After the Most Deadly Antisemitic Attack in US History

On the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, my husband and I were getting ready to take our daughter to the pediatrician's office a few blocks down the street from the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Suddenly, our phones erupted with the news that there was an active shooter there, and that the Reconstructionist congregation where we spent our High Holy Days, Dor Hadash (one of three congregations sharing space at Tree of Life), was apparently one of the targets. We burst into tears that came not entirely from shock and surprise, but from exactly its opposite. I felt the cold, familiar dread of inevitability. As a Soviet Jew who emigrated 40 years ago from a country that never considered its Jews truly Russian, I was reminded once again that some things never change: You can't out-immigrate antisemitism.