Newsletter Special: The Tree of Life Synagogue Pittsburgh Trumpmassacre
David Shasha
I have just seen the very moving – and pointedly political – HBO documentary on the 2018 Pittsburgh Synagogue Trumpmassacre:
https://www.hbo.com/movies/a-tree-of-life-the-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting
In order to provide some context for the documentary, I have collected the many articles that I published in the SHU at the time of the horrific event.
Sadly, there have been many more mass shootings and many more Anti-Semitic attacks in this country since October 27, 2018:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/us/antisemitism-jewish-history-ye-trump-race-deconstructed-reaj
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
The HBO documentary not only provides heartbreaking testimony from the survivors, but firmly places the massacre in the Trumpworld Alt-Right Fascism:
It is resolute in the way it opposes Alt-Right Anti-Semitism to Progressive-Left WOKE causes like Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, and the battle for gender equality and sexual orientation.
This Intersectionality stands in firm opposition to the reactionary values of Tikvah Fund stalwarts like Bret Jewish Genius Stephens and his desperate battle against Cancel Culture:
https://sapirjournal.org/journal/cancellation/
David Project Bernstein and his shrill crusade against WOKE Progressivism:
And, of course, Bari Rufo Austin Weiss, who has allied with the Cancelled in order to help promote the Trump Fascism in its Orban variety:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/_Lp1f4sedJI/m/U57bwbhtBQAJ
https://newrepublic.com/article/168080/university-austin-hungary-shapiro-boghossian
She has partnered with Thomas Sowell-Clarence Thomas disciple Glenn Loury to promote a rabidly anti-WOKE agenda, that fits perfectly into Christopher Rufo’s White Nationalist scam:
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/anti-racism-anti-semitism-glenn-loury-bari-weiss
https://www.city-journal.org/christopher-rufo-on-woke-education
Rufo has become the new Joe McCarthy:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chris-rufo-race-theory-cult-federal-government
It is all one big happy family of the decrepit:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/QpI_PaJVhvQ/m/m6wLZzqBCgAJ
And that is where things stand at the moment, which brings us back to the 2018 Pittsburgh Trumpmassacre.
We begin this special newsletter with the first article I posted right after that Shabbat, as I was first processing the horror. Max Boot provides the requisite outrage and Trumpcontext that puts into question American ideals in the wake of the Zombie Orange Pig and his racist hate.
After reading Boot’s article I received an e-mail from Kehilath Jarvanka and blew my lid. Rather than apologizing for the shul’s links to the Trump-Kushner family and that racist hate, the rabbis chose to remain silent on their complicity, acting as if they had nothing to do with it. As those living in the Orthodox Jewish community know well, guilt-by-association is standard operating procedure, and though it has been some time since Jarvanka were members there, no one in leadership has chosen to address the SHANDA. More than this, it remains clear that many members of the shul remain committed to Trump and his Fascism.
I then sought to review what the Neo-Con Jews were saying about the Pittsburgh Trumpmassacre, and looking back at the event four years later we can see how much more enthusiastic those Neo-Con Jews were about Trump at the time. Though things are changing of late.
Which we can see in articles from Shmuley Boteach, Dennis Prager, and even David Brooks. Boteach and Prager are big Trumpsupporters, while Brooks chose to make the shootings about mental health and “loneliness,” pompously and ignorantly citing social science theories about mass shooters. Nothing on Trump, nothing on the NRA. Very David Brooks, very Christian Nationalist. As for Boteach Schneersohn-Christ and the New Jews for Jesus CEO, their robust Trumprecord speaks for itself.
New York Times reporter David Halbfinger wrote an excellent summary of the internal rifts in the Jewish community, in both Israel and America, when it came to Trump and Pittsburgh. It is a very handy review of the matter that remains a stain on the Jewish community, as many of us here in Brooklyn can see in the sudden sprouting of “Lee Zeldin for Governor” signs on Ocean Parkway and on private lawns throughout our neighborhood. There remains the obvious contradiction between Trump’s racism and Anti-Semitism and the Right Wing Jewish need to feel White and Christian.
