Bus on Jaffa Road

by Mike Kelly

  Michael and Tracie Bernstein had been married six months earlier, a joyful ceremony in America that Sara and Matt attended. Now Matt and Sara had a simple question: What was great about getting married?

  Michael and Tracie were not surprised by the question. They knew how open Matt and Sara were—open enough, certainly, to ask a newly married couple about their decision to marry and why they valued going through the formality of a wedding as opposed to just living together.

  The Bernsteins sensed that Matt and Sara were on the cusp of getting engaged and wanted advice and encouragement. “Their relationship was so deep because they were very honest and very real,” Bernstein said years later. “They were the kind of friends that you knew you could talk to about anything.”

  As he looked across the table on that Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem, Michael Bernstein felt honored by the question Matt and Sara had brought to him and Tracie. The question itself was grounded in a sense of trust that the two couples shared. Michael and Tracie knew that Sara and Matt already demonstrated the kind of unspoken and intimate closeness of a couple who had pursued their own interests and yet still managed to find time to nurture a deep love for each other. At the same time, Matt and Sara also seemed unafraid to open themselves up to their friends. “The question did not reveal a skepticism about marriage, but instead showed how they approached their relationship with depth and thoughtfulness,” Bernstein wrote years later in a Facebook posting in which he described the meeting. “They were both suffused with great compassion for others and a talent for putting their dreams into action. And somehow, more than anything else, they loved each other.”

  The conversation about marriage drifted from the sublime and humorous—what each partner might discover about the other’s habits—to the deeply spiritual and how Michael and Tracie felt marriage made Judaism more meaningful. As the lunch ended, Michael and Tracie were quite sure that they would be hearing fairly soon of a new engagement—Matt’s and Sara’s.

  On the Sunday that Matt and Sara began their trek to Jordan by catching the Number 18 bus, Matt’s roommate, Matt Berkowitz, was also traveling. A few days earlier, Berkowitz and his fiancé, Miriam, left for a short trip of their own. Instead of Jordan, Matt and Miriam decided to head to the Israeli community of Kiryat Gat on the edge of the Negev desert.

  Matt and Miriam spent Saturday night in Kiryat Gat. When they awoke on Sunday, Matt and Miriam heard some of the residents talking about a bus bombing in Jerusalem and checked the television news. “Chaos,” Berkowitz said of the footage he watched.

  Neither Matt nor Miriam had any idea that Matt and Sara were already dead. “It was a time before cell phones,” Berkowitz said years later.

  The next day, Matt Berkowitz and Miriam caught a ride into the Israeli resort of Eilat on the Red Sea. It was Monday now; the bombing on Jaffa Road and the other blast in Ashkelon dominated the Israeli newspapers. Berkowitz walked to a newsstand and scanned the headlines—and, then, his eye caught sight of photographs of two familiar faces.

  Matt and Sara.

  The New York Times featured the deaths of Sara and Matt in a front-page obituary that accompanied a long news story about the bus bombing and its potential impact on the peace process. “They were in love with their faith and with each other, and they died together as the victims of hate,” wrote the Times’s John Sullivan in the story’s first paragraph that appeared under the headline, “2 US Students Found Faith, Love and Death.”

  The story continued inside the newspaper and featured Sara’s and Matt’s college graduation photos. It pointed out Sara’s and Matt’s Ivy League college pedigrees. It mentioned their wide array of friends and their outspoken commitment to the Middle East peace process. But many who were interviewed said how empty they felt after hearing of the deaths.

  “For a terrorist to kill her just kills me,” said Barnard Dean Dorothy Denburg. “She was such a quiet person and a gentle person. She was very committed to peace in the Mideast.”

  Likewise, Matt’s dean at Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi William Lebeau, asked, “What could be the meaning of the violence like this, the utter waste of his life and the lives of all who were killed? What could be the value of destroying such a life?”

