The new national institution dedicated to ending antisemitism housed at the site of the worst antisemitic attack on U.S. soil has named Carole Zawatsky its first chief executive officer.

Zawatsky is tasked with leading a re-imagined facility designed to be part memorial, part museum and part worship space, according to plans to renovate the site of the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill announced last May.

The nonprofit institute will simply be called Tree of Life and its goal will be to eradicate antisemitism, something Zawatsky acknowledges will be a daunting task, particularly with a noticeable rise in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. and around the world this year.

“Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem. It’s everybody’s problem,” Zawatsky told the Tribune-Review in a Zoom interview Tuesday morning. “When we work to eradicate hate in all of its forms, we are all better.”

A Maryland native, Zawatsky has 30 years of experience serving a number of Jewish communal institutions and museums, including the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia; the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center in Washington, D.C.; The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco; the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Cleveland, Ohio; the Jewish Museum in New York; and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

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Zawatsky said she sees the challenges of her new job in Pittsburgh in the context of a “call to action” in the battle against antisemitism.

“We have to look at ourselves and ask, ‘Have I done the most I could?’ ” Zawatsky said. “’Have I done the most I could to combat antisemitism and hate in all of its forms?’

“Every day, when I look at a news feed and see a growing antisemitism, spray paint in the neighborhood (in Bethesda, Maryland) that I just moved from of terrible antisemitic comments, what it does for me is say that the Tree of Life, as it is re-imagined, is that much more important,” she said. “Every child who is educated, every adult who comes through, every person who attends a lecture, a film, a symposium, a program, and comes away a little bit more enlightened than when they entered, becomes part of the story that we are all working toward.”

Zawatsky was unanimously nominated by a CEO search committee made up of people representing different sectors across Pittsburgh’s Jewish community. The selection was then approved by Tree of Life’s Interim Governance Committee.

“She’s passionate about this project,” Michael Bernstein, chair of the Tree of Life Interim Governance Committee, told the Trib. “Her whole career has been focused on Jewish communal life. She’s a student of Judaism, but just as importantly she’s worked in antisemitism, social justice. It was a combination that we didn’t find in many of the other candidates, if any.”

Zawatsky said what most attracted her to the job is the excitement of creating something new.

“This is something so unique and so important. When my niece and my nephews ask me and their children ask me, ‘In the face of the worst antisemitism, what did you do? Did you act? Did you do the most you could?’ I want to be able to say ‘Yes I did.’ ”

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who survived the attack at Tree of Life on Oct. 27, 2018, serves as the honorary chair of the Remember Rebuild Renew Campaign supporting the new Tree of Life. He called Zawatsky the perfect choice to lead the project.

“Antisemitism is not only a Jewish problem, it is an American problem. Carole not only understands that, she believes it,” Myers said. “We are so happy to have her on this journey of reimagining the Tree of Life, and empowering people to join the movement to end antisemitism.”

But the question that remains for Pittsburgh’s Jewish community is how does it move on from the pain of the recent past while facing an uncertain future?

“How do we do two things at once? We remember and we move forward. For millennia, that is the way Jews have survived,” said Zawatsky. “We remember and we move forward. We celebrate and we mourn. They have to live side by side.

“It is sobering to enter a space of such a violent act. Rich Jewish life that includes baby namings and life cycle celebration and holidays and celebrating Shabbat in that same space is the best way to affirm that we both mourn and don’t forget. But we move forward and we continue to celebrate. For the Tree of Life to be a space that can hold both of those is the best of what Judaism can be.”

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