Something Was Wrong - S6 Ep6: Panic Attack City | JE

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

*Content warning: gun violence, mass shootings, hate crime, stalking, harassment, antisemitism, violence, religious abuse, bigotry, distressing themes, death. Follow JE Reich on Twitter and Instagram  Tree of Life Synagogue  Inside the Tree of Life Congregation, the Prayer for the Dead Brings Hope by J.E. Reich  For more info about SWW and to access free mental health resources, please visit SomethingWasWrong.com Support SWW on Patreon for as little as $1 a month Follow Tiffany Reese on Instagram  Music from Glad Rags album Wonder Under  Tree of Life Synagogue  Inside the Tree of Life Congregation, the Prayer for the Dead Brings Hope by J.E. Reich Follow JE Reich on Twitter and Instagram  https://www.facebook.com/AntwonRoseFoundation/ https://www.poisefoundation.org/ https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2020/07/30/poise-foundation-launches-new-fund.html  For more info about SWW and to access free mental health resources, please visit SomethingWasWrong.com Support SWW on Patreon for as little as $1 a month Follow Tiffany Reese on Instagram  Music from Glad Rags’ album Wonder Under 

Something was wrong covers mature topics that can be triggering. Topics such as emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Please, as always, use caution when listening. Opinions of guests on the show are their own, and don't necessarily reflect my views or the views of this podcast. Please note, I am not a therapist or a doctor. If you or someone you love is being abused, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline

at 1-800-799-723. If you or someone you love is experiencing a suicidal crisis or emotional distress, please call 1-800-273-8255. For more resources, visit something was wrong.com slash resources. Thank you so much. Before we get into the second half of me, you don't know me about losing 11 loved ones during the Tree of Life Synagogue Massacre, the article was published by Vanity Fair on October 29, 2018. A link to their article can also be. found in the episode notes.

The first time I went to Tree of Life Synagogue this year. It was to say a prayer for the dead. It was February, a week after I had moved back to Pittsburgh from Brooklyn, and my mother requested that I accompany her to show support. We were at Temple for the customary morning service, Shacharit, and when the time came, we recited the mourners' cottage, a prayer to memorialize loved ones. We've lost in honor of my stepfather's father on the anniversary of his death. My mother picked me up from outside my apartment early in the morning,

and we drove through my old neighborhood, Squirrel Hill, for the five minutes it took to get to the synagogue. The trip was its own sort of ritual, cataloging the places of my youth and the memories they contained. Blocks away from the synagogue is the kosher pizza place I ordered falafel from once a week. The Ceramic-Mil-Mewa store where my mother and I bought my first and only set of tofillin. The alley where my friends and I smoked pot in high school, scattering whenever we heard cops coming up the street. This is the meaning of home, the reflex of memory. My stepfather, the executive director of the synagogue, was already there when my mother and I arrived. We were helping to complete a minion, a gathering of at least 10 worshippers, so that the morning service

could begin. I shrouded myself in a prayer shawl, and with the scant congregation there in the early hours of a weekday, we began reciting prayers in Hebrew with the fluid, roteness, a language made effortless by a collective past. Before the service began, I was given an alia, a call to receive a blessing in front of the congregation as the Torah portion is read. My Hebrew name recited as a summons. I walked down the aisle to the Bima, the pulpit, and faced the congregants as the portion was read, chanting in a lilting minor key. This is the place where I saw my stepfather marry my mother, where my stepbrothers had their barmizvahs, cracking their voices on the trope of their haf toras. It is the Bimha in the chapel where, eight months later, a shooter carrying an assault rifle, would burst through the doors. the members of the congregation who had arrived early would not be facing him.

Their eyes would be attuned past the place where I stood facing east, or were told, a promised land awaits us. Unlike most Jewish communities in the United States, the majority of Pittsburgh's Jewish population lives within the city limits, creating a stettel-like atmosphere that our Jewish-European ancestors would find more familiar than not. According to a recent study conducted by researchers from Grand Ice University, 26% of an estimated 49,200 Jews in the greater Pittsburgh area reside in the traditionally Jewish neighborhood of Squill Hill, with an additional 31% claiming other urban neighborhoods as home.

