POSTPONED Usable History in Times of Crisis:  Reflections on 10 Years of Living in the Past

In the summer of 2014 Tammy Hepps moved to Squirrel Hill for one year to research her family’s ancestral Jewish community of Homestead, Pennsylvania.  Ten years later, she’s still here and still researching.  While she has made significant strides documenting the history and personalities in the community, some of the most profound revelations came when the history she reconstructed intersected in unexpected ways with the events she lived through, including immigration crises, the Tree of Life shooting, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.