My grandmother has said to me that sometimes she wakes up and doesn't recognize this world. In the last few months, I not only understand that clearly, but I have also come to identify with it. The difference is that she's 91 and I'm 23.
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| | | Aviva N. Selekman, a former Post-Gazette staff writer, lives in Squirrel Hill (aviva@selekman.com). | |
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I often fall asleep with the television on, and Wednesday morning I woke up to Julie Chen's voice on CBS telling me there'd been a bomb at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She said the words "Hebrew University in Jerusalem" with such clarity, pronouncing them as if she had never said them before. All I could think was, "Hebrew U?"
I lived on Mount Scopus in 1999 when I spent my junior year of college studying at Hebrew U. I can't count the number of times I ate schnitzel at the Frank Sinatra cafeteria (so named, as it happens, by the Americans who raised money for the building and who thought this icon was a fitting namesake).
There was a bomb that year, too, although not within the campus gates. I was brushing my teeth when I heard the BOOM! and the windows of my dorm room rattled. I looked at my roommate and best friend, Gali, took the toothbrush out of my mouth and said, "Well, if we hear sirens, we'll know it's a bomb."
We were used to hearing loud booms because planes regularly broke the sound barrier and there was construction in the area. But for the first time, there were sirens. We ran outside to learn more. Thankfully, no one died.
Since our junior year, Gali has returned to live in Israel, and I have other friends and family there. There is worry, but life's too short to focus on what-ifs.
Gali e-mailed by 9 a.m. Wednesday that she was OK, although she had some friends at the university whom she had yet to reach.
After a full day of work and after-work activities, I got home to a message from my friend David in Chicago. David had been a United Jewish Communities Fellow in Israel with Gali and me. He sounded bad. I thought he'd broken up with his girlfriend. He said to call him when I got the message, and even though it was 11 p.m., I did.
He had terrible news. Marla Bennett was in the cafeteria at the time of the bombing. Marla Bennett was unaccounted for. Four hours later, I learned that Marla was dead. She was 24.
Marla. What a gem.
She was always smiling. Originally from San Diego, she was a Hillel Scholar the year we were in Israel, and the fellows and scholars had to take some of the same classes. Funny, the things I recall now, for example, Marla laughing about the number of gray strands that infiltrated her otherwise dark hair.
The great thing about Marla, though, was that while she smiled easily, she was deeply serious and committed to her education and her principles. When she had a goal, she went for it. That's why she was in Israel, delving into Judaism at the Pardes Institute and being in the Jewish homeland in its time of need.
One of the great things Marla did in 1999 was start a rosh chodesh (new month) women's group at the Hillel. Not only did she initiate the group, she developed much of the programming for its meetings. It became quite popular and better attended with each passing month.
Marla also was one of the 25 fellows and scholars to travel to Ukraine during Passover to lead seders for small communities who, because of decades of Jewish suppression during communism, had no one knowledgeable enough to lead them.
Although she lamented not getting to experience Passover in Israel (or try kosher-for-Passover Burger King), she wrote, "This Pesach, I did something important: I helped a once-oppressed group of people move toward freedom and success, and I learned to more strongly appreciate the freedom with which I have been blessed. . . . I know I will have other opportunities to spend Pesach in Jerusalem."
Knowing someone killed in a terrorist attack triggered a complex set of reactions. And grief, which is in many ways a private journey, also became public. But what's infuriating is that to most people, this bombing was just another "one of these" terrorist attacks.
People should not have to know a victim to be affected by these tragedies. We all have a personal stake. It's an assault on the freedom we all cherish. Every "one of these" is a crime against humanity.
Maybe it takes seeing a friend's picture on the nightly news and CNN to realize that.
The fellows, the scholars, the Pardes students who knew Marla are left re-evaluating life, searching for meaning and trying to answer unanswerable questions. The reality that large world events impact individual lives is acute.
My late evenings recently have been spent on the phone, for hours, with Marla's friends, those in Israel and those across the United States and Canada. We just can't comprehend it. I'm not the only twentysomething waking up to an unrecognizable world.
Generally, I am upbeat and positive, a glass-half-full person. But absorbing terrorist attacks, war and death over and over takes a toll. I struggle with the fine line between the painful feelings and grief associated with what is printed in these newspaper pages each day and carrying on with normal life and enjoying it. I don't know how to strike a balance.
I guess the difference when you know a victim is that you have permission to grieve.
May Marla's life be celebrated and her memory be blessed.
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