  That question by Rabbi Lebeau would come to loom large in years to come. The Times’s front page unknowingly offered a foreshadowing of the how the deaths of four Cuban Americans over the Florida Straits the day before would one day be connected to the deaths of the two young Americans on the Number 18 bus on Jaffa Road. Placed on that front page next to the Times’s main news account of the Israel bombings—“2 Suicide Bombings in Israel Kill 25 and Hurt 77, Highest Such Toll”—and next to a photograph of the blackened skeleton of the Number 18 bus, was a news story explaining that President Bill Clinton, facing Republican criticism that he was not tough enough, was weighing a variety of options to punish Cuba and Fidel Castro for ordering its air force to shoot down the two unarmed planes flown by Brothers to the Rescue. “This is an act of war,” said a Cuban-American activist. “Mr. Clinton has a lot to think about tonight.”

  In its evening news program on Monday, National Public Radio devoted a segment to Sara and Matt. In Israel, where obviously many Israelis had perished, too, the deaths and promising lives of Sara and Matt resonated. “The Heart Is Broken,” proclaimed a headline in the popular Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

  Israeli television news, in between segments assessing how the bombings would affect the upcoming elections, continued to broadcast images from the bombing site, where a memorial had candles arranged to spell out the Hebrew word for “enough.”

  “It was one of those mornings when you had to say, ‘Thank God I wasn’t there,’ ” said TV news anchor Mike Greenspan. “By the end of the day, an entire nation was weeping.”

  In his newscast, Greenspan mentioned several victims. He also reported that Israelis shot and killed a Palestinian-American motorist who crashed into a Jerusalem bus stop on Monday. It was not even known at that point whether the crash was a deliberate act of terrorism or simply an accident. But the killing of the motorist revealed how tense Israel had become in the wake of such horrific bombings.

  Later that day, Prime Minister Shimon Peres stepped into the well of the Knesset to brief Israel’s legislators on the bombings and their aftermath. Peres began by asking for his nation to try to stay calm. Then he turned to the incident hours earlier in which the Palestinian-driven car crashed into a bus stop. “It may be a terrorist attack,” said Peres, “but until everything is checked, there is no room for guesswork.”

  The problem for Peres was that disturbing stories were already spreading fast about the Palestinian driver, Ahmed Abdel Hamid Hamida, who moved to the Middle East eight months before from the Los Angeles suburb of Rowland Heights, where he ran a grocery store. He reportedly returned to the West Bank to dedicate himself to Islam, and, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he told friends that morning when he left in his Fiat: “You will see me tonight on television.” Adding to the possibility that Hamida had deliberately crashed his car into the bus stop was the fact that witnesses told Israeli police that as he ran the red light he veered directly toward the bus stop.

  Peres was not known as a man brimming with mirth and lightheartedness. His somber expression bore witness to the fact he was involved in some of his nation’s most important security decisions during threats of invasion from Egypt, Iraq, and Syria and through years of near-constant attacks by squads of Arab guerrillas who would sneak across the border and attack some of Israel’s most vulnerable towns. On this day, however, Peres appeared even more pensive and grim. Throughout his career, he had tried to fight against the notion that he was not tough enough against Israel’s Arab neighbors even though he had worked for years to help Israel’s military acquire an arsenal of nuclear bombs. Now, as he was entering an election campaign while a significant minority of Israeli voters
questioned whether the Oslo peace process had really made Israel safer, Peres seemed desperate to show that he could protect his nation from attacks.

  He pledged that he would not suspend Israel’s involvement in the Oslo peace process, but would strike out at the terrorists where and when Israel’s security service found them. Israel was facing “diabolical suicide bombers” who were “targeting all Israelis,” he warned. But where would the next attack take place? And when? What Peres did not tell the Knesset was that his own intelligence specialists told him that their informers were now warning them of other suicide bombings being planned by Hamas and its violent cousin, Islamic Jihad, in the near future.

  Peres turned his attention to the Palestinian government and Yasser Arafat and warned that Arafat’s election victory the month before would become meaningless if he allowed “a minority of armed men” to “torpedo his policies.” The Palestinian Authority, said Peres, faced a critical decision: Disarm the terrorists affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad or face the prospect of losing power to those groups.

