TV Note in Honor Bari Weiss and all the Tikvah Trumpscum Jews: "A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting" on HBO
David Shasha
“A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting” is currently screening on HBO
https://www.hbo.com/movies/a-tree-of-life-the-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting
Tree of Life survivors, families of victims tell their own stories in HBO documentary
By: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Trish Adlesic happened to be in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018. She had arrived in town two days earlier from upstate New York to celebrate her father’s birthday at her childhood home in the North Hills. Two days later, she found herself at the epicenter of the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history when 11 worshippers were gunned down at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.
“It was overwhelming, the thought of this happening and the agony being inflicted on these beautiful families,” Adlesic told the Post-Gazette. “I was in a state of shock. It was heart-wrenching on every level, and I wanted to respond.”
Adlesic is an entertainment industry veteran and co-director of the 2017 documentary “I Am Evidence,” which focuses on how police departments nationwide handle sexual assault cases. Within days of the shooting, Adlesic had already assembled a local team and begun filming the aftermath of the tragedy and how it was impacting her hometown.
Her efforts culminated in the documentary “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting,” premiering at 9 p.m. Oct. 26 on HBO and HBO Max. Adlesic directed “A Tree of Life,” which counts Western Pennsylvania natives Michael Keaton, Billy Porter and Mark Cuban among its executive producers.
The documentary is largely comprised of interviews with survivors and victims’ family members with an additional focus on the city’s many displays of unity in the wake of the shooting. Adlesic had completed trauma training while making “I Am Evidence” and made a point to take a “trauma-informed approach” to this extremely sensitive subject matter.
“I really thought that if I applied those principles to this story, it might present an opportunity to shed light and provide a safe space where participants could be given agency,” she said. “Those who lived it should tell it. They determine how the story gets told, and it should be told in their voice.”
A private screening of “A Tree of Life” was held last month at The Manor Theatre in Squirrel Hill for survivors, families and other community members. Michael Bernstein, chair of the Interim Governance Committee for the national Tree of Life Remember. Rebuild. Renew. campaign, said in a statement to the Post-Gazette that he believes Adlesic’s film is “a powerful, honest and heart-rending telling of the story.”
Eliezer “Elie” and Joy Rosenthal, parents of Tree of Life victims David and Cecil Rosenthal, said in a joint statement that “A Tree of Life” “gave us the opportunity to share our personal feelings about ‘the boys.’” The documentary contains interviews with their daughters, Michele and Diane Rosenthal, as well as testimonials from others about how the Rosenthal brothers never failed to brighten any space they entered.
“With all the bad things going on in the world, we wanted to share the good that the boys embodied,” they said. “Cecil and David touched many lives in a unique and positive way. Trish allowed us to share our story about the boys from our hearts and memories, and allowed us to both laugh and cry during the process.”
Anthony Fienberg, the son of Tree of Life victim Joyce Fienberg, said that he “wanted our perspective to be heard on how we approached life in the aftermath” of that day. Audrey Glickman, a Tree of Life member and shooting survivor, appreciated that Adlesic “asked us questions that no other interviewers had posed” and allowed everyone to “collectively shine our individual lights on the truth.”
“Talking with Trish was like writing a diary for all to read,” Glickman said. “It felt like the catharsis that comes from putting something into the record so you can stop rolling it around in your head. And yes, it gave us a vehicle from which to speak out publicly and say that we are humans, just like all others, and that prejudice, hatred and killing are wrong.
“I can't think of a better purpose for a documentary, or a better way to further the healing of a community and the world.”
Having famous Pittsburghers like Keaton, Porter and Cuban involved in the documentary was “remarkably special” for Adlesic, as was enlisting Broadway legend Idina Menzel to perform an original song that plays over the film’s end credits. “A Tree of Life” was mostly funded via grants and private donations; Cuban provided a grant that helped pay for the film’s editing.
