As he and his daughter lit a candle at an East Cobb synagogue service on Tuesday, Brian Pearle choked up talking about his hometown.
He grew up in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh where 11 members of a synagogue were murdered Saturday in the worst mass killing in American Jewish history.
Pearle also knew several of the victims who were attending a bris at the Tree of Life synagogue when they were shot to death. The alleged gunman was taken into custody after a standoff, and after authorities said he posted anti-Semitic messages online.
Reciting the names of other places of mass shootings—Sandy Hook, Charleston and Parkland—Pearle admitted it was unfathomable that the place he called home for much of his life will be included on that list.
“It just hasn’t sunk in yet,” Pearle said at a special solidarity service at Temple Kol Emeth. “It torments me that the place I’ve called home could forever be remembered as one of those places. That just hurts me deeply in my soul.”
“You can’t really describe the feeling,” he said after the service, with many participants approaching him and his daughter Rachel, who had her bat mitzvah at Kol Emeth, with shows of support.
He said Squirrel Hill, with stately homes and many schools and places of worship, felt like the safest place in the world.
Two of the victims he knew well, brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, who were fondly remembered in Pittsburgh and beyond. Earlier on Tuesday, they were laid to rest in the first of the funerals for the shooting victims.
“Everything you’ve read about them, that’s exactly who they were,” Pearle said, fighting back some emotion. “It could not be more accurate. They were great guys, would give you the shirt off their back.”
Pearle was among those speaking during a “call to action” segment of the service, which was quickly organized by Kol Emeth leaders on Sunday.
Other attendees urged the crowd to vote, contact their elected officials and treat one another with generosity, love and kindness and emphasize those qualities with their children.
Rebecca Tullman, the synagogue’s religious school director, said it was particularly tough to address the shootings during Sunday services with youth.
“It’s really hard to explain to kids why some people hate you, because of your religion,” she said.
Tullman, Kol Emeth president Rachel Barich and Rabbi Steven Lebow offered prayers for peace and special messages. The audience recited the Mourner’s Kaddish and sang, including “If I Had a Hammer” and “Oseh Shalom.”
“There has always been anti-Semitism and there always will be,” said Lebow, but recent political discourse and rhetoric “has done little” to tone down those sentiments.
The Pittsburgh shootings took place at the end of a week that included the arrest of a man for allegedly mailing pipe bombs to members of Congress and former presidents Clinton and Obama and the shooting deaths of two black customers at a Kentucky supermarket in what’s also being investigated as a hate crime.
“When will this madness end?” asked Lebow.
He urged Cobb schools, local churches and politicians to do more to practice and preach tolerance, not just for Jews, but for others from racial and other minority groups, as well as immigrants.
Barich said she was heartened by a co-worker asking her how she was doing when she arrived at her job on Monday.
“I didn’t expect to be approached as if I needed support,” Barich said. “That was very much appreciated.”
Barich said the support from around East Cobb, especially other faith communities, at Tuesday’s service also was uplifting.
“This is the beginning of healing.”
Pearle agreed, calling this “a good beginning. “This was therapeutic, this was cathartic.”
He was last in Pittsburgh last month, as his son is considering attending college there.
“The next time I go home, I’ll probably be a wreck,” Pearle said.
On Nov. 15, Kol Emeth will hold its annual Thanksgiving Ecumenical Service. This year’s theme, “Harmonizing the Voices of Humanity,” is “still very appropriate,” Barich said.
“We’re moving forward,” she said. “That’s what we Jews do.”
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