Overview

A piercing portrait of the struggles and triumphs of one of America's renowned Jewish neighborhoods in the wake of unspeakable tragedy that highlights the hopes, fears, and tensions all Americans must confront on the road to healing. Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, is one of the oldest Jewish neighborhoods in the country, known for its tight-knit community and the profusion of multigenerational families. On October 27, 2018, a gunman killed eleven Jews who were worshipping at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill--the most deadly anti-Semitic attack in American history.   Many neighborhoods would be understandably subsumed by despair and recrimination after such an event, but not this one. Mark Oppenheimer poignantly shifts the focus away from the criminal and his crime, and instead presents the historic, spirited community at the center of this heartbreak. He speaks with residents and nonresidents, Jews and gentiles, survivors and witnesses, teenagers and seniors, activists and historians.   Together, these stories provide a kaleidoscopic and nuanced account of collective grief, love, support, and revival. But Oppenheimer also details the difficult dialogue and messy confrontations that Squirrel Hill had to face in the process of healing, and that are a necessary part of true growth and understanding in any community. He has reverently captured the vibrancy and caring that still characterize Squirrel Hill, and it is this phenomenal resilience that can provide inspiration to any place burdened with discrimination and hate.

Full Product Details

9780525657194

Table of Contents

Reviews

The best portrait of a Jewish community in America since Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers. This book will speak for decades. With a remarkable and often quirky cast of characters from the coffee shops, synagogues, schools, and street corners of Squirrel Hill, Oppenheimer somehow tells the story of every Jewish American community. We come to know them as neighbors. We feel their joys, we recognize their troubles, and increasingly we mourn their antisemitic tragedies. Squirrel Hill is the masterpiece account of 21st century American Jewish life that I have been waiting for. --Michael Alexander, author of Jazz Age Jews

In October 2017, when a white nationalist terrorist carried out the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history, he tore at the fabric of one of the oldest and most dynamic Jewish communities in the country. He also unleashed the formidable pen of one of Squirrel Hill's most talented and committed descendants. Mark Oppenheimer presents us now with a heartrending, polyphonic rendering of the multifaceted people and stories that populate this all-American enclave united by tremendous grief and resilience. A tour de force of compassionate listening that captures a specific community in the aftermath of unspeakable hate, in the process revealing the tragic superficiality of our supposed differences. --Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Self-Portrait in Black and White The comparison will seem august, but the work that kept coming to my mind as I read Mark Oppenheimer's Squirrel Hill was John Hersey's Hiroshima. Same engagement with mass killing through the words and lives of survivors. Same unassuming reportorial acumen. Same granular day-by-day, block-by-block sense of reality. Same candor. Same earned poignancy at the end. Agreed, the nuclear bombing of a city dwarfs mass murder in a synagogue, but it was a Jew who first wrote that he who destroys one life, it is as if he has destroyed the whole world, while he who saves one life, it is as if he has saved the whole world. --Jack Miles, author of God in the Qur'an In Squirrel Hill, Mark Oppenheimer presents a window into the life of a neighborhood at the height of terror and just after. What we see is not only tragedy but also myriad sensitive renderings of memorable figures -- the Jewish and Gentile elders, parents, teenagers; artisans, worshipers, and activists called by crisis to transform themselves and their community. Ultimately, this is a textured exploration of a key moment in Jewish life, in the life of a city, and in American life. Squirrel Hill is for anyone who seeks to understand the impossible question vexing our country today: how to persist after and amidst hate. --Sanjena Sathian, author of Gold Diggers Mark Oppenheimer's straight-up account of the 2018 massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue is where this story begins--before it becomes an intimate drama of a fiercely American and Jewish resistance to our nation's new scourge of domestic terrorism. --Jack Hitt, author of Bunch of Amateurs In Squirrel Hill, Mark Oppenheimer has written more than just the definitive account of a horrific tragedy. He has told a compassionate and compelling story about one of the most unique Jewish communities in America. --Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein Squirrel Hill is the remarkable, inspiring and beautifully told story about community, struggle, faith, hope and love. I don't think anyone but Mark Oppenheimer could have helped us better understand what it means to be a community in a time of tragedy, to foster hope in a time of despair and to practice love in a time of hate. --James Martin, SJ, author of Learning to Pray The best portrait of a Jewish community in America since Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers. This book will speak for decades. With a remarkable and often quirky cast of characters from the coffee shops, synagogues, schools, and street corners of Squirrel Hill, Oppenheimer somehow tells the story of every Jewish American community. We come to know them as neighbors. We feel their joys, we recognize their troubles, and increasingly we mourn their antisemitic tragedies. Squirrel Hill is the masterpiece account of 21st century American Jewish life that I have been waiting for. --Michael Alexander, author of Jazz Age Jews

Author Information

"MARK OPPENHEIMER has been covering American religion for 25 years. He holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale, and has taught at Stanford, Wesleyan, Wellesley, NYU, Boston College, and Yale, where he was the founding director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. From 2010 to 2016, he wrote the ""Beliefs"" column, about religion, for The New York Times, and he has also written for publications including The New Yorker, The Nation, GQ, Slate, and many more. He created Unorthodox, the world's most popular podcast about Jewish life and culture, with over 7 million downloads to date. More recently, he hosted an eight-part podcast called Gatecrashers, about the history of Jews and antisemitism at Ivy League schools. He is the author of five books, including The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia and, most recently, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, four daughters, one son, and two dogs."

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available