While the same study traced a significant drop in membership rates for local synagogues, a substantial portion of Pittsburgh's Jewish population came of age within the hallowed halls of one of the city's many temples. These places are more than just houses of worship. There are where children run freely through the halls in between Hebrew school classes, rattling around in unoccupied rooms with curiosity and rebellion, where teenagers slow dance at bar mitzvah parties, hoping for their first kisses, where adults beat their fists against their breastbones in atonement for their trespasses during Yom Kippur. It's where my stepfather blows a resounding primal note on a shofar at the conclusion of every Rosh Hashanah service to usher in a new year. To say, everyone knows everyone is hardly an exaggeration. It's a given.

In the days following the shooting at Tree of Life, during a morning Shabbat, service on October 27th. The fact that we all know each other lends itself a complex and cruel terror. After my partner tells me about the shooting as I'm ironing a shirt, after my mother texts to assure me that she and my stepfather were not in synagogue that day after my youngest sister and I sobbed together on the phone. The terrible wondering begins. Michael, the immediate past president of the synagogue, is the father of my first childhood friend. Augie, Tree of Life's Maintenance Man, used to come over to our house for dinner on Thursday nights. Cecil, a congregant with fragile X-syndrum who calls my stepfather his BFF, visits him every day and confides in him his fears of death.

We call friends and family, panic straining our voices to find out who was where. As the news reports, a rising death toll, first 8, then 10, then 11. There is one undeniable fact. No matter who the victims are, they will be people we know. By father, the son of Holocaust survivors, belays this horrible fact on the phone, that the shooter targeted us because we are Jews and because we were together. The day after the shooting, I went to a vigil hosted by a local chapter of if not now, an activist group I belong to. The organizers made sure to state with blunt candor that anti-Semitism is an interlocking symptom of white supremacy,

of xenophobia of a particularly American. and kind of racist rot. The rain did not deter the candles the crowd holds. Flames cradled in our palms. More cops and shules will not make us safer, when speaker said. Building a wall will not make us safer. Silence will not make us safer. After each sentence, the crowd agreed. I thought of certain headlines I've read. Certain declarations. blaming the massacre on the unlocked doors of the synagogue, rather than the shooter or the 21 guns registered to his name. I thought of the president who blamed the victims by suggesting an armed guard could have saved them. The crowd sang, joining hands, gripping each other, holding each other up, miles away. My stepfather was curled up in his bed inconsolable, remembering with,

what Augie told him as he fled from the building. How he saw Cecil Rosenthal, a giant of a man, just laying in blood, how he died alongside his brother, David. Another speaker at the vigil, a non-binary trans person, remembered Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, who made sure to learn their proper pronouns after they began transitioning with the same,

compassion he showed each of his patience. Daniel Stein, another victim, was there a man, a tutor. A few of us knew the grandson of Rose Mellinger, who was gunned down while attending services with her daughter. She was 97 years old. As the fiddle continued, the media reported more details about the shooter, who he earmarked tree of life, because of the synagogues ties to highest,

a Jewish nonprofit organization that provided, aid to immigrants and refugees. One New York Times article quoted friends and neighbors who described him as a man in his own little world, a loner who built pipe bombs for fun as a teenager, a ghost. He blamed choose for helping migrant caravans. The same caravans, President Donald Trump, has incorrectly alleged are filled with gang members and criminals. But for now, there we this growing crowd of grievers. Once again, we recited a prayer for the dead. Our voices in unison.

I've heard many people say how words cannot express their pain. But in this moment, I find that these ancient words bring hope. Here we are in Pittsburgh. A people and a people who will continue to be. no matter what may come. The day after the shooting, I was at my apartment. And somebody who I had grown, like, who had been a neighbor of mine when I was much younger, who is a journalist and works for Condi Nast, saw my Twitter feed,

and the things that I had been tweeting both about my own personal feelings about the shooting and just sort of like the snippets of news from the ground. and she reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to write a personal essay about my experience regarding the shooting. It was a difficult decision for me to make just because I was sort of weighing between how something like this could, sharing my experiences, could possibly serve a greater good in helping other people. But I was also incredibly worried that it would seem like I was sort of cashing in. on a tragedy, like it was sort of like I was worried about exploiting it in some way, which is obviously something that I wouldn't, would never do and I didn't want to do. And so I, I did talk about it with my partner at the time. And I talked about it, I think I talked about it with my mom. And I came to the