“Being Jewish in Pittsburgh and knowing people who went to Tree of Life made it personal to me,” Cuban said in a email to the Post-Gazette. “So I was happy to help.”
Adlesic was adamant that her documentary provide a platform for those most affected by the synagogue shooting to tell their own stories rather than relying on experts and talking heads. She was blown away by their “courage, grace and kindness,” she said.
Though Adlesic tried to be “cautious politically” with “A Tree of Life,” there is a short section that dives into former President Donald Trump’s visit to Pittsburgh soon after the massacre and the increase in hateful rhetoric nationwide that may have inspired the shooter. She felt it “wouldn’t be telling the truth of what happened” to leave that part out entirely.
The director would much rather that HBO audiences see “A Tree of Life” as a portrait of the “intimacy that we share in this city” and how it was clear that no matter how fractured American society can feel sometimes, “our intentions really are to come together” in times of crisis.
“The only way we’re going to make progress is if we hold each other up, stand together and acknowledge one another,” she said. “The demonization of the other is tragic and really dangerous. Showing the humanity and honoring those who were so wrongfully taken shows that people have a voice and their voices should be heard.”
From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 18, 2022
HBO to release documentary on Tree of Life synagogue shooting
By: Chris Mautner
A new documentary about the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh is set to air on television later this month, according to a story from the Post-Gazette.
“A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting,” will premiere at 9 p.m. Oct. 26 on HBO and HBO Max.
The film is directed by Trish Adlesic, co-director of the 2017 documentary “I Am Evidence,” which examined. how police departments nationwide handle sexual assault cases. Western Pennsylvania natives Michael Keaton, Billy Porter and Mark Cuban are among the film’s executive producers. Actress and singer Idina Menzel will perform an original song that plays over the film’s end credits.
“It was overwhelming, the thought of this happening and the agony being inflicted on these beautiful families,” Adlesic said to the Post-Gazette about making the film. “I was in a state of shock. It was heart-wrenching on every level, and I wanted to respond.”
On Oct. 27, 2018, a gunman killed 11 worshipers from Tree of Life and two other congregations — Dor Hadash and New Light — that shared the building, located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
The accused shooter, Robert G. Bowers, has yet to go to trial for what many consider to be America’s deadliest antisemitic attack.
The documentary mostly consists of interviews with survivors and victims’ family members, as well as a look into the city’s many displays of unity in the wake of the shooting.
Adlesic, who had completed trauma training while making “I Am Evidence,” told the Post-Gazette that what she learned influenced her approach to this film.
“I really thought that if I applied those principles to this story, it might present an opportunity to shed light and provide a safe space where participants could be given agency,” she said. “Those who lived it should tell it. They determine how the story gets told, and it should be told in their voice.”
A private screening of the movie was held last month at The Manor Theatre in Squirrel Hill for survivors, families and other community members.
Audrey Glickman, a Tree of Life member and shooting survivor, told the Post-Gazette that she appreciated that Adlesic “asked us questions that no other interviewers had posed” and allowed everyone to “collectively shine our individual lights on the truth.”
“Talking with Trish was like writing a diary for all to read,” Glickman said. “It felt like the catharsis that comes from putting something into the record so you can stop rolling it around in your head.”
Read more about the film over at the Post-Gazette’s website.
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From Penn Live, October 18, 2022
‘A Tree of Life’ Review: Synagogue Shooting Doc Goes Light on Politics, Deep on Humanity
By: Angie Han
In the wake of a horror like the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, in which a white supremacist walked into Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha and shot dead 11 people, the same depressingly familiar questions tend to recur: Why did this happen? How could this happen? What should be done? What should we make of it?
HBO’s A Tree of Life offers no easy answers on those fronts, and nor does it pretend to. But it does offer clarity of a different, no less crucial, sort. By focusing on intimate firsthand accounts over hard-nosed analysis or shocking new details, it brings forth the humanity of those impacted by the incident, refusing to let them be reduced to statistics or defined by tragedy.
