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GAIL CAPLAN, WEST BLOOMFIELD, TEMPLE ISRAEL MEMBER:

“I feel very safe at temple. There is always a guard.
What happened can’t stop us from living our lives
normally. It makes me even more determined to go
to temple. With the increase in anti-Semitism,
I’m very concerned about the future
of my grandchildren.”

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”

“I think we’re all
frightened. My family
is especially frightened
because our niece, Jill
Millstone, lives a block
and a half from Tree
of Life synagogue.
Probably the only reason
she wasn’t outside
at the time [of the
shooting] was that her
daughter was sick and
she was taking her to the
doctor. I think Temple
Israel does everything it
possibly can. There is a
guard there all the time.
But, if someone wants to
get to you, he will
get to you.”

JACKIE MICHAELSON,
WEST BLOOMFIELD,
TEMPLE ISRAEL
MEMBER

world. We must stay connected to
synagogue life; we cannot let the hat-
ers win and we cannot be quiet.”
The shooting, in which suspect
Robert Bowers allegedly murdered
11 Jews as they celebrated Shabbat,
occurred in a year that saw a spike in
anti-Semitism in this city. In an arti-
cle from September, the Pittsburgh
Jewish Chronicle said since January
2018, more than 50 incidents of
anti-Semitism, mostly occurring
in the Squirrel Hill and adjacent
Shadyside neighborhoods, had been
reported.
According to the 2017 population
study of the Jewish community of
Pittsburgh, there are nearly 50,000
Jewish adults and children in near-
ly 27,000 households. In Greater
Pittsburgh, Jews constitute a little
more than 2 percent of the area pop-
ulation.
“While I know that any Jewish
community would pull together after
such a tragedy, it’s hard to explain
how interrelated the community
already is,” said native Detroiter
Rabbi Avi Friedman, who served
at Tree of Life for six years, both as
assistant rabbi and rabbi.
“As Detroiters, we’re used to things
being spread out. We think nothing
of driving from Oak Park to Walled
Lake. In Pittsburgh, everything is
condensed,” he said. “Squirrel Hill is
exactly like the Detroit my parents
remember. Tree of Life is just down
the street from another Conservative
congregation and around the corner
from the JCC. Orthodox and Reform
congregations are not much further
away. I’m certain that the communi-
ty will help Tree of Life recover and
heal.”
Friedman knew four of those who
were killed in the shooting.
“A rabbi never stops being a rabbi

”

to a community,” said Friedman, now
rabbi at Congregation Ohr Shalom-
the Summit Jewish Community
Center in Summit, N.J.

DETROIT-PITTSBURGH CONNECTIONS
Many Detroiters have strong bonds
or even family roots in Pittsburgh’s
historically Jewish neighborhoods.
Lowell Schmeltz of West
Bloomfield grew up in the Pittsburgh
suburb of Mount Lebanon and lived
in Squirrel Hill for three years during
medical school. He spoke of his own
memories of attending USY events
and Hebrew high school at Tree of
Life and the strong bond between
Pittsburgh and Detroit’s Jewish com-
munities due, in part, because of
youth group programming such as
USY and Camp Ramah in Canada.
“Because of Camp Ramah in
Canada, many of our Detroit-area
children have been influenced and
educated by Pittsburgh rabbis such as
Rabbi Chuck Diamond, who spends
his summers up at Ramah,” Schmeltz
said. “There is a tremendous connec-
tion between Pittsburgh and Detroit
kids as well as their families. And,
ironically, Rabbi Jonathan Berkun,
who I was friends with through USY
and Hebrew high school at Tree of
Life, is now is a rabbi in Aventura,
Fla., where the pipe bomber who was
sending bombs to the Obamas and
the Clintons was apprehended.”
Rebecca Starr, parent ambassador
for Camp Ramah in Canada, was
attending a previously planned Camp
Ramah open house event in the
Detroit area with the camp’s associate
director, Aviva Millstone, on Sunday
afternoon.
A former Camp Ramah camp-
er herself, Rebecca spent the first
moments after Shabbat checking on
her Pittsburgh friends.

V

The Tepmans: Suzan, Larry and Jordyn.

“My first thoughts were of one of
my Ramah friends from Pittsburgh
and his family, and I wanted to make
sure they were OK,” she said. “We’ve
been friends for more than 25 years.”

TRYING TO COPE
Suzan Kass Tepman, a school social
worker from West Bloomfield, said
when explaining traumatic events
such as this to young children it is
about controlling the narrative of
what they hear and helping them
“make sense of the senseless.”
Tepman, together with her hus-
band, explained the attack to their
8-year-old daughter. They said they
would rather she hear it from them
than from other sources.
The Tepmans belong to Adat
Shalom Synagogue in Farmington
Hills, where they were grateful that
Executive Director Alan Yost and
members of the congregation’s clergy
were on hand to greet students at
the door as Hebrew school got under
way on Sunday morning.
Elsewhere, Steve Freedman, the
head of school at Hillel Day School
in Farmington Hills, sent a letter to
all families to discuss ways to offer

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November 1 • 2018

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