Pittsburgh Steelers player gives a Hanukkah gift to Tree of Life synagogue

Zach Banner #72 of the Pittsburgh Steelers Image by Michael Hickey/Getty Images
Zach Banner, offensive tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers, offered up a chunk of his paycheck as a donation to the synagogue that was the site of a 2018 massacre.
Im crashing Hanukkah this year guys …
By donating part of my last week’s game check to the Tree of Life synagogue here in Pittsburgh.
Happy Holidays!
-Hulk
— Zach Banner (@ZBNFL) December 15, 2020
White supremacist Robert Bowers attacked Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation, killing 11 Jews at prayer, only a few months after Banner signed with the Steelers in 2018.
Banner signed the Tweet as “Hulk,” his nickname on the team. The name is a reference to the alternate identity of the Marvel Comics character who shares his last name, Bruce Banner.
Tree of Life responded with an invitation.
We look forward to inviting you to celebrate the holidays with us in-person someday soon!
— Tree Of Life * Or L’Simcha Congregation (@treeoflifepgh) December 15, 2020
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
