The Synagogue Shooting in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill Was an Attack on Sanctuary

The Tree of Life synagogue that Robert Bowers stormed, killing multiple members and police officers, is an anchor institution of Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill, which boasts a heavy concentration of Jewish institutions, families, kosher delis, grocers, bookstores, and other businesses. But calling it the city’s “Jewish neighborhood” obscures the diversity and variety of people and places that compose it. On any given day you’ll swipe arms at bus stops and cafes with people from a broad range of ethnicities and nationalities. Many of them are students from universities such as Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, and Chatham that all rest just beyond Squirrel Hill’s borders.

Tragically, the cultural diversity that attracts so many of them to Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh’s most populous neighborhood, is perhaps the same thing that makes it vulnerable to bigoted attacks like the one Bowers committed today.