In this context it is important to note that the Pittsburgh shooter – whose trial has yet to begin – made remarks against Trump, as if he was not the real leader of the Alt-Right cabal:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/robert-bowers-is-neo-nazi-who-posted-about-killing-jews-on-gab
However much this point was used in the Neo-Con pro-Trump apologetics, it was pretty clear – as we see in the HBO documentary – that, once Pittsburgh chose to pass a set of Gun Control laws in the wake of massacre, the Trumpist QAnon whackjobs and gun-nuts were on the scene screaming their Fascist hatred in the shrillest tones. Do not be fooled into thinking that Trump’s movement was not ultimately behind the Pittsburgh massacre, as it specifically targeted HIAS in the context of the “Build the Wall” Anti-Immigration hysteria:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/us/hias-pittsburgh-robert-bowers.html
HIAS has long been a White Supremacist target:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/hias-tree-of-life-shooting-immigration.html
I was happy to include an article by American-born Israeli Rabbi Mishael Zion which takes a determinedly anti-Neo-Con view of the matter, even mentioning the “president” as responsible for this new wave of Jew-hatred. Though he did not say the word “Trump” explicitly, compared to what we were seeing in the Right Wing Orthodox Jewish world, Zion’s plea for peace and tolerance against what we know to be Trumpworld was decidedly a good thing.
We close the special newsletter with a Tikvah Tablet masterpiece from Jonathan Sarna, which argues that the Pittsburgh massacre was not out of the ordinary, as he does an American Anti-Semitism connect-the-dots in a way that ultimately serves to exonerate Trump, as is the Tikvah Tablet way.
We will also recall how Sarna sought to minimize the use of Blackface in the Jewish entertainment history:
https://www.jta.org/2019/02/06/ny/jews-and-blackface-its-complicated
Here is how Sarna put it:
In an email interview with The Jewish Week, Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish American history at Brandeis University, said, “Many believe that Jolson was actually displaying sympathy for African Americans” in his “Jazz Singer” performance.
“Blackface, once upon a time, was commonplace and not viewed as negative or an effort to stigmatize; indeed, many of those who put on blackface felt that through it they came to understand something of the black experience (much as in “Gentleman’s Agreement,” the character who pretended to be a Jew came to understand the stigma of being Jewish),” Sarna continued. “Over time, of course, blackface became unacceptable, seen either as demeaning or as a form of cultural appropriation.”
I do not think that a better example of Tikvah Fund Neo-Con Jewish tone-deafness can be provided.
We have recently seen Right Wing freakouts over Ken Burns and CNN and how they have dealt with Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/doVypPkLXnM/m/iJ4zjonxCwAJ
https://worldisraelnews.com/cnn-show-is-deliberate-whitewash-of-left-wing-antisemitism-rabbis-say/
JNS head honcho Jonathan Tobin is still actively defending Trump from the charge of Anti-Semitism:
https://www.jns.org/opinion/why-the-left-cant-stop-trying-to-link-trump-to-anti-semitism/
As he has defended the YEEZUS from Cancel Culture:
https://www.jns.org/opinion/will-canceling-kanye-west-turn-the-tide-on-anti-semitism/
And has also attacked Ken Burns:
https://www.commentary.org/articles/jonathan-tobin/ken-burns-holocaust-documentary/
So, in reflecting on the Pittsburgh horror, we once again look to the current election and the ways in which Trump and his Alt-Right White Christian Nationalist mob seek to take over the country by any means necessary. We have election deniers, violent insurrectionists, and cowardly enablers – like those of The Tikvah Fund – who come at Democracy and Liberalism from different angles, though in the end they are all trying to re-install Trump in the White House, and ultimately empower his minions to commit more racial atrocities.
And that is the ultimate legacy of the Pittsburgh Synagogue Trumpmassacre: Those who fail to learn from history and doomed to repeat it.
David Shasha
What is Happening to Our Country?
By: Max Boot
The Sickening Trumpjews at Kehilath Jarvanka
By: David Shasha
The Right-Wing Neo-Con Jews React to the Pittsburgh Trumpworld Massacre
By: David Shasha
Politicizing the Massacre of 11 Pittsburgh Jews Must Stop
By: Shmuley Boteach
“We Don’t Want You Here!” The Trump Jew-Killers “Honor” Pittsburgh Victims in the Face of Protest
By: David Shasha
The Pittsburgh Synagogue, Anti-Semitism, and Trump
By: Dennis Prager
The New Cold War
By: David Brooks
Pittsburgh Killing Aftermath Bares Jewish Rifts in Israel and America
By: David M. Halbfinger
As an Israeli, I am Proud to Be an American Jew
By: Rabbi Mishael Zion
The Future of the Pittsburgh Synagogue Masacre
By: Jonathan D. Sarna