Tree of Life shooting survivor takes steps to live 'joyous' life

Carol Black remembers making the 27-mile drive from her Cranberry home to the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, and turning onto Wilkins Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill.

As she headed for the parking lot, she saw her brother Richard walking into the building. It’s the last time she saw him alive.

Richard Gottfried, a dentist, was one of the 11 people killed in the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue that housed the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light congregations. He was 65 and lived in Ross.

For Black, as with other survivors, working through the horror and lingering sadness from that day remains a work in progress. But she says it’s gotten easier.

“Three years out it’s a lot easier than it was in October of 2018,” Black said Tuesday.

”The one-year mark was brutal. It was very difficult. It was very, very, very public. We decided going forward to not repeat the parts that were just so hard for the family members to abide.”

Black said she bonded with other victims’ families when they gathered a year after the shooting to lean on each other for support.

“We’re all in a club that nobody wants to belong to, but we take comfort in each other’s company,” she said. “We all share loss and we’re people who really didn’t know each other prior to (the shootings). But I feel this very strong bond to not only the family members who lost people, but also to the group of survivors.”

By year two, the world was in the middle of a pandemic.

“That changed everything and it made the second-year commemoration 100% virtual, which was not satisfying because the family members have decided that we like being in each other’s company. We like comforting each other,” Black said.

This year’s commemoration includes an online Torah study event with a panel of scholars providing instruction.

“That’s something that my brother definitely would have loved. And we’re going to be able to be together in person. We’ll be able to see each other and hug each other. That’s something that provides a lot of comfort.”

It wasn’t until their father died in 1992 that Richard Gottfried and Carol Black returned to practicing their Jewish faith. It started with Richard Gottfried saying the mourner’s prayer or kaddish every day to honor his father’s memory. Eventually, he started attending services regularly at New Light Congregation in Squirrel Hill.

Black followed in her brother’s footsteps years later. She said returning to becoming practicing Jews later in life strengthened their faith.

“When you come back as an adult, it’s a choice and it’s not something you’re dragged into,” she said. “You choose to do that and typically when you choose to do something, you put a lot more energy into it than when you’re led into it or cajoled into it.”

When her brother was killed three years ago, Black hid from the gunfire in a closet with fellow congregants.

“I had a lot of trouble sleeping,” she said. “I heard gunfire in my head for a month afterwards. I just couldn’t block the sound out and I discovered early on that I would be a lot happier if I found somebody to talk to.”

Black found people she could talk to through the Jewish Family and Community Services’ monthly support group for survivors and witnesses of the synagogue shooting. JFCS offers the support group in collaboration with the 10.27 Healing Partnership.

“I’m there for the survivors, victims, witnesses, first responders, family members, for anything and everything they might need,” said Lulu Orr, JFCS clinical specialist. “This group is just remarkable. I’ve run a lot of support groups in my life and this one is just so unique in how they’re there for one another no questions asked.

“There’s no agenda to these meetings. They’ve come to know and care about and genuinely love each other,” said Orr. “Some of them have been known to say ‘the silver lining of 10/27/18 is the fact that we all are in each other’s lives now.’ Every time I think about it, it gets me choked up just to think that there’s any silver lining.”

Black said there isn’t a minute of the day that goes by without her thinking about Oct. 27, 2018, and wishing her brother was still alive.

“The fact is that he isn’t here. I think if it had been the other way around and I had been the one who was shot and he had survived, he would have mourned me and continued to live his life,” she said.

“I made a decision a long time ago that my plan moving forward was to live a joyous life,” said Black. “I think that’s what my brother would have wanted me to do and I’m a glass-is-half-full kind of person. I tend to be happier when I’m looking on the bright side of things.”