What the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter didn’t understand about Jews

PITTSBURGH — I came here not as a journalist, but as a Jew.

When you’re Jewish, even if you aren’t strictly observant, bits and pieces of Jewish teaching and tradition are infused within you and present themselves to you at different points in your life. Ever since learning about the tragic events at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill last Saturday, one line has stuck with me from the Haggadah, the book we read during Passover as we commemorate the exodus of our ancestors from captivity: “In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he had come out of Egypt.”