Commemorating the Creation of the Marla Bennett Peace Tile Garden Project -- Hon. Tom Lantos (Extensions of Remarks - May 04, 2004)
[Page: E726]

Hon. Tom Lantos of California in the House of Representatives

• Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, nearly two years ago, Marla Bennett, age 24, was one of the nine innocent victims of a terrorist attack at the Frank Sinatra cafeteria of the Hebrew University Mt. Scopus campus in Jerusalem. Ms. Bennett was a recent graduate of the University of California at Berkeley who was studying to get her Masters at Hebrew University. Marla's tragic and needless death brought the horror of the Israeli conflict home to the Berkeley community and on May 9, 2004, the Berkeley Hillel will unveil its permanent tribute to her with the dedication of the Marla Bennett Peace Tile Garden Project. This is a fitting tribute to a young lady whose life was ripped from those who loved her by a senseless act of terrorism.

• During her academic career at UC Berkeley, Marla's face was a familiar one among the Jewish student population as well as the Jewish community of the Bay Area. She was an active student organizer, a Hebrew school teacher, and resident of the Bayit, the Jewish student cooperative of UC Berkeley. Marla's personality, her enthusiasm, and her zest for Judaism and the Jewish way of life made her well-known within her community and she was the first recipient of the Berkeley Hillel award, Hineni, given to the student who best exemplifies selfless devotion to the Jewish Community by answering "here I am'' whenever a task needs to be completed.

• Marla's tragic death had a profound effect on the Jewish Community at Berkeley and led to many inspiring endeavors in honor of Marla. The Rosh Chodesh Women's Group at the Berkeley Hillel was revived to honor her memory and scholarship funds in Marla's name for students seeking to study Jewish education in Israel were established. As wonderful as these tributes were, Dana Blecher, the Cultural Arts and Educational Programs Coordinator, for Berkeley's Hillel wanted to create a permanent memorial to this extraordinary individual who blessed our world for too short a time. Ms. Blecher envisioned the unused backyard of the Berkeley Hillel as an ideal space to construct a lasting tribute to the memory of Marla Bennett.

• During the past year, Ms. Blecher has been instrumental in the creation of the Marla Bennett Peace Tile Garden Project and I want to publicly commend her for incorporating so many aspects of the Berkley and Bay Area community into the project. For example, she collaborated with Bay Area artist Jodi Gladstone, and invited the students of Berkeley Hillel to contribute sketches, poetry, and memories of Marla to be the foundation of the inspirational material for the creation and design of a tile project. Keeping with our Bay Area sensibilities, Dana contacted Jonathan Pilch, a student instructor in the subject of organic farming, and a UC Berkeley student, to prepare, recommend, and supervise the formation of the garden.

• Mr. Speaker, friends of Marla's, as well as students who never had the opportunity to meet her, have come from across the country to help build the Marla Bennett Peace Tile Garden Project. They all came to Berkeley to create a lasting tribute to a person whose life touched so many and was tragically cut short. This new space at the Berkeley Hillel, while dedicated to Marla, also will be presented in the name of 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 in the history of the Jewish state.

• The Marla Bennett Tile Garden will serve as a place for recollection and reflection, an appropriate memorial to a person who took investigating her Judaism very seriously. As the expression says, "to live in the hearts of those who love you is to never die,'' and this wonderful memorial will allow the memory of Marla to continue to live on so that in the words of the Executive Director of Berkeley Hillel, Adam Weisberg, "Her name will be for a blessing.''