Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
October 27th is a podcast that tells the story of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting through the voices of the local community.
Each episode introduces us to the story of a person who experienced the synagogue shooting and its aftermath: survivors and family members of those who were killed, Jewish community members, and their non-Jewish neighbors.
October 27th is adapted from Meanings of October 27th, an oral history project that interviewed over 100 Pittsburghers about their life stories and reflections on the shooting.
Visit the oral history archive: https://october27archive.org/oral-histories
Donate to support this project: https://bardian.bard.edu/register/meanings
Noah Schoen: On October 27th, 2018, Rabbi Jeremy Markiz wasn’t in Pittsburgh. He was in Los Angeles, California, and when he got the news about the synagogue shooting, it was just 24 hours before a crucial moment in his life.
Sunday, October 28th. That was Rabbi Jeremy’s wedding day.
In the first episode of this podcast, I talked about the way that the Torah is an oscillating narrative, a complex story of life’s ups and downs. So many of the stories we heard throughout this project were shared with us in the shape of the oscillating narrative. There was this instinct that Pittsburgh’s Jews had to tell the story in a way that would build resilience out of tragedy.
And there’s perhaps no interview that represents that instinct more than this one.
Schoen: Rabbi Jeremy, I'd love to know a little bit about where you come from.
Markiz: I was born in Los Angeles, and when I was five years old, we moved from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon.
But I think a big piece of where I come from is my experience growing up at synagogue in Portland. I grew up at a large, one thousand-family synagogue not so dissimilar to Conservative synagogues around the country. My parents didn't have a lot of Jewish education, so it was very much the family was exploring these things all together, and there was lots of things we didn’t know about or know what to do. My parents expressed and they showed with their actions that being a part of Jewish community mattered, and that it didn't matter how much you knew or didn't know, it was about being a part of it. And when we sat at the Shabbat table, we talked about why it mattered—that the questions that Judaism asks was something that was a worthy way of spending our time.
I think the value that my parents expressed early on was that you can learn from everyone, and that learning didn't only go from parent to child, but that children could teach their parents as well. And so at a certain point, I knew a great deal more than my parents. And that was okay. As I explored my own Jewish identity, which is such a huge part of who I am, my parents have always been extremely supportive even though it was not something that they were doing.
So, when I was in high school, I started keeping kosher and wearing my kippah on a regular basis. I can tell you wearing a kippah in public school was not necessarily an easy experience. I knew that it wasn't always safe to be Jewish publicly, and when I felt uncomfortable, I knew that I had the privilege of being able to take off my kippah, which not everybody can do with the things that people identify about them.
I feel good about the Jewish life that I had, because it's still with me. My Jewish Portland experience is something I carry with me everywhere.
Where do I come from is multi-layered. My father's father, he immigrated to Argentina from Poland at the age of one. They were escaping pogroms and antisemitic violence. His name was Shmuel, he went by Shmelik, and the Argentine kids couldn't say Shmelik, so they called him Chile, and until he died, he went by Chile.
So my father was born in Argentina, moved to the United States as an eight year old. Just having those stories of his experience was important.
He recently just shared this story with me… of him when he moved the United States as a second grader, and being asked to write a short, a few paragraphs about his relationship with the pilgrims, and him thinking to himself, "I don't have any relationship with the pilgrims. I just got here, what do I know from pilgrims?
And sort of thinking to myself, well what relationship do I have to that American story as three of my four grandparents were born outside the United States. I'm not an immigrant, but because so much of my family sort of share that immigrant story, it tends to sort of sit with me. My identity is very much about people escaping violence and coming to the United States for safety.
Schoen: What has it been like bringing all of this knowledge and hunger and passion to Pittsburgh as a rabbi?
Markiz: We moved to Pittsburgh in 2016 after I was ordained and my wife finished medical school. We moved here because she got matched through the residency match process. And so that first year was really about helping Elana get settled in with her job and trying to find a place for myself. So the very first year, I…ended up finding a ton of part-time jobs. I ended up working as a youth tefillah director at Beth Shalom. And the big shift came in July 2017, where Beth Shalom hired me from part time to full time to run Derekh, their adult programming arm.
My role was to build up this beit midrash... its vision of being the beit midrash to the beit tefillah—the study hall attached to the prayer hall—and as a concept of what a synagogue could be, a beit knesset, a gathering place, these are these two halves together.
More broadly than that, I've tried my best to be a good ally and a good partner here in Pittsburgh, building relationships across community lines. And I think in particular for the Jewish community, because we are so small—I mean we're a huge portion of Squirrel Hill—but since we are so small in the world, having strong relationships with someone outside means someone can help you, someone can support you, someone can help bring attention to your needs.
And I think one of the things that's really special about Pittsburgh is nobody loves their city more than Pittsburghers do. Pittsburghers love their city. And getting to sort of experience that love of place has been a really wonderful experience and particularly this neighborhood of Squirrel Hill is a really unique and special place.
Pittsburgh has been good to us, and good to me.
Schoen: I want to turn now in this interview to the events of October 27th and just begin by asking a little bit about what your day was like on October 27th, 2018.