conclusion that, yeah, it was something that I should do because it could help people in the long run. And maybe it could put into words things that other people couldn't at the time. I wrote up an essay and I want to, like, less than 24 hours, I turned it around pretty much immediately. I kind of just sent it in, and I was like, I kind of didn't even want to look at it because I just felt emotionally exhausted. It forced me to really start processing things in a way that I hadn't been able to before because I was just in complete shock. I didn't even know it had been published until people started sending me the link. I remember, like, my Facebook blew up because I went to high school with, like both Jewish and non-Jewish who I hadn't spoken to. and in a really long time, we're like sending me, we're like posting it on their walls and

like, uh, sending me personal messages about like how much it meant to them and how much their feelings about the shooting as well, which it took me a while to be able to like really start responding to people just because everything was just so much at once that I couldn't really take it. I just needed to kind of sort through and start to process my grief. But it did, ultimately, I think it did what I wanted it to, which is to help people, find the words that were within them. I wasn't seeing a therapist at the time. I was seeing a psychiatrist, but I was able to luckily have a session with them a few days after the shooting to be able to start processing it. But writing was really was really like my rock in terms of understanding

my feelings and understanding how to unpack my grief. So it was actually a number of months later, I remember it was actually around Valentine's Day. My partner and I were preparing for Valentine's Day. And I got a call from my mother. She asked if I had made anybody mad lately, which, of course, like coming from my mother, I'm like a weird question. I've been a professional, writing professionally for, gosh, for over a decade. And being somebody who is queer, who's Jewish and who's trans. So like not like a cis white dude, a cis straight white dude.

And like writing things in public and things that are on the internet. Like I've made a lot of people angry in my time. I've developed a pretty thick skin when it comes to not just criticism, but like receiving things like DMs that are like death threats or like anti-Semitic cartoons in my email box, which usually just kind of makes me laugh

because it's somebody wasted two hours of their life drawing an anti-Semitic cartoon of me to send to me only to sort of like reify the fact that whoever I think this person who's doing it is a total loser and pathetic and not somebody I'd never be scared of. So like I've gotten used to that kind of stuff. And because like the medium that those kinds of things have been sent to me or said to me have always been through the internet. Like my mom calling. and saying, is somebody angry at you? Did you make someone mad? Did you, like, it didn't click.

And I was like, Mom, what do you mean? No, I don't think so. And she told me that somebody had left a message on my stepdad's cell phone, calling me by my first name. I go by J.E. Reich professionally because I like to sort of split my private life and my professional life. And they didn't refer to me as J.E. Wright. they referred to me by my first name. So I, again, didn't think this had anything to do with anything writing related. For that message, I remember that one was little muddled. We could only, like, really hear my name and then calling me a kike, but most of it seemed like pretty garbled. And

the voice wasn't a voice that I recognized at all. It was, it was slightly weird. I mean, it's not very, It doesn't feel very great to be called, like, the K word. It doesn't feel great to be called anything derogatory. But, like, it just seems sort of like weird, jumbled up nonsense. My mom then proceeded to tell me that my stepdad had been receiving phone calls from this number. It was an unknown number that were taunting him and saying things about the tree of life shooting, calling him derogatory names. And only then did it start to do.

dawn on me. Yeah. And of course, my stepdad, he's kind of like a very stoic guy. And I don't think at the beginning he really like understood the severity of this, especially because they had his personal cell phone number. It took us a little while, but we did figure out how that person got the personal cell phone number. So my stepdad, he left Tree of Life in June of 2018. And they hadn't hired, they decided not to hire somebody else for for his role at that time. So his office, I guess was still empty and he still had his voicemail recording on it. So later that day, the person called again and my mom said, Joel, don't pick it up, let it go straight to voicemail, which my stepdad did.

And that was the second message that was recorded. And that one was addressed again to me by my first name. Again, calling me Kike. They said some homophobic things in the message too. a lot of it just kind of, it was very odd. Some of it was just like yelling out words. And one of them was like, I'm going to take a buckshot to you, something having to do with like basically shooting me.

