Paul Kengor: Remembering Tree of Life

“Pray for us, I will call you later.”

We received that text message from our 16-year-old daughter at 10:16 a.m. on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, 2018, as my wife and I drove toward the Strip District.

My wife called immediately. “Are you OK? Were you in an accident?”

In a hushed voice, my daughter explained that she and our second daughter and three friends, along with an adult friend of ours — Suzy, their driver — were hiding in their van across the street from the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill. They were just arriving for a Saturday morning retreat at a house across the street. As their van pulled up, police cars began flying in, and bullets began flying, too.

The girls all ducked and dropped to the van floor. They listened, worried, prayed. We received the text message about 20 minutes later.

After an hour or so of chaos, Suzy and the girls decided to abandon the van. They dashed across backyards and over fences to meet a relative. They could hear gunfire. They met Suzy’s relative in his getaway car. They escaped.

The attack at the Tree of Life synagogue happened a year ago this week. It was a scary day. It was also evil — an act of evil against our beloved Jewish brothers and sisters at a peaceful Saturday worship service.

I’ve since returned to that spot about a half- dozen times since last October. It’s never the same. I always pause to look at the synagogue and say a prayer. I’ve since heard the stories of other parents who dropped off their girls at the retreat center.

One of them marvels at the conversation he and his wife had that Saturday morning. His wife typically drove their daughter and then sat in the car in the synagogue lot, waiting and working on her laptop. On this morning, however, the dad — a gut-feel — oddly insisted on driving. He convinced his wife to stay home. He walked his daughter inside the retreat center and then safely left to do some shopping — all before the shooting erupted. His wife could have been one of the first people shot that morning. They were lucky. So were we.

My wife and I are so grateful, of course, that our loved ones didn’t get caught in the crossfire. And yet, I imagine that many of the families of the 11 dead worshippers asked why God hadn’t spared their loved ones. That’s one of those timeless perplexing questions. It’s a mystery that believers of all stripes, and the Jewish people in particular, have asked since the time of Job. I have no answer, though I know that God is the author of life, and God wasn’t pulling that trigger.

I also feel confident in saying this: The true Tree of Life is not an earthly one but an eternal one. This world, unlike the heavenly paradise we seek, is full of sin and rot. Trees in this world decay and die. Eternal life and perfect bliss come in the next world.

One year later, that may seem small consolation to the grieving loved ones at the Tree of Life synagogue, but I think it might be the best we can say.