Marla's Neshama

Three years ago, San Diego’s Marla Bennett was killed by a suicide bomber at Hebrew University. Since then, her name has been used for good in countless ways—all of them a reminder of the unique, gifted person that she was.
By David Greenwald

It has been a little more than three years since Marla Bennett was murdered when a terrorist’s bomb blew apart the cafeteria of Hebrew University in Jerusalem where she was a master’s student. She was 24. In the time that has passed, the apple sapling that her mother and father planted in the backyard of the family’s Del Cerro home – a gift to them in Marla’s memory from some of her closest friends – has grown, and now mottled red and green fruit fill its branches.
In a way, these budding apples represent the blossoming of Marla’s eternal spirit, her neshama, which continues to touch and inspire people – many of whom never knew the lovely dark-eyed young woman who had such a fierce determination to help repair the world.

“My friends and family talk about how dangerous it is here, and I have to agree with them. It is dangerous. But I remain unconvinced that the rest of the world is such a safe place,” Marla wrote in an open letter that was printed in newspapers around the country after her death. “At least if I am here I can take an active role in attempting to put back together all that has broken. I can volunteer in the homes of Israelis affected by terrorism; I can put food in collection baskets for Palestinian families; I can see what goes on with my own eyes.”

Her words resonate beyond the pages on which they were printed. And with the awarding on September 25 of the first Marla Bennett Humanitarian Award by the San Diego Chapter of Magen David Adom – now named the Marla Bennett Memorial Friends Society of Magen David Adom – and the coming of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in October with their themes of reflection and zichronot, it is an appropriate time to remember Marla and to think about the qualities of her life and the impact of her death.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, there was a tremendous outpouring of both grief and comfort. A ninth-grader from Bonita who never had met Marla wrote to Linda and Mike Bennett: “I’ve watched the news and listened to the radio and have learned to know the kind of person your Marla was. It hurts me to know that someone with so much good in them could have something like this happen. … I admire the person she was. And I want to live my life as she did.
Marla will always be a role model for me. … It is too bad there aren’t more people in this world like your precious daughter.”

And there were words from those who did know and love her. “Though she had a million friends, and though her planner was always overflowing with things to do and people to meet, she would find a slot for you because you two had to hang out, and she would make sure it happened,” wrote Dipti Barot, a classmate from UC Berkeley, in a letter that she sent to all of her friends who had not “had the gift of knowing Marla.”

Marla’s bedroom remains much the way she left it five years ago when she moved to Israel to pursue a master’s degree in Judaic studies at Hebrew University and to study texts at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Awards and framed certificates fill one wall, and photographs are arranged on a dresser. A bulletin board is cluttered with clippings and pictures, and there is a blue satin ribbon tacked to the wooden frame on which is written, “Who I am makes a difference.” But there is a major difference that distinguishes her room today from the one she left behind: Now it is filled with boxes of letters, cards and remembrances – thousands of them, from all over the world – and loose stacks of paper piled on the bed and on the floor, each one a tribute to her memory.

Linda Bennett rummages among the papers on the bed, looking through the cards and letters. Would this outpouring of feeling for her have surprised Marla? “Yes, knowing Marla, I think she would have been surprised because I don’t think she realized how many people she touched,” Linda responds.

Mike thinks she might have found it all a little overwhelming. “She wouldn’t have felt centered,” he says.

Linda and Mike Bennett describe their daughter as centered. Calm. Peaceful. So it is only right that among the many tributes and memorials to her are two beautiful gardens that inspire quiet reflection and calm, as well as learning.

One, the Marla Bennett Peace Tile Garden Project, was established at the UC Berkeley Hillel, where Marla was an active member while a student. It is a space dedicated not just to Marla, but also, in the words of U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos of San Mateo in a statement that he read last year into the Congressional Record, to “peace and hope that there will be a time in the future of Israel when violence does not play such a tragic and terrifying role.”

The other garden project is at Camp JCA Shalom in Malibu, where Marla spent many summers as a camper and, later, as a counselor and program director. The Marla Bennett Israel Discovery Center and Garden, landscaped in the shape of Israel, was planned as an interactive learning

center to teach about the land, history and people of Israel. “It is so symbolic of her; she was so much about planting seeds for the future,” says Joel Charnick, director of the camp. “She was passionate about teaching, and she had such a strong desire to touch and brighten other people’s lives.”

The ripples of her life extend in so many other directions. More than 2,000 mourners turned out for her funeral service in San Diego, at which Rabbi Danny Landes, her mentor and teacher from Pardes, eulogized Marla as “this beautiful tree” under whose branches “everyone who knew her wished to be … and there was room for us all.”
There are scholarships in her name to help send youth to Israel, money was raised to purchase a new ambulance for the Magen David Adom in Israel, and a van with her name on it circulates through Jerusalem to get kids off the streets. Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary performed for 1,000 people at a San Diego memorial, and there have also been concerts and memorials in New York, Israel and Washington, D.C.

Babies bearing Marla’s name continue to bring joy to their parents. One of Marla’s close friends, at whose wedding she was maid of honor on her last day in San Diego, gave her daughter the name Maytal – Hebrew for dewdrop – for Marla. It is not just those who knew her who chose her as a namesake—Bill Glaser, a Washington, D.C. man who read Marla’s letter in the Washington Post, called Linda and Mike Bennett to tell them that he and his wife wanted their infant daughter Juliet to have Marla’s Hebrew name.

“Marla never had a chance to fulfill her goals in life, and we thought this would be a fitting way for her name to continue,” Glasser says. This past January, a year after her birth, Juliet Glasser was blessed with Marla’s Hebrew name: Miriam Chana.

Future generations will also know of Marla. In Israel, construction is scheduled to begin in October on 60 acres in the Lower Galilee for a camp that will be a refuge for children – Jewish, Moslem and Christian – with serious illnesses. The camp, Jordan River Village, is being established under the umbrella of The Hole in the Wall organization founded by actor Paul Newman, and among the cabins that will be built to house the children will be one named for Marla. It is a gift from Sue-ann Friedman and her husband, Michael Finkelstein, of New York, so that “[Marla] and the tragedy of her death will be remembered and honored.”

Grappling with the death of a child is devastating for any parent. Allaying the Bennett’s grief, however, is the comfort of so much good that Marla continues to bring to the world.

“I’m so proud of her,” Mike Bennett says quietly, sitting at the dining room table. “She was the most perfect human being I ever knew.” In the adjacent living room photographs line the shelves – Marla as a child, Marla with her friends, with her family. Framed proclamations lean against one wall. An Israeli and U.S. flag that draped Marla’s casket are folded inside triangular wooden frames on the hearth of the fireplace. In another room is a picture of Lisa at her wedding last year, with a tall bouquet of flowers next to the chupah where Marla would have stood as maid of honor.

“Everything that has happened since she died – there has been so much good,” says Linda Bennett, knotting her fingers in her lap. “Knowing this helps me a great deal to get through it.”

She steps into the backyard where the young apple tree is budding. “It gives me pleasure to look at this tree and to see the fruit on the branches,” she says, cradling a small apple in her palm.

“It reminds me of Marla.”

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