Posted on 08/20/2003 9:31:07 PM PDT by yonif
NEW YORK In one of Goldie Taubenfeld's last acts of kindness, the hassidic mother of 13 offered to donate a kidney to a fellow Jew in need.
"I'm very sad," said Yehoshua Levin, an ailing 26-year-old who had begun a series of tests to determine his compatibility with Taubenfeld's kidney when he heard about her death in Tuesday's suicide bombing of a No. 2 Jerusalem bus.
Ashen-faced, his eyes bright red from crying, Levin recalled, in broken English, Taubenfeld's quiet acts of kindness in their close-knit, ultra-Orthodox community. "She was very, very nice person," he said.
Taubenfeld, 43, was a US citizen from the small Hassidic village of New Square, New York. Her husband Moishe, a teacher at a New Square yeshiva, wasn't on the bus, and he spent the evening running from hospital to hospital until he heard his wife was dead, said State Assemblyman for Rockland County, Ryan Karben, who is serving as the family's spokesman.
The youngest of the couple's children, five-month-old Shmuel, was confirmed dead Wednesday afternoon. Their 15-year-old daughter, Batsheva, was wounded in the bombing, and is currently in stable condition, said Karben. Three more Americans were killed in the blast: Three-year-old Tehilla Nathanson of Monsey, New York, and Mordechai Reinitz, 47, and his nine-year-old son, Yitzhak, residents of Netanya who had dual Israeli-American citizenship.
According a statement released by the Taubenfeld family Wednesday, Goldie Taubenfeld was a "dynamic, creative, and God-fearing woman, beloved by her parents, children, siblings, and community. We mourn for her brutal murder and the loss of our beloved Shmuel, but thank God for the moments we were privileged to share with them."
The family noted that it was "humbled by the many stories of Goldie's good deeds that have come to public attention." The Taubenfeld family had visited Israel this week for a relative's wedding. Taubenfeld's parents, Max and Elizabeth Schwartz, and two of her older children flew to Jerusalem to attend the funerals on Wednesday, held in accordance with a New Square rabbinical ruling that anyone who dies in the Holy Land must be buried there. Taubenfeld's younger children were unable to fly to Israel because they don't have passports, said Karben.
Karben, who grew up next door to the Taubenfeld family, said her home was a place where children and guests roamed freely, and the smell of freshly-baked pastry was always in the air. When her sister-in-law died of cancer, she took in her children and raised them as her own, he said. Karben also recalled Taubenfeld's devotion to Israel, and remembered that during the Gulf War, she appeared at the Karben household nightly for a briefing on Israel's well-being. Her own house, in accordance with New Square's strict Orthodox custom, had no TV.
"This is a person of tremendous inner strength and inner beauty," Karben told reporters at his Rockland County office Wednesday. He called the attack a "human cry for sanity in American Middle East policy to reject the notion that there is any moral equivalence between Palestinian terror and Israeli self-defense."
Asked to comment on Taubenfeld's wish to donate a kidney to a stranger, he said, "The Goldie Taubenfeld I know, there's nothing she wouldn't give a neighbor, there's nothing she wouldn't give a friend."
Another New Square resident, Herman Spira, said his daughters, whom Goldie taught at school, were in a state of shock over her murder. "All night they were asking, is it true or is it a dream? Unfortunately, it's true." he said.
Taubenfeld's congressman, Democrat Eliot Engel, is visiting Israel this week. At a press conference Wednesday at Hadassah-University Hospital at Ein Kerem, Engel was in a somber mood following visits with some of the wounded.
Caught in the carnage was another of his constituents. Tehilla Nathanson's mother Chani, who moved from Monsey to Zichron Ya'acov four years ago, and was in the recovery room after surgery. Nathanson, who kept slipping in and out of consciousness, asked whenever she was awake that everyone in the world should do one good deed for the well-being of her family.
"I never imagined that we would be here during one of these terrible suicide bombings," an emotional Engel said. "If I was doubtful about the road map before, I now think it's over and done with. You can't have peace when only one party wants it."
Greer Fay Cashman and AP contributed to this report
Three of the four New Square men whose sentences were reduced by then-President Clinton have been released from federal prison after their shortened terms ended.
The fourth man whose sentence was shortened by Clinton in January 2001 is scheduled to be released in March.
"Obviously, we are very happy these three men are back home with their families," said Rabbi Mayer Schiller, a spokesman for the New Square Hasidic Jewish community in Ramapo. "We are looking forward to the last man's return home and the end of all of this
Still happy you helped terrorist loving Hillary get elected Rabbi?
The time has come. Pack 'em up and move 'em out.
Hillary Clinton met with the Hasidic community's grand rabbi, David Twersky, at his home in New Square in August 2000. The community gave 1,400 votes to Hillary Clinton, opposed to 12 votes for Republican Rick Lazio.
The rabbi and other village leaders met privately with the Clintons at the White House in late December, a month before the president issued his pardons and clemencies.
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