Yom HaZikaron 5777

Yom HaZikaron Ceremony

Northwestern Hillel

May 1, 2017

My remarks are in memory of Marla Bennett and the other victims of the bombing at Hebrew University in 2002; they will take the form of a commentary on the poem, The Diameter of the Bomb, by Yehuda Amichai (translation by Chana Bloch).

The full poem, first in English, then in Hebrew (read by my colleague Simcha Masala)

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,

with four dead and eleven wounded.

And around these, in a greater circle

of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered

and one graveyard. But the young woman

who was buried in the city she came from,

at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,

enlarges the circle considerably,

and the solitary man mourning her death

at the distant shores of a country far across the sea

includes the entire world in the circle.

And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans

that reaches up to the throne of God and

beyond, making

a circle with no end and no God.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

I don’t really know what the diameter of the bomb was, and I don’t really care.  It was placed in a backpack and left, strategically, on a table under a newspaper in Café Sinatra at Hebrew University. 

and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,

Very effective.  The open newspaper made it look like someone was just saving the seat, had put the backpack there for a moment while they went, like the couple of hundred other people inside the air-conditioned café on that sweltering last day of July in 2002, to grab schnitzel or some other quick lunch before the final exams of the summer session.

The bomb went off at 1:31 pm.  36 hours later, I talked my way past the guards watching over what was now a crime scene and a makeshift memorial site.  I made my way into Café Sinatra and sat on the floor, wondering exactly where Marla and Ben and Jamie would have been sitting before hell intruded. By this time, the tables and chairs and bodies and blood and nails and spikes and flesh and hair and glass and everything else imaginable and unimaginable had been swept up and cleaned.  Much of the structure remained intact.  But – not the ceiling.  Panels had fallen or had been blown off, wires exposed.  The guts of the building had been ripped open.

with four dead and eleven wounded.

In Café Sinatra, nine dead and 85 wounded.  Nine dead. Ben Blutstein.  Marla Bennett.  Revital Barashi.  David Gritz.  David Diego Ladowski.  Janis Coulter. Dina Carter. Levina Shapira. Daphna Spruch.  The 85 wounded included our friend, Jamie Harris-Gershon.

And around these, in a greater circle

A greater circle. The people – random, amazing people – who carried the dead and the wounded into the plaza outside the café’, organizing triage for those who could be helped and maintaining whatever dignity could be held for those who were already dead.

A greater circle.  Over 3000 civilians killed and more than 25,000 wounded by Palestinian terror attacks in Israel since 1948.  More than 20,000 Israeli soldiers killed in combat. A toll that continue to rise.

Thousands of Palestinian casualties of war and violence related to this conflict. A toll that continue to rise.

of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered

Hadassah Hospital – Ein Kerem:  Where I went, hours after the bombing, to try to find out if the woman lying in a coma, unable to be identified, was Marla. I went to her bedside, looked at this person, features swollen so much she was virtually unrecognizable.  Will she survive? I asked the nurse.  “It doesn’t look good.” Still, I wasn’t sure if this was Marla.  They brought me out of the room, over to a drawer that held her belongings.  A ring.  A watch.  This wasn’t Marla. Marla, it turned out, had died instantly.  This woman, Revital Barashi, would succumb to her injuries a few days later.

Hadassah Hospital – Har HaTzofim (Hebrew U.):  Where I went, right after going to the site of the café, and found my way into the room where Jamie lay recovering from her horrendous injuries.  She had not yet been told that her friends and lunch companions, Marla and Ben, were both dead.  And I couldn’t tell her.  All I could tell her was that I loved her, and wished her the most intense refuah shleima, full and speedy recovery, that I could muster.

and one graveyard. But the young woman

The cemetery is in San Diego, where Marla was born.  Where she is buried now, next to ancestors long dead, her own arrival far too early, far too soon.

Marla was born and raised in San Diego, went to college at UC Berkeley, and studied in Israel at Hebrew U. during her junior year and then at Pardes starting in September 2000.  She arrived when the elusive dream of peace looked like it might actually be achieved.  Instead, the 2^nd Intifada erupted that fall.

Marla loved Jerusalem. In spring 2002 she wrote, “I’ve been living in Israel for over a year and a half now, and my favorite thing to do here is to go to the grocery store. I know – not the most exciting response from someone living in Jerusalem these days. But going grocery shopping here…means that I live here. I am not a tourist; I deal with Israel and all of its complexities, confusion, joy, and pain every single day. And I love it.”

On the last Shabbat of July 2002, after lunch with our friends Jamie and David Harris-Gershon, Marla and I went for a walk in our beloved Yerushalayim, a walk that began in the heat of late afternoon and ended as the cooling breezes arrived in the hills of that holy city.  On our walk, Marla pointed at houses to show me the kind of place where she’d like us to live some day.  We walked through a playground filled with small children. We held hands as we walked, beaming in joyful anticipation of hundreds of Shabbat walks – and so much more – that we imagined lying ahead of us in our future.

Marla also wrote this in spring 2002: “As I look ahead to the next year and a half that I will spend in Israel, I feel excited, worried, but more than anything else, lucky…. Stimulation abounds in Jerusalem…. There is no other place in the world where I would rather be right now.”

who was buried in the city she came from,

As I was leaving Israel on my horrible, holy task of accompanying Marla’s body on its journey home to her family in San Diego, I was handed a bag with soil from Eretz Yisrael, to place in her grave.  Which I did.

at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,

Thousands of miles away, and not just in distance.  San Diego is temperate, in more ways than one, and can feel a million miles away from Israel. Though on the day of Marla’s funeral, people from thousands of miles away, even as far as Israel, came to San Diego and collapsed that distance, at least for a moment.

enlarges the circle considerably,

The Talmud tells us that the murder of one person destroys an entire universe.  Marla was preparing to be a teacher of Torah, with dreams of one day heading a school. How many students – how many worlds – would Marla have touched and changed indelibly? Dozens, hundreds, thousands?

And, in our here-and-now reality, at least 20 children have been named for Marla in the years since she was killed.  Memorials and scholarships and days of service exist to honor her memory.  People like me try to honor her memory in words and deeds.

and the solitary man mourning her death

The lone man who weeps, and cries out, for hours and days and months and years.  Until the weeping doesn’t quite stop, as it never really stops, but becomes part of who he is, and then he moves forward, because he doesn’t know, really, what she would have wanted, but he believes that she would have wanted him to live.

The story of how I met Marla, and where I lost Marla, takes place in Jerusalem. So does the story of how I met Claire, four years nearly to the day after Marla was killed, and about thirty feet from the very spot where I had met Marla. I met Claire Sufrin in Jerusalem eleven years ago, the n we dated long distance, then fell in love, got married, and then Jacob, and then Ethan, and here we are. Hineinu.

at the distant shores of a country far across the sea

Jerusalem. Tel Aviv. Petach Tikva. Beersheva. Haifa. Netanya. The list goes on, and on.

includes the entire world in the circle.

San Bernardino. Orlando. Brussels. Paris. New York City. Aleppo. Istanbul. The list goes on, and on.

And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans

that reaches up to the throne of God and

beyond, making

a circle with no end and no God.

And yet I continue to say, Baruch Hashem.  Blessed is God. Blessed is God for creating this beautiful, amazing, joyful, and, yes, horrifying and painful world. Baruch Hashem for creating Marla, though she was ripped away from us so horribly.  Baruch Hashem for creating me, and Claire, and Jacob and Ethan. And all of you.  All of us. Baruch Hashem, for giving us the ability to cry, to laugh, and, sometimes, to make peace.