Israeli
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Infant with Oak Park roots dies from
injuries sustained in West Bank rock attack.

SHELLI DORFMAN
Stair Writer

7

Above:
Alex Saltsman
holds a picture
of great-grandson
Yehuda Shoham.
He owns a metal
supply company and
has been a frequent
visitor to Israel.

e ft;

6/15

2001

22

Right:
Bat-Sheva and
Benny Shoham

he recent violence and grief that has ripped through Israel has hit
home in a horrific manner as the infant member of an Oak Park-
rooted family was killed in a terrorist attack near the child's West
Bank home of Shilo.
Five-and-a-half-month-old Yehuda Shoham, whose great-grandfather is Alex
Saltsman, 92, of Oak Park, sustained a massive brain injury from a rock thrown
through a front window of the car in which he and his parents were riding.
Bat-Sheva and Benny Shoham were returning from a shivah call in
Ra'anana about 11 p.m. June 5 when the car was stoned and the infant, sit-
ting in a rear car seat next to his mother, was hit. The parents were
unharmed in the attack by Palestinian Arabs from the village of Luban a-
Sharkiya in the West Bank, north of Ramallah, near where they were travel-
ing, according to news reports.
Bat-Sheva, 25, is the daughter of Elaine and Jerry Saltsman, formerly of
Los Angeles and Oak Park, respectively; they made aliyah 32 years ago.
Elairie.and Jerry Saltsman had been in Oak Park since May 31 for another
grandson's bar mitzvah when they received word of the attack; they returned
home the day after the attack. Benny Shoham is Israeli-born.
During the days the Israeli-American infant spent unconscious and on a
respirator in Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, the family kept vigil
and added the name Chaim to his birth name of Yehuda.
"It is done when someone is very, very, very sick," says Rabbi Yigal Tsaidi,
educational director of Yeshivat Akiva in Southfield, where two of Yehuda's
cousins are students. "Giving the new name is like adding another life.
Chaim means life. If he had recovered, the name may have remained. Since
he did not, the name is taken away again."
At Akiva, Rabbi Tsaidi says,."Tehillim (psalms of healing) are said every
day for Israel, for the injured and for the redemption of people in captivity
— prisoners — and for shalom emet, true peace. The direct connection with
Detroit made us say it with more intention and more depth.
"Any time anybody is killed in Israel, it is very, very, very sad," says the
rabbi. "How much more when it is a 5-month-old — a pure human being,
the most righteous, with no sins.
"Any time a Jewish person is killed, it is like losing part of our family. But
now a child connected to Detroit, to our community, to our school makes it
so much closer. It feels like it happened directly to me."
Akiva President Stuart Teger says, "Our hearts go out to the entire family.
There is nothing that we can do or say to make it hurt less or to make sense out

