Audrey Glickman was not allowed to talk about her experience as a survivor of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre leading up to the trial of the shooter, who killed 11 congregants and injured six, to avoid skewing the outcome: “We had to be quiet while others were speaking for us.”
Being featured in the 2022 documentary “A Tree of Life” was a “cathartic” outlet for Glickman to share her thoughts after the shooting. The National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington, D.C., offered a virtual screening of the film on July 11, followed by a Q&A session with Glickman.
Directed by Trish Adlesic, “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting” tells the story of the survivors and their families and community of the 11 people killed in what is believed to be the deadliest antisemitic attack in United States history.
Adlesic, who began filming the day after the shooting, uses trauma-informed interviews to share survivors’ stories. The film provides space for the survivors to honor the victims and discuss their varying beliefs on topics including Jewish faith and guns.
Michael Rugel, the museum’s director of programs and content, moderated the discussion, which drew about 80 attendees. Rugel said although the film’s contents do not directly relate to the museum’s main focus, they share a common goal.
“The film was not directly on our subject matter, but part of our mission is combating antisemitism,” Rugel said, adding that people need to continue to remember what happened in Pittsburgh.
Rugel said he hopes the screening sheds light on antisemitism through the narratives of survivors such as Glickman.
“The way that the film deals with these horrible acts and the way it profiles the individuals connected to the synagogue, the survivors, those who were killed, is a way that encourages [rather than] a singular political angle or just one way of looking at it, a human way of looking at it, processing it and trying to take steps forward from there,” Rugel said.
Glickman, who survived the Oct. 27, 2018, shooting with her late partner, Joe Charny, said the shooter was “very active online” and had engaged with antisemitic rhetoric on social media.
“He was posting and reposting and liking and commenting on [social media posts], many of them antisemitic, many of them about immigrants,” Glickman said in an interview with the Washington Jewish Week. “But the notion that the Jews were bringing in the immigrants was what lit the fuse.”
The documentary details how the shooter’s anti-immigrant, antisemitic views led him to commit violence. In October 2018, the Tree of Life congregation participated in a Shabbat service for refugees in partnership with the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society. The gunman found Congregation Dor Hadash, one of the three synagogues in the shared building, listed on the HIAS Shabbat website and targeted its congregants for their pro-immigration stance.
Glickman emphasized the dangers of antisemitic content online: “People are willing to put forth anything that distracts from what’s going on in the world.”
“The film does such a great job of showing the potential consequences of people being trapped in their own world of hateful thoughts, and it just increases and increases until somebody’s capable of going into a synagogue and murdering any number of people,” Rugel said. “The escalation through the hateful rhetoric that you see online, on social media, is a continuing danger and, hopefully, this film will help people to realize that.”
The Tree of Life, which recently celebrated its 160th anniversary, held a groundbreaking ceremony on June 23 in Pittsburgh where hundreds of guests and dignitaries, including second gentleman Doug Emhoff, marked the start of the construction of a new facility. Glickman commenced the ceremony by blowing the shofar, like she does in the film’s opening scene.
Set to open in late 2026, the 45,000-square-foot facility will house a museum about the history of antisemitism in the U.S., classrooms for experiential learning, an area for kosher-catered events and a garden memorial to honor the 11 people killed.
Rugel said it remains necessary to talk about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting now — more than five years after it happened.
“We don’t want to let something so horrific just go by the wayside,” Rugel said. “Sometimes that can happen if we just talk about whatever the latest is. And with acts of antisemitism, it seems that there’s always something to talk about, but we don’t want to forget those who were killed.”
Glickman said she wishes that she had discussed with the virtual audience the veterans impacted by the shooting: Judah Samet, a Holocaust survivor who witnessed the Tree of Life massacre, served as a paratrooper and radio man in the Israeli Defense Forces, and Sylvan Simon, who was killed alongside his wife, Bernice, in the shooting, was a military veteran.
Glickman also has connections to the military: her partner, Charny, was a veteran who “loved telling stories about the war,” her father served in World War II and her father’s brother served in Normandy.
“I would love to tell Joe’s stories to the museum,” Glickman said. “I’d love to learn more about them and be more engaged. I hope I can go visit them anytime I’m in [D.C.]”
