Hillel Holds Service for Victims of University Attack in Israel
Date: July 8, 2002
By: Dawn Fuller
Photos by Dottie Stover
Phone: (513) 556-1823
Archive: General News
"I feel like human beings were not meant to handle this kind of pain." -- Hebrew University student Shoshannah Finkelman, in a correspondence to Rabbi Abie Ingber, executive director of the University of Cincinnati Hillel Jewish Student Center.
Tears and prayers filled an Aug. 5 memorial service at UC's Hillel Jewish Student Center, as mourners felt the personal loss of the seven people killed in the July 31 suicide bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
"This chapel, this building in the last six months has seen too many memorial services," said Rabbi Abie Ingber, Hillel executive director. In the winter, services were held in memory of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, kidnapped and killed in Pakistan. Last spring, Hillel held the symbolic services to complete the Passover Seder, after 26 people were killed at a Seder in Netanya.
"Summer: The seven people killed at Hebrew University. Somehow, this attack at Hebrew University in the heart of Jerusalem was an attack on every university," said Ingber, who noted that in the few days it took to organize the service, many more died in attacks in Israel.
Representatives of the Cincinnati community, their voices breaking with emotion, described their bonds with the victims they never met in person: Marla Bennett, David Gritz, Benjamin Blutstein, David Ladovsky, Janice Ruth Coulter, Dina Carter, and Levina Shapira, all killed in the Hebrew University cafeteria in Jerusalem.
Marla Bennett UC graduate student Rachel Howse is 24 years old, the same age that Marla Bennett was when she lost her life in the explosion. Howse explained that Bennett, one of the five Americans who died in the attack, was on campus to take her final exam. Bennett was scheduled to return to her San Diego home just two days after the tragedy. She, like Howse, was a graduate student exploring her Judaism, planning to become a teacher and administrator.
David Gritz 24-year-old UC graduate student Corinne Aimard shared that she had just recently moved to Cincinnati from France. She's the same age as victim David Gritz, who was living in Jerusalem, but held dual citizenship in the United States and France. Gritz was planning to take a graduate-level course in Jewish thought at Hebrew University.
Benjamin Blutstein Xavier University student Mindy Kuhlman is the same age as Benjamin Blutstein. Blutstein was studying at Pardes Yeshiva to become a teacher of Jewish studies. Kuhlman is also the program associate at Hillel and her mission to connect young Jews to their heritage-a mission shared equally by Blutstein. He was looking ahead to arriving at his Pennsylvania home Aug. 1. Blutstein's body was sent home on the same flight he had been planning to take. His body was found with his airline ticket in his pocket.
David Ladovsky Orit Mazuz, an Israeli citizen, told the attendees that David Ladovsky was an Israeli citizen, an immigrant from Argentina. Ingber added Ladvosky was a brand new member of the Israeli diplomatic corps and was preparing for a diplomatic mission to Peru. He had stopped by Hebrew University to drop off a final paper.
Janice Ruth Coulter Heather Kilgore, an assistant in Xavier University's Office of International Students, described how Janice Ruth Coulter worked as a foreign student officer. Coulter, who was based in New York and served as deputy director of New York-based admissions to Hebrew University, was in Israel accompanying a group of 19 students from the United States.
Dina Carter Her voice choked with tears, Laurel Wolfson, deputy librarian for Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, described the ties she felt with 37-year-old Dina Carter, a native of North Carolina who held Israeli citizenship. Both women devoted their careers to the libraries. Carter was a librarian and archivist at Hebrew University. Wolfson explained that they both had also studied anthropology in their college careers.
Levina Shapira Mitchel D. Livingston, UC Vice President for Student Affairs and Services, described Levina Shapira as a devoted mother and wife. Livingston and Shapira shared a common bond in their careers -- Shapira had worked for Hebrew University for 33 years. In her most recent job in student services, she was head of Hebrew University's Student Authority.
Livingston, the founder of UC's Just Community, reflected that it seemed like it was just yesterday when he and 40 other practitioners and scholars were invited to Israel to present at the first International Conference on Promoting Democratic Principles in a Multicultural Society, held in Jerusalem in 1993. Livingston said he presented on the award-winning ideals of a Just Community.
"It was honestly that experience that led me to commit myself to the ideals of both community and justice and how they intersect, and the basic notion is given our differences--physical national, religious, whatever they happen to be, that if one wishes to create community when you have differences, that fundamentally, you have to address issues of justice first.
"Today I rededicate my commitment in the name of Levina Shapira," said Livingston.
Ingber read a correspondence from a Hebrew University student who was a friend of both Ben Blutstein and Marla Bennett. Shoshannah Finkelman wrote that Ben was always playing the African drums. "He made Judaism come alive like that," she wrote, and added a friend heard him playing those drums shortly before he headed to the cafeteria. Ingber says Finkelman went to Ben's apartment after the tragedy. "There was a message on his answering machine from his father, trying to find out where he was," she wrote.
She wrote that Ben was studying to become a teacher, and would have come back to America in just a couple of years. "Students would have thought he was the coolest teacher they had ever met."
Finkelman described Marla Bennett as a quiet, private person who was very much in love with her boyfriend. "There's not enough to be said about Ben and Marla. The newspaper descriptions seem so short that it's almost offensive, and I feel the same about what I've written here."
Rabbi Michael Zedek, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, read the words of Hebrew University President Manachem Magidor, who described the attack as a crime against the free and enlightened world. 'Above all, we will not let them kill our aspirations for peace.' Rabbi Gershom Barnard, president of the Cincinnati Board of Rabbis, led the memorial prayer.
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