Through interviews with survivors, family members of slain victims, and other local community representatives, director Trish Adlesic charts a rough course from the days immediately following the attack to the months and years of healing after, though it’s not always clear watching the film which bits of footage were captured when.
There are no outside experts brought in to pontificate on the events from an academic distance, and little time is spent trying to comprehend the motives or mindset of the killer, beyond a basic acknowledgment of his white-supremacist beliefs. The perspective is an inside one.
At just 87 minutes, A Tree of Life can’t hope to capture the full experience of one single person’s trauma — let alone those of the innumerable others touched by it in some way, like the local Muslim community leaders moved to raise funds for their Jewish brethren’s funeral and medical costs. But Adlesic shows a remarkable gift for locating little details that make an outsized impact by drawing out a speaker’s personality, by hinting at greater emotional or thematic depths, by sticking in the heart after drier facts have faded from memory.
In one particularly haunting anecdote, survivor Audrey Glickman fixates on the fact that she could not call 9-1-1 during the shooting because she’d left her phone on the pew when it wouldn’t fit into her pockets. “It was a poor decision, and I’ll never go to the synagogue again without pockets big enough to have my phone on me,” she explains with wrenching pragmatism. Others are more lighthearted, like Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, citing the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 1979 win that invokes the city’s scrappy, communal spirit.
Each has, of course, been carefully selected from hours of filmed interviews to emphasize a certain point or encourage a specific reaction. But Adlesic and editors Eric Schuman and Lorena Luciano capture them with the natural, unhurried flow of a personal conversation. The strangers on the screen start to feel less like abstract victims in a national news story and more like our own friends and neighbors, sitting down across from us to chat or reminisce or open up with touching vulnerability.
Inevitably, some of these talks turn to politics. The shooting — which claimed victims from the New Light and Dor Hadash congregations that also worshipped in the building owned by Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha — cannot be extricated from the social and cultural forces that gave rise to it, and A Tree of Life acknowledges as much. While the filmmakers avoid showing anything too graphic, they do include upsetting language and imagery to illustrate the history of antisemitism in America, incorporating clips of a 1939 American Nazi Party rally and a modern internet jingle decrying “Jew lies” among others.
On the whole, however, A Tree of Life handles politics with a light touch. The balance can be a tricky one to find. On one hand, the film’s (or the subjects’) reluctance to take more explicit stances can seem curious, even timid. At one point, a security expert notes that groups like the Ku Klux Klan have recently felt empowered, but demurs when asked why. “We both know what the answer is, and I’m not going to answer that question,” he finally says after some hemming and hawing.
On the other hand, when A Tree of Life does attempt to get more overtly political, the results can be clumsy. A montage that aims to connect the shooting survivors’ activism to other contemporary protests supporting queer rights or Black Lives Matter or Stop Asian Hate is stirring in the moment, thanks in large part to Laura Karpman and Amelia Allen’s score. But it looks too tidy on closer examination, given that we’ve heard little from the actual survivors (some of whom describe themselves as “apolitical”) about whether they see themselves in solidarity with these other movements.
Still, these become minor quibbles in the face of A Tree of Life‘s immense powers of compassion, curiosity and patience, and its willingness to let survivors tell their own tales even when they’re messy or incomplete. Besides, there are surely plenty of others who are eager to deliver, or have already delivered, more expansive or more pointed versions of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting story — ones that work harder to expose the killer’s beliefs or slot the tragedy into the greater history of Jewish America or deploy it for arguments about gun control and hate crimes.
A Tree of Life‘s own mission lies in empathy and understanding at the ground level. Near the end of the film, survivor Joe Charny, reading from a book, offers this kernel of wisdom: “To love God truly, one must first love all humanity.” I can’t presume to know how Adlesic and her project collaborators might feel about God. But in their insistence on seeing the shooting survivors as people first, caring enough to ask about their feelings and opinions and their personal tales, A Tree of Life surely stands as an act of love toward humanity.
From The Hollywood Reporter, October 25, 2022