The Squirrel Hill memorial service this October will mark the sixth anniversary of the Tree of Life shootings. The numbers around what happened that morning are well documented. Less documented is what the community built afterward — a set of programs that have, in their quiet way, become a template.
Three pieces in particular are now being studied and copied:
The community mental-health network. Built with grant funding from the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Foundation, the network pairs roughly 800 community members per year with low-cost or free trauma-informed therapy through a referral system that doesn’t require diagnosis or insurance paperwork. The model has been replicated in fourteen North American cities, most recently Indianapolis and Vancouver, where local federations have used it as a baseline for their own programming.
The security-coordination office. Pittsburgh was one of the first U.S. cities to fund a full-time staff position coordinating security planning across community institutions — synagogues, schools, the JCC, communal organizations. Six years on, the role has moved from emergency posture to operational discipline: drills, threat assessments, after-action reviews. The model is now standard guidance from the Secure Community Network (SCN) and has been adopted in more than 35 communities nationally.
The 10.27 Healing Partnership. Now its own 501(c)(3), the Partnership runs continuing care for direct-impact survivors and their families. It operates out of an office in Greenfield with a clinical staff of six. Its programming includes peer-support groups, anniversary observances, and a school-based intervention curriculum that has been piloted in three CDS districts.
What the community has not figured out is the next chapter. Several volunteer leaders interviewed for this article described a current of “anniversary fatigue” among donors who funded the immediate response and are now asking, six years out, whether the long tail of the work should look the same. The answer most institutions are landing on is no — the work needs to broaden into general communal resilience rather than remain focused on a single event.
The 10.27 anniversary this year falls on a Tuesday. The Tree of Life memorial site, which opened to the public in early 2025, will be open for the day with extended hours.