Markiz: So, that was the weekend my wife and I got married. We were not here in Pittsburgh; we were in Los Angeles. And, early in the morning, because we were on the West Coast, right we're three hours behind, so it was you know 8:00-ish in the morning, there was a knock on my door at the hotel and it's my father. He comes into the room to tell me, he says "You need to know what happened. And he proceeds to explain there had been a shooting in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, that he didn't know much of the details, and that I needed to be aware that that was happening.
I ended up taking a shower and as I’m getting out, I'm hearing pounding on my door, and it's my brother, and he comes in, and you know give this sort of brotherly embrace and shared some tears about sort of just how scary this felt.
I remember going down the elevator with my father and saying, “This is the only thing we're talking about today." Right, like it didn't matter that we were getting married, the shooting was the entire focus of the day.
During that morning, Elana was really struggling, as was I, you know with this idea of having to share our weekend with this horrifying thing. And one of the pieces of wisdom that her sister gave to her and that became one of our mantras throughout the whole weekend, was “joy and sorrow.” Of holding those things in parallel. That became the mantra all weekend long for Elana and I, just understanding these things are in relationship, they happen at the same time, you have to hold them both.
I felt the need to say something right, to the people who were going to be looking to me to say something. For the people who knew that it was our wedding weekend and who wanted to know what I was thinking. And I ended up writing a Facebook post.
I wrote, "There are no words to fully express my feelings. Tomorrow is our wedding day. At the end of the ceremony, there is a glass that we break. It reflects the idea that, even in our highest moments of joy, we recognize the brokenness of the world. Today, our world was broken. Our home and our community have been damaged. Our hearts are broken. Our sacred spaces have been violated. Tomorrow is our wedding day. We will dance, we will sing, and we will be happy. We will speak words of Torah, we will give rings, and we will smile lovingly. We will hug and we will be wrapped in love and we will be married. My heart will be with my bride, and my heart will also be in Pittsburgh, with our home, with our community.
I have a teacher who taught me one of the most important lessons I've always needed: when in doubt, love more. I love my bride, I love my family, I love my friends, I love my home. I love my community at Congregation Beth Shalom, I love my community at Tree of Life-Or L'Simcha. I love my community in Pittsburgh. I love you."
Schoen: The thing that's echoing in my mind, Rabbi Jeremy, from what you were just talking about is this idea of joy and sorrow and holding those two things together. It strikes me that there's something perhaps particularly Jewish about that, it’s a way that Jews might think about or approach our own history and experiences as a people. And, I'm wondering if you could speak more to that.
Markiz: Yeah. Well, so I think the actual wedding day is a good example of it. We already have a built-in structure for weddings around that, which is the breaking of the glass. We often think about it as sort of a celebratory moment, but it's actually a heartbreaking moment, right where we're thinking about the destruction of Jerusalem, and how the world is broken—and it's built into a wedding already. It actually is a perfect metaphor for the thing that we were experiencing.
I called Rabbi Cheryl Peretz, who officiated our wedding and I said to her, I said, "We have to find some way of dealing with this for the wedding itself. We have to create space for this. And so what Rabbi Peretz did is quote Masechet Kiddushin from the Talmud, a section that asks the question, “What happens when a funeral procession encounters a wedding procession?” Which, again, is so perfect for us in our scenario. And then the Gemara answers, "You follow the wedding procession, because life takes precedence." And that was the framework we used, that, you know what, it's okay to put aside the negative grieving emotions we were having to focus on the joy. Those things will still be there.
And what Rabbi Peretz had planned was that right before all of us came in, she would teach that piece of Torah from the Talmud, and give everyone permission to not think about the shooting. That gave everyone permission to follow the wedding procession. And I'm so grateful that she did that, because it gave everybody permission to to allow us to have our space, and also to give themselves permission to just have a really wonderful wedding.
One person who I don't know particularly well sent me a message saying that they had gotten married like the same week of the Sbarro bombings in Israel, and that they had cried and laughed and struggled with that same joy and sorrow during their wedding. And that was really helpful, just knowing that we weren't alone in having this moment.
By Tuesday, we had basically shifted gears. We were flying back Tuesday night, and we were basically in Pittsburgh mode, for lack of a better way of putting it.
What's happening in Pittsburgh is that Rabbi Seth Adelson had a whole planned trip to go to Israel with most of the leadership of the synagogue. That trip left on the Sunday after the shooting, the day of the wedding, and Rabbi Adelson stuck around for a few more days, so that the community wasn't left without anybody.
So Tuesday, we're at the airport and trying to figure out, “What are we going to do? What is my role?”
We arrived at 1:00 am in the morning, and Elana and I were both at minyan the next day. I felt like people needed to see the rabbi. I wore a suit all week, which I don't normally do. And every morning at minyan for the following week, I gave a short dvar Torah after every service, reminding people to take care of themselves. So much of the storytelling feels so focused on the Saturday of the shooting. My experience of the shooting is about the fallout, is about what happened afterwards.
The next few days went by like a blur. I remember you know picking up the phone at like ten o'clock in the morning and putting it down, it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and it's like, "I have no idea how I just spent the last six hours, but I know that I was on the whole time."
