shoshana kordova

By Shoshana Kordova

Nearly a year after 16-year-old Shoshana Ben Yishai was killed in a terrorist attack on her way home from school, the blue backpack she was wearing that day still sits on her desk chair at home, as full of books and blood as it was the day she died.

Shoshana, known by her family and friends as Shoshie, was one of two teenagers killed when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire on Egged bus No. 25 at Jerusalem’s French Hill junction on November 4, 2001. She was on the bus with more than 30 other girls from the Beit Shulamit Religious High School in Jerusalem’s Neveh Yaakov neighborhood, on her way home to the mostly Haredi West Bank community of Upper Betar.

She and 23 other North American terror victims killed this year were honored Tuesday in a memorial ceremony organized by the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, at which Shoshie’s mother, Miriam, read aloud an English translation of Psalm 23.

The ceremony took place at the AACI Memorial Forest of the Jewish National Fund.

Shoshie’s parents, American-raised Miriam and Israeli-born Yitzhak, and her five younger siblings, have been forced to create a new life that marks the hole in their family. Although they have tried to move forward, they can never really return to the routine, or the joys, of life before November 4. “You know, you go back and do whatever you have to do, because you’re not going to commit suicide,” says Miriam in a soft voice tinged with the sound of 15 years in her native Uruguay, where she lived before moving to New York in 1979 with her parents and siblings. “But we live just like robots. You do your job and continue with the kids, but all the happiness…” she says, trailing off. “You’re not complete.”

Her presence lingers

The family’s loss is obvious from the minute they open the door to their three-bedroom apartment. A framed certificate of recognition for a contribution to an organization that helps child terror victims hangs next to a typed tribute poem written by a friend of Shoshie’s that begins, “God takes only the righteous / And leaves us orphaned and alone.” A cupboard near the entrance to the living room holds a charity box in Shoshie’s memory and a tall memorial candle of the kind that has been lit almost constantly from the day Shoshie died. Above the candle hangs a picture of Shoshie, who had straight, dark brown hair and, say those who knew her, a ready and warm smile.

Sometimes, Shoshie’s two sisters and three brothers act like any normal children do: Eight-year-old Chana and six-year-old Yael tell jokes, and four-year-old Abiel gets excited at the prospect of ice cream.

But they are also still very much a part of the continued remembrance process. They made signs and ate cake to celebrate what would have been Shoshie’s 17th Hebrew birthday a couple of months ago, and the family dedicated the commemoration to the uplifting of her soul.

Shoshie’s siblings are also involved in the tastefully presented memorial booklet in her honor that opens with a quote from Song of Songs: “My beloved went down to his garden to gather roses [shoshanim].” Chana rushes to point out the picture of a red-roofed house and Israeli flag that she drew for the booklet, and Yael eagerly picks out Shoshie in all the group pictures printed inside.

Both sisters used to share a room with Shoshie; now they share a room with her backpack, the clothes that still hang in her closet, the Harry Potter keepsake ornament that still sits on her shelf, and the Israeli flags and Zionistic, right-wing bumper stickers (”The land of Israel for the people of Israel,” “Uprooting settlements tears apart the nation”) that still decorate her wall and door.

Every once in a while, says Miriam, one of the children asks to sleep in Shoshie’s bed. Maybe the family will move out of this home full of Shoshie’s presence, she says, but for now she can’t bear to sort through all of her daughter’s belongings.

Life for the Ben Yishai family may never return to normal. “We haven’t returned to a regular routine,” says Yitzhak, “and it doesn’t seem like we’re going to.”

Shoshie was nearly four when she emigrated from Queens, New York, with her parents and brother Yaacob, now 14. Miriam, a short, slight woman, spoke to her in a mixture of Hebrew and English but depended on Shoshie for help with reading and writing, just as Miriam had helped her own parents with their English in New York. It was Shoshie who solved minor computer problems, Shoshie who would hold her youngest brother Abiel until he fell asleep, Shoshie who was up by 6:30 A.M. to make sure her brother Israel Chai, now 11, made it to school on time.

Miriam used to call Shoshie over whenever she ran into a language problem as she tried to help the younger children with their homework. “Now I can call Shoshie,” she says, “but Shoshie won’t come.”

‘We talked about everything’

Miriam tried hard to make sure her relationship with Shoshie was different from the relationship she had with her own mother, who died three years after the family moved to America, when Miriam was 18. Miriam never got to know her mother as a person - what she liked and didn’t like, what she thought. So she built a different relationship with her long-awaited eldest daughter, who was born following two miscarriages in five years. “We talked about everything,” says Miriam, a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit of Shaare Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem, where she and Yitzhak were called in to identify Shoshie’s body. “So now her being missing is like a piece of me being missing.”

Time doesn’t heal

For Miriam, time has only deepened the wound. “The pain goes even deeper and harder to live with,” she says. “At the beginning you’re numb, you just can’t believe it happened. You sort of don’t know what just happened and you cry a lot, but then everything starts reminding you of her.

“Her toothbrush was still in the bathroom. You go to the store and you buy less food. You go to buy something she likes and you realize she’s not around so you don’t need that anymore.”

The passage of so much time also seemed to confirm for Chana that her sister really had been killed. About a month ago, says Miriam, Chana came out of the girls’ bedroom and started crying. “Do you know why I’m crying?” Miriam says she asked. “Because now I know she’s not coming back.”

But in general, says Miriam, her children have been dealing with their sister’s death better as more time elapses. Shoshie’s siblings used to refuse to sit at her seat at the table, weren’t doing well in school, and had trouble sleeping.

Now they are doing a little better, says Miriam. Yael, for instance, used to start crying sometimes in the middle of her kindergarten class. Now, says Yael, “I stopped a little.”

Shoshie’s father, Yitzhak, talks less about his own feelings and more about politics (the army should never have left the areas it entered in Operation Defensive Shield) and the many condolence letters the family has received. Some of those letters are from the people Shoshie helped, like the learning-disabled students near her high school who would run over to hug her whenever she would come in to tutor them.

Yitzhak, a freelance printer, has also organized programs such as a weekly women’s Torah learning group in Shoshie’s name.

Shoshie’s best friend, 16-year-old Ilana Schertzman, who immigrated from New York with her family 10 years ago, attends the classes regularly, and continues to visit the Ben Yishai family at least once a week - to play with the kids, talk to Miriam, and help out wherever she’s needed. This, too, is part of the family’s new routine.

Schertzman and Shoshie were both very nationalistic, and attended many right-wing demonstrations together. “We had this world that was connected, and now when I go to a demonstration, she’s not there,” says Schertzman. “But for me, Shoshie will always be there.”