Yom HaZikaron 5778

This is an updated version of my Yom HaZikaron remarks from last May.

Michael Simon

Yom HaZikaron Ceremony

April 18, 2018

My remarks tonight are in memory of Marla Bennett, Ben Blutstein, and the other victims of the bombing at Hebrew University in 2002, and of Yotam Gilboa.

I’ll be sharing a commentary on the poem, The Diameter of the Bomb, by Yehuda Amichai.

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

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective

range – about seven meters.

And in it four dead and eleven wounded.

And around them in a greater circle

of pain and time are scattered

two hospitals and one cemetery.

But the young woman who was

buried where she came from

over a hundred kilometres away

enlarges the circle greatly.

And the lone man who weeps over her death

in a far corner of a distant country

includes the whole 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.

Then, back to English:

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

I don’t know, exactly, what the diameter of the bomb was, and I don’t really care. The bomb 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

Very effective. The open newspaper made it look like someone was just saving the table, 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.

range – about seven meters.

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 sat on the floor of Café Sinatra, wondering exactly where Marla and Ben and Jamie had been sitting before hell intruded. 36 hours later, 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.

And in it 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 them 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 people killed and more than 25,000 wounded by Palestinian terror attacks in Israel since 1948.

A greater circle that includes Yotam Gilboa. I was Yotam’s madrich on Nesiya in Israel during the summer of 2002, the summer when I first became a Jewish educator. The summer when Marla was killed. The day after the Hebrew University bombing, when I said goodbye to my group of chanichim (campers), Yotam – a tough kibbutznik who had little patience for me throughout that summer, hugged me tightly with tears in his eyes that said, “Now you’re one of us.” Four summers later, on July 21, 2006, Yotam was killed in southern Lebanon while fighting as part of an elite combat unit against Hezbollah terrorists. He was 21 years old.

Yotam is one of more than 20,000 Israeli soldiers who have been killed in combat. A toll that continue to rise.

of pain and time are scattered

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

two hospitals and one cemetery.

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 a person with features swollen so much she was virtually unrecognizable. Will she survive? I asked the nurse. “It doesn’t look good.” I didn’t think it was Marla, but wasn’t sure. 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 say was, “I love you, Jamie,” and wished her the most intense refuah shleima, full and speedy recovery, that I could muster.

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.

But the young woman who was

Marla was born and raised in San Diego, went to 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. Three months before the bombing 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, Marla and I went for a walk in our beloved Yerushalayim. On our walk, Marla pointed at houses to show me the kind of place where she’d like us to live someday. We walked through a playground filled with small children. We held hands, 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 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.”

buried where she came from

At the airport, before I accompanied 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.

over a hundred kilometres away

Thousands of miles away, San Diego can feel a million miles away from Israel. Though on the day of Marla’s funeral, people came from thousands of miles away, from as far away as Israel, and collapsed that distance, at least for a moment.

enlarges the circle greatly.

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?

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 lone man who weeps over her death

The lone man who weeps, and cries out, for hours and days and months and even years. Until the weeping doesn’t quite stop, but becomes part of who he is, and he moves forward, because he doesn’t know for sure 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. And so does the story of how I met Claire, four years nearly to the day after Marla was killed, a week after Yotam was killed, and about thirty feet from the very spot where I had met Marla. I met Claire Sufrin in Jerusalem twelve years ago, and we fell in love, got married, and then had Jacob, and then Ethan, and here we are. Hineinu.

in a far corner of a distant country

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

includes the whole world in the circle.

San Bernardino. Orlando. Brussels. Paris. New York City. 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.

(pause)

And yet I continue to say, Baruch Hashem. Blessed is the Creator.

Blessed is the Creator for creating this beautiful, amazing, joyful, and, yes, horrifying and painful world.

Blessed is the Creator for creating Marla, though she was ripped away from us so horribly.

Blessed is the Creator for creating me, and Claire, and Jacob and Ethan.

And each of you. All of us.

Blessed is the Creator, for giving us the ability to cry, to laugh, and, sometimes, to make peace.