PITTSBURGH — Jewish communities everywhere reacted with horror at last year’s Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, but the approaching one-year commemoration of the assault hits home particularly hard in Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, which already marks a grim anniversary each October.

It was here on Oct. 27, 2018, that a gunman carried out the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, killing 11 worshippers from three congregations at the Tree of Life synagogue.

Adding to the intense feelings is the arrival of the Jewish High Holy Days — days that bracket the Oct. 7 anniversary with rituals focused on mortality and recalling the deaths of loved ones and ancient martyrs. Many are taking consolation in the rituals as they mark an emotionally fraught milestone.

“The trauma here runs deep in our community,” said Rabbi Seth Adelson of Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative synagogue a few blocks from Tree of Life in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the heart of Jewish Pittsburgh. “You can’t really separate the trauma of Jews being attacked in Pittsburgh and Jews being attacked in Israel.”

The attacks do have differences.

The Pittsburgh attack was carried out by a right-wing extremist who targeted Jews for their aid to immigrants. It was followed by widespread civic support for the Jewish community.

The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, killed 1,200 Israelis and triggered a war in Gaza, whose health ministry says Israel has killed more than 41,500 Palestinians and wounded more than 96,000. Israel is now intensifying attacks on Hamas ally Hezbollah with deadly attacks in Lebanon, while Iran has attacked Israel with missiles.

The attacks have common threads, local Jewish leaders say. The synagogue attack violated the sanctuary of a place of worship. The Hamas attack has been followed by an upsurge of antisemitic incidents around the world.

“The similarity of what Oct. 7 and Oct. 27 hold together is a question of safety for Jews,” said Maggie Feinstein, director of the 10.27 Healing Partnership, which aids those traumatized by the 2018 attack.

Emboldened far-right extremists have been spreading Holocaust denial and other antisemitic screeds. Some on the left have expressed antisemitism along with criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war, while debate persists over the line between robust criticism and hate speech.

Nationally, nearly two-thirds of Jews feel less secure than they did a year previously, according to an American Jewish Committee survey this year.

In Pittsburgh, a man was charged in September in an attack on two university students wearing yarmulkes, the skullcap worn by observant Jews.

A synagogue and the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh office were targeted with graffiti. Parents of Jewish college students say their children have endured antisemitism amid protests critical of Israel.

Rabbi Daniel Yolkut of Congregation Poale Zedeck in Squirrel Hill said it’s become “unremarkable” for his children to hear antisemitic slurs shouted by motorists.

Unlike in 2018, Adelson said, local Jews haven’t felt widespread community solidarity.

“There’s this feeling that Israel was attacked and then the attacks just continued here,” he said.

As Oct. 7 approaches, Feinstein said Pittsburgh Jews are already familiar with the “anniversary effect” — the emotional churn around a traumatic calendar date. Each year since 2019, the community has held memorial services honoring the 11 lives lost on 10 / 27, as the synagogue attack is known locally.

She reminds people that emotions around anniversaries are natural: “Whatever we’re feeling, we shouldn’t feel shame.”

Members of all three congregations worshipping at Tree of Life — the host congregation, Dor Hadash and New Light — were killed that Sabbath morning.

News of the Hamas raid arrived on another Sabbath, just weeks after the conclusion of a lengthy federal trial in which the Pittsburgh assailant was sentenced to death on 63 criminal counts.

That trial confirmed in previously unknown detail how the gunman absorbed white supremacist ideology online and spread the slander that Jews were bringing in immigrants of color to replace white Americans. He targeted Dor Hadash in particular for its support of a national Jewish agency that helps refugees.

The timing of the Hamas raid “was very difficult because some people had not calmed down from their very high level of anxiety from the trial,” said Rabbi Amy Bardack of Congregation Dor Hadash. Both attacks raised gut-level questions: “Are Jews safe in the world?”

The war has worsened divisions on the left. Most U.S. Jews are liberal politically and vote Democratic, but many progressive Democrats have supported Palestinians and say Israel’s attacks amount to war crimes and genocide — charges that Israel and its supporters strenuously dispute.

Jewish community members acknowledge broad differences within their families and congregations, although most support Israel as a Jewish state and haven for Jews.

“Everybody wants peace,” Adelson said, “but there is a strong feeling that Israelis deserve to live in peace and not to be subject to the threats and rocket attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah.”

The disputes have flared locally, such as a recent failed effort by some Pittsburgh organizations to bar the city from doing business with entities linked to Israel.

Rebecca Elhassid now volunteers for the new Beacon Coalition, which researches local politicians’ views on Israel and Jews.

Until now, “we didn’t think to understand what a city councilperson thought about the Jewish community they represent,” she said.

The danger from the far right was well-known, but antisemitism from parts of the progressive left has hit closer to home.

“All my old colleagues, with whom I’ve done many things over the years with civil rights and voting rights and gay rights and all kinds of women’s rights, and I’m seeing them on the other side of an issue,” said Tree of Life member Audrey Glickman. “That’s been personally difficult for me because it’s hard to talk to people when they think you’re choosing the wrong side.”

But she’s determined to maintain dialogue and has continued to visit schools and other settings, spreading the word against antisemitism and other hatreds.

“If we don’t talk to each other, we don’t get anywhere,” she said. “I always feel more motivated to get out there and pull people together.”