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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
I’m Noah Schoen, and I’m Aliza Becker and this is October 27th, a podcast about the October 27th, 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Aliza and I co-founded an oral history project that recorded over 100 interviews with local Jews and non-Jews about their life stories and reflections on the shooting. Our interviewees taught us so much and we’ve created this podcast to share their insights with you. This is October 27th.
Most synagogues have a small group of volunteers who keep the place running. They are the pillars of the shul, the people who arrive early to greet congregants, lead services, set up kiddush, and clean up afterwards.
On the morning of October 27th, 2018, Dan Leger and two of his fellow congregants were setting out prayer books around the table in preparation for Shabbat morning services at Dor Hadash, a lay-led Reconstructionist synagogue that rented space in the Tree of Life building.
It was Dan’s custom to arrive before the start of services to get things situated. A long-time lay leader of Dor Hadash, he often led prayers or facilitated the weekly Torah study.
When the shooting began, Dan ran toward the sound of gunshots, knowing help was needed there. He was shot, and nearly killed. But his recounting of that day is steeped in gratitude for the people who helped him survive, a response shaped by his love for the Jewish tradition and the depth of his faith.
Dan Leger: I'm Dan Leger, and I was one of the people who was in the synagogue when the massacre occurred on October 27th. I was shot, and I'm still recovering. And here I am.
I'm seventy-one years old. I'm a native Pittsburgher, and it’s an important place to me.
I was born here in 1948 in Homewood-Brushton. And I've never really left the city. Ah, you know, I've lived here all my life. Went to school here. Have worked here. Raised my two sons here. Live here in Squirrel Hill.
In the ‘50s, when I was growing up on my street there were almost all white people. There were Catholics. There were three Jewish families. There were Protestants.
You know, the street was a small cobblestone street with row houses. And so there were common walls. People could hear their arguments. People could hear if you were playing a musical instrument, and you were practicing. When people were up in the morning and in their kitchen, you could hear it. And I loved that. I still live in a house that has a common wall with my neighbors. And I really love that ability to feel like I'm connected with other people and not separated by property and fences.
So for me, the neighborhood was wonderful. You know, we seldom would lock our doors when I was a kid. And kids were in and out of the house all the time. You know there was a very free atmosphere among the kids who lived there.
You know, my family was a working-class family. My mother had been a nurse before she got married. She worked in Mercy Hospital. And she loved being a nurse. And it was really unfortunate that in the ‘40s, when she married, the expectation was that women didn't continue to work. So I don't think that she ever really wanted to be moored at home raising kids. I know she didn't want to be moored at home raising kids!
And in the ‘50s, the white population of Homewood really went through some significant change, because the Lower Hill District was decimated for the building of the Civic Arena, and the population was displaced. And many of those residents who were displaced came to Homewood, and the white population flew. They flew to Wilkinsburg. They flew to East Hills. They flew to Penn Hills.
We, I believe, were the last white family on the street in 1962. And it was uncomfortable by then, because the hostility between the African American population that was moving in and the white population that remained was very real. And this idea that, “We've got to get out of here,” was the prevalent attitude among the white families, unfortunately, rather than, “How can we all get along? We've got new neighbors!” And that was hard for me to understand, because some of these families just seemed like nice people. You know, I didn't really get this idea that, “Why is everybody leaving? Why are my friends leaving, too?”
My mother grew up on the street where we lived. And she never wanted to leave that neighborhood. It was really painful for her to leave that street. And so when we left there when I was a young teenager and moved into Wilkinsburg, she was profoundly sad. So within a year or so, they moved closer back to Brushton. But it was uncomfortable. The tension that was going on between the white neighbors and the Black neighbors was difficult.
So, my family initially moved into Wilkinsburg, which was a very, very straight-laced white Republican community in those days. They unfortunately didn't want to be next to Homewood-Brushton, so they moved farther out, too. And it just continued.