  The Israeli government had already reached out to Arafat and his security officers for help in tracking down the terrorists behind the bombings. Earlier that day, Arafat had even written a letter of condolence to the Dukers and Eisenfelds. But no one had been arrested yet.

  From the Knesset podium, Peres paused, then turned his thoughts to the peace process. He promised not to halt Israel’s participation in the ongoing Oslo negotiations that included a pledge to withdraw Israeli military units from the city of Hebron in the coming weeks. But before finishing, Peres repeated his promise to attack and arrest terrorists too.

  Peres walked back to his seat in a front row on the Knesset’s left side and as he sat down, Benjamin Netanyahu rose from a seat in a nearby row.

  Netanyahu was already well known to Americans. As Israel’s United Nation’s ambassador in the late 1980s, he was a frequent guest on American television talk shows. He was well versed in Israeli policy. What also made Netanyahu popular was that he had a near-perfect command of the English language with almost no hint of an Israeli accent. To some, he sounded more American than Israeli.

  This was no accident. Netanyahu’s father, Benzion, a noted history professor and father of three sons, was brought to the United States by several colleges and universities in the 1950s and again in the late 1960s. Benzion’s middle son, Benjamin—or “Bibi” as close friends called him—graduated from a high school near Philadelphia. After serving in the Israeli army, Benjamin came back to America to study at MIT.

  At the podium, Netanyahu nodded toward Peres and looked out at the other ministers in the Knesset. Netanyahu said that this was no time for recrimination by Israeli politicians—even those who were campaigning against each other to win an election and control of the government. “Israel must stand united to defeat those who would destroy her,” Netanyahu said.

  Netanyahu turned to Peres. “Shimon, fight these terrorists with all Israel’s might. Fight them and you will have our full support. No matter what government, we will never allow the terrorists to succeed.”

  In a Jerusalem TV studio, Israeli news anchor Michael Greenspan summarized the speeches by Peres and Netanyahu, then turned to the story of Matt and Sara. Like his journalistic colleagues in America, Greenspan viewed the deaths of the young Americans as emblematic of the overall tragedy, and he invited Edward Bernstein, one of Matt’s fellow students at the Schechter Institute and a former roommate in New York, to the studio to share some thoughts.

  Greenspan asked about Matt and Sara and how their deaths affected the other American students.

  “They were probably going to get married,” Bernstein said, his voice falling off. He fell silent for a second or two, then added:

  “They died together and they’re going to be buried together. That might be the one beautiful thing about this.”

  After burying their loved ones at a cemetery, Jews customarily begin a weeklong period of mourning called “shiva.” Arline Duker retured to Teaneck and met with relatives, friends, neighbors, political figures, and journalists who stopped by to pay respects. Likewise, in West Hartford, Vicki and Len Eisenfeld welcomed a stream of visitors.

  Shiva is not just a time for condolences. Often, it is a time to take stock of the life that was lost—and, in the case of Matt and Sara, how their lives were ended.

  One day during shiva, Vicki Eisenfeld found herself pondering a concern that had been building quietly inside her. She was, of course, deeply saddened that Matt and Sara had been killed. She was also upset that their deaths were no accident.

  But what could be done about this?

  The Eisenfelds had received a letter of condolence from Stephen Flatow. “We stand with you,” Flatow wrote in his brief letter, which was read at Matt’s funeral.

  Flatow also was wrestling with the same dilemma as Vicki Eisenfeld: What could be done about this killing? Like Vicki, he saw no clear answer.

  In the days after Matt’s death, Vicki often found herself struggling to contain her anger. And midway through the shiva period, she finally spoke up. Sitting in her living room, she turned to several guests and asked, “What can we do about this?”

  The bluntness of the question seemed to startle several guests.

  “What do you mean?” someone asked.

