Bound in the Bond of Life

Raw and profound.

The voices that animate this collection are varied and stunning.

Bound in the Bond of Life is a document to be read and contemplated, not summarized—a close-to-the-event memorial that expresses grief, the search for understanding and the effort to find a way forward.

Bound in the Bond of Life does more than humanize a historic event: it gives us the rare opportunity to see what happens ‘after the vigil,’ in the apt words of contributor Molly Pascal.

The impact of the attack that claimed 11 lives . . . was also extraordinarily local. It happened in Squirrel Hill, a neighborhood most Pittsburghers know well, and many area residents have only a degree or two of separation from that day’s violence. Bound in the Bond of Life reckons with that legacy.

Gathering accounts from local journalists, academics, rabbis and community members, Eric Lidji and Beth Kissileff reveal efforts to make sense of the shooting, from raw, first-person descriptions to pieces by those who translated the horror into activism.

Bound in the Bond of Life, with its many viewpoints, illustrates the resilience of the Pittsburgh and American Jewish communities.

Despite the challenges in reading a book like this, I couldn’t put it down. The writing itself is phenomenal, and the grief is meant to be shared.

Bound in the Bond of Life challenges the many dry, usually emotionless, and very monotone media and encyclopedic descriptions of what has become known as the ‘Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting’. . . . Although each essay conveys authentic emotions and even practical advice, the combined strength of the contributors’ words is to be found in their linked context.

What does it take to mend the world? Parts prayer, howl, remembrance and meditation, the essays in Bound in the Bond of Life go beyond the initial shock and grief of October 27th to examine the meaning of community and the power of faith under attack. Rather than make sense of hate, the Pittsburghers here wisely try to find perspective on a moment evil struck too close to home.

This sterling collection of essays by writers from Pittsburgh reflecting on the October 27, 2018 massacre of Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue gives us just the company we need as we work through our collective grief, together and alone. I was stunned by their deep, generous insights into how this tragedy affected this dynamic and diverse city and by the writers’ compassion for both the victims and survivors. By turns devastating and consoling, each of these reflections takes us a little further down the path to healing, despite community wounds and losses that can never be fully mended or compensated.

Taking its place in the somber tradition of heart-rending Jewish chronicles, Bound in the Bond of Life memorializes the Tree of Life synagogue massacre, the most deadly act of antisemitism in all of American Jewish history. Filled with heart-rending, first-person accounts, this book fulfills a sacred commandment: to recall the tragedy that befell Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018, and never to forget it.

It is a depressing reality that, in America today, mass shootings come and go with the news cycle in a depressing blur of sameness, marching us from one shattered community to the next. Parkland. Charleston. Newtown. Orlando. Las Vegas. Yet, people who cherish each of these communities are left to step into each new day differently, along different streets, through different histories and toward different tomorrows. It’s important to know them as unique places with unique people. This anthology provides that for the tragedy at the Tree of Life synagogue by uniting a range of talented local writers who explore the loss of eleven lives and the special community that Squirrel Hill was, and is.