This is like when it sort of wouldn't like the ramifications of it really hit home, especially because they knew my first name. So after speaking with my mother about these threats and sort of realizing the alarming nature of them, We both decided to call the police. We both lived in different jurisdictions, so two different precincts dealt with these calls respectively. I mean, they did take it really seriously. I will have to say that while I have a lot of very complicated feelings about the police

as a whole, the specific police officer that I dealt with initially was really wonderful, very caring, and he made sure to gender me correctly. He even gave me a hug, which was, again, like very disconcerting, considering my larger general feelings about the police as a whole in the United States. And yeah, they took it seriously for the first, at least the first couple of days, maybe slightly under a week, there was actually a police car parked outside for 24 hours. Maybe there was, I don't know, like maybe 10-minute breaks or where there was no police car just because switching shifts and whatnot. And after that, for at least two weeks, there was a specific increase in a police presence

within at most of four block radius from my house. I mean, it's a residential area, and they were specifically there to make sure that no one was, you know, driving by my house, or, you know, they were on the lookout for anybody who might fit the description, whatever that might mean, of a white supremacist or a white nationalist,

and who seemed to have maybe a particular interest in my address. As far as I know, there was maybe only one instance where they noted a car that didn't seem to belong to anybody who lived in the area that drove by my house a few times. But I think they ultimately figured out very quickly that it was probably just somebody who was lost in the neighborhood. It wasn't a threat of any kind. The calls didn't stop. I mean, the case was immediately sort of like sent up to Allegheny, Pedy, which is like, like the county PD as well as the FBI. There was sort of like an FBI liaison that we contacted whenever we got another call.

And we did get these calls, I think, only stopped a few months ago. But yeah, for at least a period of six months, maybe eight months, we received calls like this. Sometimes it was once a week. Sometimes it was like once every six weeks. At one point, I was loaded by someone online to a thread on. 8chan about me. I don't know if it was connected to the calls or not, but basically the commenters on this forum

were just discussing how I needed to be raped real good. They referred to me by she-her pronouns and called me the K-word, called me a number of really derogatory things. And I had to screenshot that all and give it to the officer who was working on the case, or the detective who was working on the case, and sent him each message and also I had to basically read them aloud to him because he was sort of an older guy. And he didn't really understand internet stuff.

So it was kind of retramatizing in its own right. The calls did eventually stop. I have theories as to who might have been behind it. But it's pure speculation at best. And I don't think it would be responsible for me to pontificate who I was behind the calls or the people who I think. think was behind the calls. We did find out that the number that they were using was basically sort of like a rerouted number. So we couldn't even find the location of the caller. The caller could have been anywhere. And it was scary to think the caller would have possibly been in Pittsburgh

as well. That's so terrifying. Like how do you summarize what that experience felt like to be continually receiving this harassment not only for yourself but for your parents? I mean, it was really debilitating, at least for like the first few weeks. I didn't want to go outside. I hardly ever went outside. I was pretty terrified. I did have like some friends who were really awesome and would, you know, came over and like checked in with me to make sure I was okay. But like every little noise outside the door had me on guard.

Like it was panic attack city. And like I was also working at the time too. I was working from home, like doing some like remote reporting. this was like a contract position. So it was already going to be like a temporary gig. But I had to explain to my editor. Like, so I might need to end my shift early because the police might be coming by to follow up on the report involving like death threats I've been getting for a shooting

that occurred in my city, you know, months ago. It was like I sounded, I felt like I sounded like a crazy person just trying to explain it to them. Yeah, I just couldn't. It was so surreal. Yeah, it's, it was. I was like, these people must think I'm a lunatic because, like, who, who, like, how do you find yourself in this kind of situation, you know? I just, I just, like, would try to throw myself into work when I had shifts so I could just focus on anything but that. But it was just a series

of panic attacks, one after the other, but a few weeks later, or maybe a month later, another close friend of mine from college, Timmy, he died. So within this, like, months long span, my friend just dies. Then the shooting happens. then my friend Timmy dies. And so it hit me all over again. Unfortunately, at the time, I didn't have, like, resources to health care that I needed in terms of, like, my mental health. So I was really just trying to piece, like, to try to hold it together as much as I possibly could. But it really wrecked me for a really long time.