  Vicki said that representatives of Hamas had claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Number 18 bus. Israeli investigators had not announced any suspects’ names. But, as Vicki pointed out, Hamas was a well-known group, with a headquarters and a variety of spokesmen in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.

  “What can we do about this?” she asked again, pausing and adding yet another question: “Why can’t we take them to court?”

  An attorney who had been listening spoke up.

  “You can’t take Hamas to court,” he said.

  “Why not?” said Vicki.

  In Jerusalem, Hamas struck again.

  Again, it was a Sunday morning—the first Sunday after Sara and Matt were killed, March 3, 1996. Again, it was Jaffa Road. Again, it was the Number 18 bus.

  And again, it was a bomb made by Hassan Salameh, given to a young Palestinian man who boarded the Number 18 bus near Jerusalem’s city hall and believed he was giving his life to the will of Allah. Nineteen people died, all Israelis. More than three dozen were injured.

  Rabbi William Lebeau had just stepped through the doors of the King Solomon Hotel and onto the sidewalk to breathe in the morning air before beginning a two-mile walk to the Schechter Institute and a memorial service for Sara and Matt. Lebeau had gone to the funerals in America. But as dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary, he worried about students who were colleagues of Matt Eisenfeld and studying that year in Jerusalem. So he caught a flight to Israel soon after Matt’s burial in Connecticut. Before he left, he made a promise to his wife: In Jerusalem, Lebeau would take no buses. So this morning, he opted to walk across Jerusalem and through the Valley of the Cross to the Schechter Institute.

  Then he heard the bomb’s hollow thud and felt the ground shake. The King Solomon Hotel was less than half a mile from Jaffa Road. Lebeau knew another bomb had exploded. He thought briefly of walking toward the explosion, then stopped. He had come to Jerusalem to offer comfort for the friends of Sara and Matt, many of whom would be gathering this same hour at Schechter. Surely, they heard the bomb’s thud, too, and perhaps saw the column of smoke rising from Jaffa Road. Lebeau wondered how the students would react.

  Lebeau turned and walked toward Schechter. An hour later he stood at a podium in the first-floor study hall. He called Sara and Matt “two gentle souls.” He said “their bodies were shattered by an act of inhumanity but their souls escaped the carnage without scar or blemish.” He noted that “violence was the antithesis of their lives” but that “the deaths of Matt and Sara captured the world’s attention. Violence always captures atte
ntion but people were drawn to this tragedy sensing something special in their deaths.”

  He turned his attention to the students and faculty members before him. He saw Edward Bernstein, who had spoken of Sara and Matt on Israeli television. He noticed Matt’s former roommate, Matt Berkowitz, and Michael Bernstein, who invited Sara and Matt to the apartment he shared with his wife to talk about marriage, and Avigal Young, who hosted Sara and Matt for lunch on the Saturday before they died.

  Almost everyone had mentioned to him how the deaths of Sara and Matt had unsettled them, freezing them in a newfound fear of taking buses or even entering any sort of unprotected public space where a suicide bomber might be lurking. Several spoke of leaving Jerusalem and returning to America. Others were angry—with the Palestinians, with Israel, with the endless conflict.

  “Essential to the process of comforting is the need to talk about the lives of Matt and Sara and the experiences we shared with them,” Lebeau said. “Our recollections have been painful, but the endurance of that pain is necessary for us to better comprehend the meaningfulness of their lives. The more we speak and remember, the more we guarantee that the tragedy will not overwhelm our sense of their vitality and their accomplishments that we so cherish.”

  Lebeau mentioned their commitment to prayer, their resolute schedules of studying scriptures, even their attempt to help the homeless woman, Annie. In their short lives, Lebeau said, Sara and Matt had managed to blend their spirituality with action. “Imagine what the world might be like if we adopted their sense of urgency and intensity,” LeBeau said. “For this reason, we must emulate them.”

  On the following day, another bomb exploded in Tel Aviv. Thirteen more Israelis died and 130 were injured. It was the fourth suicide attack in nine days. The death toll for all the attacks exceeded sixty.