At that point, I left home when I was eighteen and lived here in the city. I was going to school at community college at that time. I had to deal with the Vietnam War, because I left college, and I didn't have my student deferment any longer. I felt strongly that this war was an immoral war and that conscientious objection was the direction that I would go. So, I applied for conscientious objector status, and then, after I was granted the status, I would need to find work that would meet the substitute criteria of not having gone into combat.
I was very fortunate. Not only was I given the opportunity to find a position, but almost unheard of was that I was given the opportunity to find a position even here in Pittsburgh, rather than having to be a medic in Vietnam. And so I was twenty years old, and I was hired as a child care worker, nurse's aide, basically, at the Home for Crippled Children here in Squirrel Hill, and began my work there. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it.
Of course, this was in the day when kids would stay at the Home for you know anywhere from six months to two years. That longitudinal aspect of being in relationship with the people that you're helping to serve was something that really spoke to me, and I just loved it.
And I never thought in a million years that I would be a nurse. It still in retrospect, seems a surprise to me that it never entered my mind that I would be pursuing the profession of my mother. But that's where I ended up through a completely circuitous route. And I remember the stories that she told when we were kids, that were the happiest times in her life, were stories about having been in the hospital working with people and her work as a nurse.
I went back to community college and got my nursing degree and then went back to the Institute. And I was there for about thirty years. After a number of years there, I realized that we were getting a significantly greater number of referrals for young people who were not going to survive. And what they really needed was, rather than rehabilitation, they needed hospice. And was told that it was inconsistent, really, with the mission of the facility.
And so I said, “Well you know, this is something that has really entered into my heart in a way that I have to do something about. So as much as I love it here, I think I need to go.” And so I was hired at Forbes Hospice as the pediatric clinical specialist. And so I really had to develop that whole aspect of the hospice program from the ground up.
Many people in nursing say, “Oh, I can do everything but kids.” I've heard this through my career. Well, my attitude was, “I can do anything but grownups”
Kids you know kids are no bullshit, no nonsense. If they hurt, they tell you they hurt. If they are mad, they tell you they're mad. If they want to throw shit at you, they throw shit at you. Literally! There’s just something so refreshing about the surface being the interior.
Schoen: I also wanted to ask you about being Jewish, I’m wondering how that figures into all of this?
Growing up in a strongly religious family where you never had a meal without saying grace. Never was there a Sunday without going to church. I was raised Roman Catholic. These things were deeply part of my life. And so my practice, when I came to my teenage years, seemed to naturally indicate that the professional person I should be in the world was a priest.
In those days, there were things called minor seminaries, much like the yeshiva that teenagers for the first year of high school would enter into. This was the beginning of studying for the priesthood. But during those early years, I really began to have a crisis of faith in that I did not understand the concept of the divinity of Jesus and the necessity of salvation in that way.
It was hard to feel this spiritual connection with God that was really important to me, And what that meant in terms of what I needed to do to find my way still spiritually connected, still having relationship to the divine, and dealing with the aspect of potential punishment for leaving that way of life that I was in the process of doing.
And so through my high school years, and then in my early college years—the people in my life who I was attracted to and who I felt had a connection to the divine that also was rooted in the here and now, in the reality of the world that we live in—more and more of these people were Jews.
You know, becoming Jewish, if you weren't born Jewish, is a process. And that process not only leads one to a place where they accept the mitzvot, but it continues through your whole life.
It just is such a comfort, Judaism, because there is no aspect of human life that's not touched by it and It also is very clear that the relationship that I had with my creator when I was five years old is still the relationship I have with the divine now. It's just that it has grown and matured and found its relevance to me in the world and how I fit into it. And I am eternally grateful to be a Jew in the world.
It's who I am. I'm proud to be a Jew. I'm glad to be a Jew. It's caused me some trouble, hasn't it? It's caused a lot of people trouble.
Schoen: I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the massacre on October 27th and the days after it.
