Public rituals of grief took place across the city for the 11 people killed when a gunman stormed the Tree of Life synagogue during services.
PITTSBURGH — The public rituals of grief in Pittsburgh kept accumulating on Wednesday with more funerals, more burials and more communal gatherings for the 11 killed in the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue.
At Beth Shalom Synagogue, people gathered early Wednesday to mourn Joyce Fienberg, 75, a well-loved researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. A little over an hour later, visitation had begun for Irving Younger, 69, at Rodef Shalom Temple, the second service there in two days.
“He wasn’t the tallest guy, but he had the biggest heart,” said Marsha Mintz, 74, a longtime friend who was waiting in the visitation line. She was a guest at the wedding of Mr. Younger and his late wife, Sherry, and remembered how he had doted on her. “She was ill for a very long time and he took care of her with such devotion,” Ms. Mintz said, choking back tears.
Emily Harris, 69, was in Mr. Younger’s graduating class in high school when they were growing up in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. “He was a good guy, a solid guy: what we call a mensch,” she said. “He was a friend you could always count on.”
On Wednesday, a federal grand jury indicted the man accused of carrying out the attack on 44 counts, including hate crimes, prosecutors said. Robert Bowers, 46, who will appear in federal court on Thursday, faces the possibility of the death penalty.
Most of the mourners tried to keep the focus on the people being remembered, but sometimes the horrific circumstances behind it all crept into mind.
“You see all that’s going on in the world,” Ms. Harris said, “and every time I’m out in a crowd, I get visions of something like this happening.”
[ Read more about the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting.]
At the same time, friends and family gathered in a funeral home chapel not a mile away, for the service for Melvin Wax, 87, who was killed on Saturday as he came out of a dark storage room into the chapel where the New Light congregation met on the Sabbath.
“It is a week of mourning for the whole community; there are funerals that are scheduled every day,” said Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, who leads the New Light congregation and was preparing to lead services for Mr. Wax. “It’s very all-consuming, everybody is talking about whose funeral they have gone to and when the next funeral is going to be and where will it be held.”
The deaths have been on front pages globally; it is not just the family and friends who mourn them, said Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of Tree of Life, at the funeral for the Rosenthal brothers, Cecil and David, which took place the day before. But, “the entire world is sharing this grief.”
That has presented the families with another burden in an already taxing week: how to balance the intimate rituals of grief with the worldwide attention. Many of the funerals are private and closed to people outside of friends and family. The shivas, the seven-day periods in which mourners and community members come together to comfort the bereaved, began on Tuesday with the first burials; by the end of the week, there will be several proceeding around the city. Families have tried to keep most of these closed, as well.
Given the outpouring of support, they are big enough as it is.
“The house could just not hold capacity,” said Steven Halle, a nephew of one of the victims, Daniel Stein. “It’s overwhelming support. We expect the same for the next two nights.”
The shiva for Mr. Stein began Tuesday evening, hundreds of people packed into the home where he lived for years with his wife, Sharyn. A line snaked out the door; the porch stayed about 50 people deep for hours. When the rabbi began the evening services to lead the Mourner’s Kaddish — the traditional prayer for the dead — it was impossible to see where the voice was coming from, the room was so crowded.
Ms. Stein, Mr. Halle said, “sat in one chair at 6 o’clock and didn’t get up until 11, when people had gone home.”
“I spoke to them this morning and there is clearly relief,” he continued. “They are sleeping better. It does help them, no doubt.”
Plainclothes officers from the city police department and the F. B. I. were scattered throughout the gathering, there to both ensure safety and, at the family’s request, keep the news media out. Hundreds of visitors came carrying food, offered for both the mourners and visitors.
“If you don’t eat at a Jewish event, something is wrong,” Mr. Halle said. “I can’t even tell you how much food was arriving, and people still wanted to provide more.” When others asked if they could provide meals to Ms. Stein, they were urged to call next week: There was already food lined up for days and days.
