America Has Already Forgotten the Tree of Life Shooting

PITTSBURGH—Last year’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue was a stone dropping in water, creating concentric circles of grief. At the center were the survivors and the families of victims. Then came the first responders, and the local leaders who handled the overwhelming logistics involved in the aftermath. On and on: members of the Pittsburgh Jewish community. Pittsburghers writ large. American Jews. And, finally, the whole of the country, which saw the attack as part of the long list of mass shootings that have already happened this decade.

Each of these circles has a different half-life for its grief. People in Pittsburgh’s Jewish community still talk about the shooting over Shabbat dinners, but when they leave the city and strangers ask where they’re from, “Pittsburgh” often no longer carries any particular meaning, many people I interviewed over and , of people and , of worshippers and —with each anniversary, the Pittsburgh attack will slip further into the great fog of forgetting, swallowed up by the latest national political drama or by workaday life. Yesterday, Pittsburgh’s Jewish community marked one year since the deadliest anti-Semitic attack on U.S. soil. This morning, they still woke up with their grief, while America largely continued to move on.