Profiles

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Remember
When • •

From the Jewish News pages for this
week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.;

A Gentle Soul

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Family tried to hide Israeli roots to protect their journalist son.

One was Rachel
Knopoff, now a
Manhattan Beach, Calif ,
physician, who remem-
bers Pearl as "thegreatest
ntil the very last moment,
guy I have ever known. I
the family of murdered
had
a huge crush on him,
journalist Daniel Pearl
and
so probably did most
never lost hope that he
of
the
girls in the troop.
would be released by his Pakistani
He
was
the funniest,
kidnappers and return safely.
smartest,
nicest guy I ever
Dr. Judea Pearl, and his wife,
met."
Ruth, said in a statement last week
Attorney John Liebman
that they simply could not believe
served
as adviser to the
that anyone could harm a soh they
Explorers.
"They were an
described as "such a gentle soul" and
extraordinary,
highly moti-
as "the musician, the writer, the sto-
vated
group
of
kids," says
ryteller, the bridgebuilder."
Liebman,
who
recalls
Pearl
Pearl's parents and his sisters,
as
"obvioasly
highly
intelli-
Tamara and Michelle, remembered
gent, with a fine sense of
him as a "walking sunshine of truth,
humor and easy to get
humor, friendship and compassion."
along with."
The family's unflagging hope was
At Birmingham High in
best illustrated in an e-mail message
Van
Nuys, Calif, whose
the father sent to members of a local
current
student body
Israeli choir on Feb. 21, only a few
observed
a minute of
reporter
Daniel
Pearl.
ourna
Slain Wall Street
hours before the U.S. State •
silence
in
honor
of their slain
Department confirmed the brutal slay-
alumnus,
Pearl
"was
the teen-
reporter.
ing of the Wall Street Journal
ager everyone wanted to be,"
After nearly a month of torturous
observed the Los Angeles Daily News. "He was the smart, funny
waiting, Judea Pearl told fellow musicians of the LA-Shir choir,
kid who was a cultural counterpoint to the mall-hopping,
which he founded, that "We have learned to cope with the ups
materialistic 'Valley Girl' world of the 1970s and early 1980s."
and downs of the situation ... We are confident that he will
return to us and fairly soon. When that happens, we will all
celebrate his homecoming event with Handel's 'Hallelujah.'"

TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

v•I• "*•,,

The family's grief was shared by a circle of Daniel Pearl's
close friends, many of whom went to school with Pearl in
the Los Angeles area. One recalled participating in a
Passover seder at the Pearl home. "The Pearls are not affili-
ated with a synagogue, but they are deeply attached to
their heritage and very cognizant of who they are," said
Gary Foster, the family spokesman.
Israeli newspapers reported that Daniel Pearl had cele-
brated his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
A San Fernando Valley rabbi who is also a practicing psychol-
ogist has been counseling the Pearl family. A private memorial
service at the family home in Encino was held last week.
Some of Daniel Pearl's closest friends were fellow back-
packers between 1978-1981 in an Explorer post, a co-ed
affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America.

Related commentary: page 32

After graduating from the Technion-Israel Institute of
Technology in Haifa, Judea Pearl and his wife Ruth, an
electrical engineer, moved to Princeton, N.J., for graduate
studies and to work at a research center. Their son was
born there in 1963.
In 1970, Judea Pearl joined the computer science faculty
at UCLA, and in the following decades he earned a reputa-
tion as a leading researcher in artificial intelligence.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering
in 1995 "for developing the foundation for reasoning
under uncertainty," and earlier spent a sabbatical year at
the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Just before his son's abduction, Judea Pearl was notified
of a $10,000 award from the London School of Economics
for a recent book on his path-breaking studies.
During the month following Daniel's kidnapping, there
was deep concern that publication of his family's Israeli
roots would further endanger his life. Foster, the spokesman,
INSIGHT on page 30

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The Jewish communities of Detroit
and Minsk, Belarus, gather at
Holocaust Memorial Center in
West Bloomfield to hold memorial
services for the more than 9,000
Jews who were murdered in Minsk
during World War II.

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An exhibition of a show of Israe li
archeology at New York City s
Metropolitan Museum of Art, delayed
because of a dispute over "security
risks from radical elements," gets
under way as the dispute is resolved.
Jack Robinson, chairman and
chief executive officer of Bloomfield
Hills-based Perry Drug Stores, is
honored in New York City with the
B'nai B'rith American Traditions
Award.

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Detroit's Karl Zipser, son of Mr.
and Mrs. Burton Zipser, will be the
first Cub Scout in Michigan to
receive a new award, the Aleph,
given for religious experience.
The University of Michigan hon-
ors Raoul Wallenberg with its first
annual lecture series in his name. A
member of the 1932 graduating class
of the U/M College of Architecture,
Wallenberg was responsible for the
rescue of more than 50,000 Jews
who would have been exterminated
in camps in Hungary.

Famous Father

Friends Mourn

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Oranges from Israel, which gained
world fame under the name Jaffe,
are now available in food markets
in Detroit.
In a new mark in interfaith rela-
tions, Avraham Harman, Israel's
ambassador to the United States, is
guest at the University of Detroit
and gives a speech on peace in Israel.

03
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The first bi-monthly service of the
newly formed Suburban Temple,
later Temple Emanu-El, is held at
the Burton School in Huntington
Woods.
— Compiled by Holly Teasdle, certi-
fied archivist, the Rabbi Leo M
Franklin Archives of Temple Beth El.

IN

3/1
2002

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