Jewish volunteers set empty Shabbat table in Pittsburgh for civilians kidnapped by terrorists

Etti Martel comforted an Israeli teen within a maze of tables in Oakland’s Schenley Plaza Friday afternoon, as volunteers taped photos to white folding chairs of the 242 civilians that Hamas militants kidnapped in Israel on Oct. 7.

Nearby sat two teddy bears in high chairs — one for 4-year-old Israeli-Argentinian toddler Ariel Bibas, another for his 9-month-old brother, Kfir, the fate in Gaza of both young boys still unknown. Hamas had kidnapped an estimated 32 children, at least seven of them under the age of 3, last month, organizers said.

Hundreds of wine glasses along the blue-draped tables remained empty. So were the porcelain-white plates, each lined with a single, powder-blue napkin.

Martel, a Squirrel Hill mother of four, watched a young Jewish woman place a green sippy cup near an untouched loaf of challah — a kind of white, leavened bread, typically plaited, that Jews bake for the sabbath.

“We all have connections to Israel,” said Martel, a Jewish woman who was born and grew up in Israel but has spent much of her adulthood in Boston, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. “You see the news and think about everything. Nobody wants to do anything. And everybody’s heart is broken.”

The installation, appropriately known as “The Empty Shabbat Table,” first was shown outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art after the Oct. 7 attacks. Jewish communities then staged it in Rome and on the Bondi Beach in Australia. Jews in Baltimore announced earlier this week they’d be setting their one empty table at Oheb Shalom Har Sinai Congregation.

On Friday, the trend came to Pittsburgh, as scores of volunteers, a few of them wearing Israeli flags as capes, dressed folding tables in blue cloth and placed bottles of Israeli wine that would not be poured.

Shabbat dinner table in Times Square with a seat for each one of the hostages held by Hamas.

+220 men, women, children & elderly people have been brutally separated from their families.

We will not rest until they come home. pic.twitter.com/PNLKjFTavJ

— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) October 26, 2023

Racheli Holstein, a former teacher at a Jewish day school in Squirrel Hill, said she approached the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh on Monday with the idea to set the empty tables in Oakland, the region’s hub for higher education.

“I saw my family and friends in Israel helping the front lines and I didn’t know what I could do beyond donate,” said Holstein, 25, of Greenfield, who was born in Israel and moved to the U.S. at age 12.

“I wanted to have an event here where we could respect (the kidnapped) and talk about why this is an important thing for our Jewish community,” Holstein said.

Fox Chapel-based event planner Shari Zatman helped coordinate the materials and rented the big-top-style tent from Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.

She burst in tears Friday as she talked about the conflict that erupted after the attacks.

Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 civilians and injured 4,000 more on Oct. 7, in what is the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust. Israeli Defense Forces attacks on Gaza in the weeks since have killed an estimated 8,000 Palestinians.

“These are people — mothers, fathers, children,” Zatman said. “We want people to understand that. They’re all individuals. And we want them to come home.”

The event was largely volunteer-driven, counting among its army of table-setters students associated with Hillel Jewish University Center and Chabad, a Hasidic movement which has chapters in Squirrel Hill and Greenfield.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh helped fund the installation.

They also brought security. Several men in black, at least two armed with handguns, walked the perimeter of the tent as Jews prayed with tefillin, a set of small black boxes with leather straps containing parchment scrolls inscribed with Torah verses.

Jeff Finkelstein, who leads the federation, had returned just four hours before arriving in Schenley Plaza from a 36-hour trip to Israel.

There, he met families of two hostages Hamas is holding in Gaza. One of them, a woman named Tamar, was pronounced dead Thursday, he learned as he left the county. There was no body for a funeral.

But, on Friday, Finkelstein did not feel helpless.

“Somewhere here are their two photos on an empty chair,” Finkelstein said. “This has deep meaning, that a community like Pittsburgh, one that saw the most antisemitic attack in American history … is standing up for Jews who have been taken hostage.”

Israeli teenager Ayelet Setbon arrived in Pittsburgh in late August as part of her sherut leumi, a year of national service some Israelis take after high school. She volunteers to teach and share Jewish culture with students at Hillel Academy, a Squirrel Hill school.

After Oct. 7, the native of Netanya, Israel, a coastal city 19 miles north of Tel Aviv, became familiar quickly with American forms of antisemitism. Unknown vandals scrawled antisemitic graffiti at multiple Squirrel Hill locations as recently as Tuesday.

Pittsburghers reported at least 218 antisemitic incidents to the federation in the area this year through last week, nearly doubling last year’s total of 122, officials said. More than 700 incidents were monitored since Oct. 7 nationwide by Secure Community Network, a Jewish security group.

“I never thought things in Israel impact so much things in America,” said Setbon, 19. “I don’t have the words to describe it.”

Setbon’s parents told the young Jewish girl to hide her Star of David necklace under shirts and never to speak Hebrew in public in the U.S.

Martel, the Squirrel Hill mother of four, countered that, telling Setbon to have Jewish pride.

“I’m here to stand with Israel,” Martel said. “They’ve done this in New York, they’ve done this in Tel Aviv, big cities. But this is amazing. I’m so happy Pittsburgh’s doing this.”