Leger: I can tell you more about it than I can tell you about the days after it. Because the days after it I was in the ICU intubated and unable to communicate with the world. So, my information about that comes from other people, more than my own experience of it.
The morning of October 27th was pretty typical of Shabbos you know. Dor Hadash has a more formal Shabbat service about once a month where we take the Torah out and read it and have a more traditional formal service. But on the intervening Saturday mornings, we'll get together and pray shacharit, and then for an hour we'll study the parashah. It's a wonderful, freewheeling kind of approach both to prayer and to study.
That morning was on the heels of an erev Shabbat service the night before that my dear friend Eddie, Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin, had come in to do with us. And I just delight in the opportunity not only to study with him and learn from him and be with him because our friendship goes back so long and is so deep. But also we were leading that service the night before together. And to be there on the bimah with him and lead the congregation in prayer was just a wonderful event.
And I would say there were maybe 150, 200 people who came there that night. And one of my absolute feelings of gratitude is that the shooter didn't come then. It just would have been so much more the horrible with that many people. And having had that many people for such a joyous night, I think there was a tendency on the part of many people to get to shul a little later than they might have, thank God.
So I got there probably about twenty to ten, as I usually do. And my friends Jerry Rabinowitz and Marty Gaynor also got there shortly after I did. And we were getting the books out and putting them around the table, and getting ourselves ready for the service.
And we heard this noise. And initially, you know I thought, “This is gunfire.” But then I sort of tried to convince myself for a fraction of a second that it wasn't. I said, “Oh, maybe the furnace exploded. Maybe something in the building has happened in the physical plant.” And it was clearly my trying to convince myself that the horror that I knew was happening was not happening.
And so, thank God Marty left the room and got out of the building. Thank God.
Jerry and I stood in the doorway for a few seconds looking at each other. Jerry is a doctor. I'm a nurse. We did probably what every trainer would tell nobody ever to do. Rather than the “Flee. Hide. Fight.” attitude that is the right thing to do, We did the opposite of that, because we felt that there were probably people who needed something from us. And so, we went in the direction of the gunfire.
I hope Jerry's looking at my face was the last face that he saw. I truly hope that. His was the last face I saw.
You know, I was shot. What can I say? I fell down onto the stairway between the level where the chapel is and the level where the entry lobby is.
And I didn't feel afraid at that point. I didn’t feel afraid. I felt, “Okay, I'm dying. My life is coming to an end. What better way for it to come to an end than doing what I was doing that morning and with the words of Shema Yisrael on my lips.”
And so I said the Shema. I said my Vidui. I thought about all the people in my life who I'm so grateful for, all those people who I've done things to offend and asked their forgiveness. Prayed for this person who did this, that God would somehow open his eyes so that he could see that what he had done was not the right thing to have done.
My physical pain was real, but it wasn't the thing that was all-consuming at all. And my sense of being very, very close to God. My sense of just really being closer to the divine than I've ever been.
But eventually, there was someone with sort of camouflage pants who was walking up the stairway. And I thought, “Either this is the person who shot me, and if he's aware that I'm still alive, he'll finish the job, probably, or it's a helper.” So I grabbed the pant leg, and it turned out to be a helper. Thank God.
I remember this person screaming, “This one's alive.”I remember a little bit about being picked up off the stairs. My clothes were cut off of my body during the ambulance transport. And then I remember sort of going through doors at the hospital. And then I don't remember anything after that until feeling like I was laying on my back looking up through this gauzy substance, this cloudy atmosphere. And there were some people slowly moving near me. I remember thinking to myself, “This is the chevra kadisha. They've come to get me ready to bury me.” And I felt so comforted. I felt so completely comforted by that.
Then the next few days you know I was unconscious. I was intubate., I was in the ICU. They really didn't know whether I was going to survive for a while there. And I remember them withdrawing the ventilator. And the first words out of my mouth were the Shema. The second words out of my mouth after the Shema were, “I love you,” to my family. And the third thing was, “God forgive him.
