Kelly Schwimer, executive director of Jewish Cemetery & Burial Association, participates in the cleanup project at Beth Abraham Cemetery in the South Hills on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025. The volunteer event was part of several community projects done to commemorate the seventh year since the Tree of Life Synagogue attacks on Oct. 27, 2018. (Tim Grant/Post-Gazette)

Published by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Tim Grant Oct 26, 2025

At Beth Abraham Cemetery in the South Hills, volunteers spent Sunday morning raking leaves, shoveling soil and cleaning headstones.

Among them was 20-year-old Ben Richlin, a University of Pittsburgh neuroscience major who joined about two dozen of his Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity brothers for the annual cemetery cleanup. His grandfather passed in February, and as he looked across the rows of gravestones, he imagined what each one represented — a gathering of family and friends mourning someone they loved.

“These gravesites mean so much to a lot of people,” Mr. Richlin said. “It’s gratifying to be able to do something this personally valuable. Families will visit their relatives and see that it’s being kept up and that they are being honored like they should be.”

The cemetery cleanup was one of four volunteer projects held by the Jewish community this weekend ahead of Monday’s community-wide remembrance marking seven years since the shooting at the Tree of Life building in Squirrel Hill on Oct. 27, 2018.

Three congregations worshipped in the space: Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light. Eleven congregants were killed: Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil and David Rosenthal, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.

Each volunteer project honors the passions of those who were killed, said Maggie Feinstein, executive director of the 10.27 Healing Partnership, which organizes the annual commemoration.
Cemetery maintenance was deeply meaningful to Bernice and Sylvan Simon, who were married 60 years earlier in the same chapel where they died.

“Their passion was really around the idea of making sure that nobody’s grave would be forgotten,” Ms. Feinstein said. “In the Jewish tradition, cleaning up someone’s grave is one of the greatest gifts you can give because it’s something they can never pay back to you.”

Beth Abraham Cemetery is an “orphan” cemetery — meaning it has no funds for maintenance and relies entirely on the nonprofit Jewish Cemetery & Burial Association of Greater Pittsburgh, which depends on grants, donations and volunteer labor to preserve its 5,000 gravesites.

“The volunteers are performing about $15,000 worth of labor today,” said Kelly Schwimer, executive director of the association. “They’re shoveling 14 tons of topsoil to fill in areas where the ground has settled and caused monuments to tilt or sink.

“All of the work is done by hand,” she said. “No machines. This is all about carrying buckets, pushing wheelbarrows and using shovels. They get dressed for getting dirty, and they do it with smiles on their faces.”

In the early years, the cemetery cleanup attracted only about 10 volunteers. Last year, 40 people participated.

This year, the number doubled to 80.

“People enjoy and feel good about this kind of giving,” Ms. Schwimer said. “They’re doing it because it really comes from the heart.”

For some, the work carries a deeply personal meaning. Bernice and Sylvan’s son Marc Simon said maintaining cemeteries like Beth Abraham connects remembrance to renewal.

“It’s a personal labor of love for me, but it also involves community,” Mr. Simon said. “It’s very important to involve community so that this tragic event that happened in 2018 is never forgotten.”

Three other volunteer events were held Sunday in the spirit of remembrance and rebuilding.
At Catholic Charities, volunteers packed dental care kits in honor of Dr. Rich Gottfried, who was remembered for his years of providing free dental services to those in need. Volunteers assembled 1,000 kits for distribution.

Elsewhere, the Jewish Community Center hosted a blood drive in memory of Irv Younger and Dan Stein — two more victims of the 2018 attack.

The Friendship Circle held a volunteer session to prepare signs and bags for its annual Walk4Friendship, which will be held on Nov. 2, continuing its mission of building an inclusive community for individuals with disabilities. Volunteers also helped restock the Jewish Family and Community Services food pantry with nutritious items for local families.

The weekend of service culminates Monday evening with a 6:30 p.m. remembrance ceremony at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh.

This seventh year of remembrance carries a special spiritual weight. In Jewish tradition, the seventh year is a time to let the land rest and regenerate, Ms. Feinstein said.

“The idea is we need to regenerate to figure out how to keep going,” she said. “We continue to work the field, but we also recognize that some people may need to let some of the burden go — maybe the grief, or the trauma, or some other pain.

“Everyone will have to do that in a way that feels right for them. But we are not going to leave this field,” she said.

“We’re going to stay here as a community. And we’re going to make sure that we don’t ever abandon the memory of these 11.”