And I'll just say now, the only reason I was able to stay on two feet every single day was because Elana was behind me holding me up. I mean what a challenging way to start a marriage. and I could not have done any of it without her there supporting me every step of the way.
Did I solve every problem? No. But my role in that moment was to hold the heart of the community, to give them space, to give them time, to give them the reminders to take care of themselves. because there wasn't someone else necessarily telling them that.
And I remember actually Friday afternoon getting a phone call from Wasi Mohamed, who is a really amazing Muslim leader in Pittsburgh, offering for his community to make a ring around the building to sort of create space for us. And I ended up saying no, that wasn't the right fit for us, but this was a way of Wasi and his community expressing love for us.
That Saturday morning was a really powerful day, and it is sort of the capstone to the way the story begins. And we had people from all faiths there. You could tell, often, the Christians were there early, showing up on time, and the Jews were showing up much later. And it was just really amazing to have people be present with us.
My message to them using the metaphor of the aspen tree was the idea that the aspen tree is actually one organism, and they're connected in their roots, and that Pittsburgh's roots were made of steel and therefore very strong, and that even though we looked like separate trees, we were actually all one organism together. And that was the message I wanted people to understand that we were going to make it through together, that was the key.
The part I will remember most about that day is a number of members who wanted to throw us a sheva bracha and after services, everybody went down into the social hall. It was packed, hundreds and hundreds of people were sitting at these tables, and we're crying and sort of reflecting on this like horrifying experience. It was traumatic for a lot of people who were in synagogue a week after the shooting in the synagogue and then you know something happened, and we started dancing, and we started to sing and make these big circles, and somebody grabbed Elana, and there was a women's circle and there was a men's circle, and then they merged circles, and we did this big dancing. And the crying became laughing, and the tears became song. And you could feel the cathartic nature in everyone around us, the need for them to experience the joy. They needed to celebrate as much as we did.
I remember Rabbi Adelson coming back, and I told him I said your very first meeting is with me and I downloaded as much of the information as I could of what had happened, who I had talked to and then I said, "Okay, now that you have all this information, I'm taking the rest of the day off," and then I went home. And even being able to like hand the baton over a little bit, was a relief.
After that, we got a chance to like go back and start celebrating our wedding again. It wasn't quite the same, of course, but, you know, it was good to celebrate those good things and take the intensity of those first few weeks and put them to the side.
Schoen: I'm curious—in those first two weeks, and in the weeks and months following, what were the things that were helpful to your healing process in the fallout, and what were some of the things that were not as helpful?
Markiz: It's a tough question, because I think it was a long time before I actually had space to process it for myself. That almost all of my energies was focused on others, and that was challenging. I honestly even think just starting our marriage, and the challenges of dealing with our collective trauma, and I'm not sure that I'm healed from it. It doesn't hurt as much as it used to, it doesn't feel as intense.
I went to a conference later on where someone had mentioned the shooting, and they had written a song. And I remember feeling during those times like, "You're not allowed to do that, this is mine, this is ours, you don't get to do that," And feeling my heart rate speed up, and feeling you know the blood in your ears when it was talked about by other people – this is about us. Which, of course, is not real—this impacted everyone around the country and around the world. it was and it is a symbol, a sign of what was happening in our country, the challenges we were facing around religious institutions and gun violence, around being Jewish in America, the stuff about immigration and refugees being a motivator. The fact that it happened in my neighborhood does make it mine in some way, but it's also all of ours, it's part of the fabric of you know American history.
I think that it hurt for a really long time, until it eased away. It's not that it's gone. It's hard to separate out my anniversary and the shooting—they're on the 27th and the 28th of October.
It's hard not to think about my wedding without it. And sometimes I forget which date was which when I'm writing things out. Right when people talk about October 27th, and in my head I'm like, "Is that my anniversary day, or is mine the 28th?"
We learned this in rabbinical school—that after the immediacy of a traumatic event or a loss, that people are still feeling and experiencing it much later than we think. You know in those first twenty-four, forty-eight, thirty-six hours, we certainly got a lot of messages, and that was really nice. And then like six weeks later, nobody really mentioned it again, and I kind of wish that people remembered that. And I understand why they don't, they have their own lives and their own things going on, they're not necessarily thinking about the trauma of others. But I think that might be a lesson we can all learn, in terms of how we can be cognizant and hold space for others is just to mark those things down, and remember to check up with each other. You know that was one of the lessons that I tried to remind people, "Hey, call your friend, check out, make sure that they're okay, make sure that they're sleeping, that they have enough food to eat, and that they're taking care of their kids."
The immediacy of that might go away, but that stuff is still there, and I think we can all remember the lesson of following up with those people, even if it doesn't seem like anything is wrong…and I think both in the large traumatic events like the shooting, and the small events that happened in each of our lives, we can all do better in being there for each other and remembering.
I think the challenge of "when in doubt, love more" is an ever-present opportunity to stretch ourselves, to grow, to be, to lean into the positive energy that's in each of us. When you're not sure what you should do, spend the energy on the love, on the gratitude, the kindness.