as clearly. Oppenheimer reports with candor and clarity in 18 chapters.
His immersive account—which also sheds light on the attack’s antecedents, historical context, and especially its geographic setting—is granular in its detail, emotionally intimate and often moving.