I feel so grateful to my family and to the doctors and the staff and the paramedics and the first responders. I feel such incredible gratitude to all these people. I also feel this incredibly comforting sense of gratitude that my life has been so rich and so good that I was comfortable not only in feeling that my life had been a really good life, and if this is it, okay. I'm not leaving with any major feelings of regret, even though there are always things in life one wishes one had done differently. The job is not to go back in the past and fix them, because you can't do that. The job is to deal with crap that's left in its wake.
You know Fred Rogers was such a hero to me. One of the things he said was, “When we can accept the things that we can't change in life, it can give us enormous energy to manage the things that we can deal with in life.” That's a paraphrase. But it's always been a really important message to me, because there are some things that are out of our control. This event was certainly out of my control. And there will always be things in our world that we don't have any control over.
Viktor Frankl embodied this you know when he talked about the idea that you can't change your fate, but you can change how you approach it, what you do with it, how you choose to make decisions about it. And it was very clear to me from from the moments after the shooting that if I did survive, even if it was going to be for a few minutes, I didn't want those last minutes of my life to be ones in which I was bitter and engaged in hatred and engaged in separation from my God and the people who bring me daily close to that God. I wanted it to be a unified experience, one of integrity and one of gratitude.
And I'm really grateful that I got that opportunity to feel like I got close to the door and this is how I dealt with it. Because I've often wondered that, you know having been a hospice nurse. I’ve been with so many people through death and wondered when my time comes, how am I going to deal with it myself? Although this didn't turn out to be the time, thank God, I felt that I did get somewhat of an answer.
I'm just so grateful for life. I'm so grateful for the people in my life. And you know I feel like sometimes I live in a body that's not mine. I was really healthy. I did not feel seventy years old most of the time before this happened. I feel every year of seventy-one now!
It's harder for me to get around. I can’t do things the way I used to. my body has a different shape to it, it's got some extra parts. It's got some parts that don't work like they used to. Some don't work at all. But, you know, this is what I've got to work with.
And it was important for me to go back into the building. Some time after I was out of the hospital, I felt that I was strong enough to do this, so I got in touch with the FBI. And Ellen and I were taken back into the building. I needed to be able to see the place where I was on those stairs, on that floor. I needed to be able to see where these other people were killed. I needed to see the bullet holes all over the walls. I needed to see the shattered glass and stand in that doorway where Jerry and I looked each other in the eye.
And I needed to walk out of that building, not be carried out of that building. And I needed to be able to say, “This is a place that doesn't have this kind of power over me any longer.”
I'm really grateful for the opportunity to talk about this. One of the most important things we can do is just listen to each other and to ourselves. And being a Jew means constantly being aware of those responsibilities. It's not just all about me. The fact that when we pray the Amidah, we do it two ways: we do it individually, and we do it in community. We have a responsibility to make community.
It is just such a wonderful gift to have the ability to bring thousands of years of tradition and rich conversations that have taken place over long periods of time and to still continue to allow those things to enrich our lives and give it value.
The values that we apply to living a Jewish life are both freedoms and constraints—and balancing those is the way to find that melding of justice and love. That is the great challenge of life. And Judaism gives us the potential to be able to take that dynamism, that synergy, and manipulate it and feel it and work with it every day.
October 27th is written and hosted by Aliza Becker and Noah Schoen, and it’s produced and edited by Carly Rubin. We get administrative support from Tina Stanton Gonzalez of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and our closing theme is Tree of Life by Nefesh Mountain. If you want to support our work and the creation of more episodes like this one, you can make a donation at October27podcast.org where you’ll also find episode transcripts, a link to this full unedited interview, and more. That’s October27podcast.org. And lastly, thank you to all of the amazing Pittsburghers who shared their stories for the Meanings of October 27th Oral History Project. We’re so grateful for your trust and your generosity.