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The Jewish Home | JULY 14, 2022
The Wandering
Jew
Mini Trips Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania By Hershel Lieber
A
t the tail end of May 2003, we went on a mini vacation trip to Pittsburgh, PA. Our trips usually combine visiting general tourist sites with an emphasis on finding opportunities to meet members of the tribe. We arrived Monday afternoon and left Friday morning, which gave us three full days to discover the City of Bridges. Staying on an upper floor of the Hilton across Point State Park gave us a bird’s eye view of the confluence of the Allegheny, Ohio, and Monongahela Rivers that surround Pittsburgh and some of the 446 bridges that service this city. In fact, Pittsburgh has more bridges than any city in the world including Venice, Italy! Another anomaly is that all the bridges are traditionally painted a yellowish gold. Pittsburgh has another nickname, Steel City, because of its history as the center of America’s steel industry. Hence, the name of its football team is The Pittsburgh Steelers. Enough history. The day we arrived, we went out for a short walk in the Park, which included a visit at the Block House, the only remnant of the largest and most elaborate British fort, Fort Pitt. Then we headed to Squirrel Hill to eat supper at Platters, a Middle Eastern restaurant. We also went to a kosher supermarket and stocked up on food to take back to our hotel for breakfasts and lunches. Squirrel Hill is the Jewish neighborhood of Pittsburgh. About forty percent of the residents are Jewish, and about a third of Pittsburgh Jews live there. There are shuls of every denomination, kosher food stores, restaurants, Jewish schools, mikvehs, a kollel, a Jewish book and Judaica shop, and, of course, the neighborhood has a prominent Chabad presence. Recently, the neighborhood gained worldwide recognition from the tragic shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation in October of 2018. Generally, Squirrel Hill is considered one of the city’s safest areas, and the epicenter of its Jewish presence is undoubtedly Murray Avenue. The drive from Point State Park to Squirrel Hill takes about fifteen minutes, and I drove to Shacharis every morning. I made a point to daven in different
The funicular to the top of Mount Washington
shuls so that I would experience the diversity among the Orthodox population. On Tuesday, I davened at the Shaare Torah Shul of Rabbi Daniel Wasserman. We were just a bit over a minyan in this huge famous shul whose spiritual leader was once the legendary Rabbi Bernard Poupko. When I came back to the hotel, Pesi was having an issue with her eye in that her vision was marred with her seeing specks. We immediately went to see an ophthalmologist who, baruch Hashem, did not
think that it was a serious problem. We began our day by walking in the downtown area for about two hours which included a bit of shopping. After lunch, we went to the Phips Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. This oasis in the middle of a bustling city has over twenty first class gardens and a fourteen-room glasshouse. The weather was just right, and many flowers were in full bloom. What a delightful day! When we finished at the Gardens, I stopped on Murray Avenue to get a haircut. There, I met Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, the rav of the Lubavitch Center and the Dean of the Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh. We had a very nice conversation, and he invited me to daven with the bar mitzvah age boys on Thursday morning at the yeshiva. Before heading back to our hotel, we partook in a Chinese buffet at the Golden China restaurant. On Wednesday, I davened Shacharis at Poale Zedeck, which is referred to by everyone as P-Z. One of the people who greeted me was someone named Yale Butler. He was very friendly and wanted to schmooze with me after davening. I had to excuse myself because Pesi was waiting for me at the hotel, and we had scheduled an itinerary which involved specific timing. I made a suggestion that we meet that evening with our spouses at a restaurant where we could leisurely get to know each other. He accepted and suggested Sari’s, where Wednesday’s dinner was dedicated to Mexican food, and we set a time. After a rushed breakfast, Pesi and I headed to the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. There, they had a collection of thirty-one classrooms as part of an exhibition called “The Nationality Rooms.” The architecture and design of each classroom depicted different nationalities, cultures, and traditions. Twenty of those rooms represented European nations, while the remainder illustrated other countries including one called Israeli Heritage. We were overwhelmed by this beautifully arranged exhibit and spent a long time marveling at this special treat. We stopped by the Carnegie Museum of Natural