I have issues with, like, alcohol dependency. So for a brief time, I started drinking again, like, pretty badly. And, I mean, all of these things also were part of the reason why, my relationship at the time ended, all these stressors. And, you know, like, I can't blame them for that for that as a factor because it's a lot for somebody to take. I was trying to figure out how to cope, and it's like I was trying to actually, like, get a therapist, but, like, you know, at the time I was on, like, a really long wait list. And there was very little I could do. I didn't have insurance. So it was only months later when I started to go back into therapy when I had access

to it and I had access to that care that I started being able to heal. You are such a strong person. I mean, when I think about how much you had coming at you at once, it's an incredible amount of trauma and grief. It's horrific. I imagine you're still healing. I think so. Yeah. I do think about this a lot because the idea of normal and okay. Because in a way, I think it's possible to heal without ever being okay. I think it's possible to heal and knowing. that something inside you did break for a while and that thing still exists and it always will. But that doesn't mean that you have to sort of like let it tear you from the inside out. You know, I don't think of myself as a very strong person. I just think of myself as a person who has figured out how to survive. And maybe one day I'll think about it differently, but I think it's okay for now. And I think the only thing that I can really do is just look forward and hope that some of the experiences that I've had.

and talking about them can in some way, shape, or form help others. Absolutely. I think I took any anger or rage I had about the shooting and tried to channel it into supporting other minority communities in this country of my fellow neighbors who deserve to be heard just as much as I did and making sure that people know the name Antoine Rows II and that he was murdered. He died in unfair death

and that stories like those should be represented just like stories like mine. The shooter is nothing to me. I don't owe him my forgiveness. Instead, I owe others' allyship and love. I think that's a beautiful approach to take. We have so much more work to do. I mean, just the political class.

in Pittsburgh, especially leading up to the election and the Black Lives Matter protests that have taken place in the city and the way in which Trump supporters have enacted violence against those protesters and who have done their best to wield this silly, stupid, idiotic notion that whiteness equals supremacy in any way, shape, or form. I couldn't step foot into any synagogue for a really long time. It's still really hard for me to do it. And of course, right now with COVID, I kind of wish that I had been able to do it more because I haven't been able to set foot inside one since the pandemic began. But for the following year, on Yom Kippur, Tree of Life did hold services actually in a church. A cavalry church was nice enough to lend the space to Tree of Life congregates,

So we would be able to come together for the high holidays and really be together for the first time in such a large way. In toning the words or people have spoken for thousands of years all in one space. And my girlfriend Zoe came with me to that. It was nearly a year after the shooting had happened. And I stayed the whole time. And I was able to see people I loved and be with someone I loved and be with my community. in this way for the first time in a really long time. And it's the closest thing I've ever felt to what it means to truly start to heal. And I think healing is building up to those moments,

making it possible for those moments to happen, whether it's through activism, whether it's through social justice, or whether it's through, you know, taking one step inside of a doorway. I don't think it's linear. And I think sometimes it can feel like, you know, it's a losing game. But I think it can happen. I thought we could end by sharing the 11 victims' names. Yeah. Joyce Feinberg, 75. Richard Gottfried, 65.

Rose Malinger, 97. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66. Cecil Rosenthal, 59. David Rosenthal, 54. Bernice Simon, 84. Sylvan Simon, 86, Daniel Stein, 71, Melvin Wax, 88, and Irving Younger, 69. May their memories be for a blessing. Thank you.

Thank you so much for, thank you so much for sharing and for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you for letting me share my story. Thank you. Thank you again to J.E. for sharing their story with all of us. For more information about Antoine Rose II, please check out the episode notes. Thank you so much and stay safe, friends.

Something Was Wrong is produced and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. Music on this episode from Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. If you'd like to help support the growth of Something Was Wrong, you can help by leaving a positive review, sharing the podcast with your family, friends, and followers, and support at patreon.com slash something was wrong. Something Was Wrong now has a free virtual survivor support forum

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