— "1411 1111111111111111111111111111.11111•111•11111111111111Nwirmak Insight Updates UV & From the Jewish News pages for this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago. Heartbreaking z, Close Israeli family shattered by suicide bombing once lived here. DEBRA ISAACS Special to the Jewish News C hen Keinan rem-embers herself as a serious girl, a teenager who felt "deaf and dumb" as she struggled to learn English during her stay in America. She plunged into books as an escape from her peers' adolescent pursuits — makeup and boys, among them — and to keep up with them at Orchard Lake Middle School. Such were the three years she spent in West Bloomfield, from 1982-1985, when the Israeli Army sent her father, Retired Lt. Col. Natan Peled, to Michigan. He was assigned to be a liaison between the U.S. Army Tank Command in Warren and the Israeli Defense Forces. Today, Keinan cannot stop talking about the horror of losing her mother and 15-month-old daughter in a sui- cide bombing in Petach Tikvah, outside Tel Aviv, on May 27. The 31-year-old woman and her husband, Lior, sur- vived the attack with light wounds, but their hearts were shattered. Before their eyes, their only child, Sinai, and Keinan's mother, 56-year-old Ruth Peled, were blown apart as a Palestinian bomber ignited his cache of explo- sives outside a small bakery in a commercial shopping strip. The family, as it often did, was having coffee together on a sunny afternoon outside the shop. "It's a horror show," Chen Keinan said. "I can't imagine anything worse. The only one who could comfort me was my mom." Of her daughter and mother, Keinan said, "They were soul mates. They had to go together, I guess. I'm a tree with my roots gone and my branches gone." Sinai was her "flower," a little one who loved dogs and had just learned to kiss and hug, her mother said. Keinan asked a friend to close the windows in her house to pre- serve the sweet scent of her daughter. When Israeli-born Nira Lev heard there had been an attack in Petach Tikvah, she frantically called friends from her home in West Bloomfield. She learned from her sister- in-law that her good friend, Ruth Peled, was a casualty. Lev, head of the Agency for Jewish Education of Metropolitan Detroit's Hebrew program, still can barely contain her shock and sadness. "When you think of a man who is willing to die so he can kill an innocent person ... I haven't lost hope, but something must be done so this can't happen. This shows you closely how it's killing people. The whole family is ruined. The victims are not just Ruthie and the baby. The real victims are the people left behind," said Lev. She and her family became very close with the Peleds when they lived here, and visit them every time they go to Israel. Ruth, Lev said, was an idealist with a strong sense of justice who could easily convince others to the rightness of her way. Because of a kidney disorder, Ruth became a strict vegetari- an, and Lev followed. "Ruthie was a model to all of us," Lev said. But Ruth Peled's true achievement was the closeness of her family, Lev said. Chen and her sister, Lee, live a few doors away from each other in Petach Tikvah, and the children, includ- ing Lee's 13-month-old twins, were always together. Son Udi, now Ruth Peled and her granddaughter 24, who attended Hillel, is nearby. Sinai Keinan, 18 months, were "Ruthie was really the "soul mates." Both were killed central figure, though May 27 in a suicide bombing outside a bakery in Petach Tikvah. (Natan) was the central figure in the army. She was a very tiny, thin woman. She didn't look 56; she looked 26," Lev said. Uri Zachor, an executive at a Macomb County company that manufactures spare parts for the military, recalls the Peled family as a formidable unit. About two years ago during a visit home, Zachor, an Israeli who lives in West Bloomfield, ran into them at a shopping mall in Tel Aviv. Naturally, grandparents, chil- dren and grandchildren were together, he said. Zachor has been touched by the deaths of other close friends in Israel, too. The man who built his family's home in Ramat Hashon 40 years ago was among those killed in the Pesach massacre in Netanya. Natan Peled, Zachor recalled, maintained an optimism that Israelis would be able to live in peace, that a day would come when men would not have to serve in the army every year. Even in the eulogy he delivered at his wife's and grand- child's funeral last week — a copy of which was sent to Zachor — Peled did not rail against Palestinians, but HEARTBREAKING Remember When • • • on page 32 ,sgrAe Howard Gelberd, former executive director of the San Francisco Bureau of Jewish Education, is named head of the Agency for Jewish Education of Metropolitan Detroit. The Michigan Jewish AIDS Coalition is working on Jewish AIDS curriculum for synagogue education programs. Residents of metro Detroit's Jewish Federation Apartments will hold a park groundbreaking ceremony at its first strawberry festival. „.— The new Congregation Beth Israel of Flint is dedicated. A permanent memorial to the 6 million will be unveiled in a cere- mony by Congregation B'nai _Moshe of Detroit in Section P of Oakview Cemetery, Royal Oak. HC Detroit pro-Nazi supporters paint a red swastika on Ahavas Achim syn- agogue in Detroit in response to the hanging of Adolf Eichmann. Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit announces it will now be housed at the Jewish Community Center in Oak Park. Vtir ik*WW' AU A, , attam,Imvxma,„toiVen, Beth Aaron Synagogue and United Hebrew Schools enter into an agreement to open an afternoon Hebrew school at Wyoming and Thatcher in Detroit. As part of the interracial program of the Council of Mothers Clubs, the New Study Club and Pasadena Club are sponsoring a tour of - Detroit's Mexican neighborhood. The first official report since Pearl Harbor shows more than 20,000 Jewish refugees in Shanghai under Japanese control are without jobs, food or aid. . — Compiled by Holly Teasdle, Archivist The Rabbi Leo M Franklin Archives Temple Beth El IN 6/7 2002