For American-Israeli Teacher, Death Came on the No. 78 Bus
BEIT SHEMESH, Israel — Richard Lakin’s funeral on Wednesday was touching in the tiny, usual ways. His grown son tearfully recalled a man who began every morning with a banana and a chuckle. His teenage granddaughter thanked him for teaching her to ride a bike and, barely able to get the words out, “for watching ‘Charlotte’s Web’ endless times with me.”
There were also hints at the unusual circumstances of his death. The United States ambassador to Israel sitting in the chapel’s last row, the former member of Israel’s Parliament helping fill the grave with dirt. And the son, Micah Avni, asking in his eulogy, “How is it that such a beautiful person is struck down in such a brutal and horrific manner?”
Mr. Lakin, 76, was shot in the head and stabbed in the face and chest byPalestinian assailants on a public bus in Jerusalem at the height of this month’s violent uprising. An American who moved to Israel three decades ago, he died after two weeks in the hospital, where he had much surgery and a parade of visitors, including Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations and students from Hand in Hand, Jerusalem’s joint Arab-Jewish school.
He was one of nine Israeli Jews killed byPalestinians since Oct. 1. One of the two bus attackers was among more than 25 Palestinian suspects shot dead by Israelis during the same period; some 35 other Palestinians have been killed in clashes with security forces.
Each, undoubtedly, is a story in itself. Mr. Lakin’s is one of a teacher slain by young men who could have been his students, of a social media devotee whose family is now suing Facebook over posts they say incite violence, of a man who stood up for coexistence being felled by its failure.
“He was just a deeply optimistic and hopeful person, and refused to be deterred by the grim political reality here,” said Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman of Kol Haneshama, the Jerusalem synagogue where Mr. Lakin was a longtime member. “He wasn’t oblivious to the reality, but it didn’t affect his basic existential nature. He could not imagine a solution wasn’t possible and that people couldn’t learn to live together.”
A civil rights activist and Connecticut elementary school principal, Mr. Lakin moved to Jerusalem with his family in 1984. He taught English to Israeli and Palestinian children, performed in musicals and, according to Rabbi Weiman-Kelman, never missed a peace rally.
After a routine doctor’s appointment on Oct. 13, Mr. Lakin called his ex-wife (and still best friend), Karen, to say he was taking the No. 78 bus rather than walking home because he thought it would be safer amid the spate of stabbings on Jerusalem streets. When news broke that a No. 78 had been attacked, she and her son started frantically dialing Mr. Lakin’s number.
“Eventually, one of the nurses in the operating room answered his phone,” recalled Mr. Avni, 46, who works in finance and had walked out of a meeting in his Tel Aviv office to drive to Jerusalem. “She said, ‘Come to Hadassah Ein Karem as soon as possible.’ ”
Hadassah and Jerusalem’s other hospitals are rare oases of the Arab-Jewish coexistence Mr. Lakin promoted. A Palestinian nurse in the emergency room recognized him as he was wheeled in: Her two sons had taken his classes. The surgical team that struggled to stitch together his injured organs included Dr. Abed Khalaileh, an Arab from East Jerusalem, like the attackers on the bus.
“When I talked to the family, I had tears in my eyes — this is a man and he didn’t do anything. What did he do to deserve such a punishment?” Dr. Khalaileh said later. “I am not political here, my goal is not to judge, and I try and disconnect. But still, you live with a sensation that isn’t good, that after all, the person who carried out this attack is from your people.”
One of the attackers, Bilal Abu Ghanem, had surgery in the same hospital, at the same time.
“I had the auspicious pleasure of holding my father’s hand and looking that man straight in the eye as he woke up in the intensive-care unit,” Mr. Avni recalled. “And it sounds like he’s doing O.K. — as opposed to my father.”
Mr. Avni, who Hebraicized his last name, said he soon learned that the slain attacker, Bahas Alian, had announced his plans on Facebook. While sitting vigil in the hospital, the family was incensed to find on social networks a re-enactment of the bus attack “to encourage others to take the same action,” Mr. Avni said, and “specific instructions on how to slice someone’s chest open and cut their intestines like what was done to my father.”
Mr. Lakin’s own Facebook page had as its cover a photo of a boy in a Jewish skullcap and one in a Palestinian kaffiyeh under a “Coexist” logo made from religious symbols. The morning of the attack, he posted an article about a long-ago discovery regarding diabetes, but the days before, his page was filled with links regarding the uprising. Mr. Lakin had also made 38,000 Twitter posts since joining in 2009, and had 4,634 followers.
“My father had been a great beneficiary of social media. He used Facebook and Twitter to express his thoughts on education and on peace,” Mr. Avni said. “He also became the victim of a tremendous amount of incitement and hate on those vehicles.”
Now, Mr. Lakin is the lead plaintiff in a suit filed this week in New York by a conservative Israeli antiterrorism group that seeks an injunction to force Facebook to block posts that call for violence against Jews.
None of this was mentioned at Wednesday’s funeral, where Karen Lakin read from Robert Frost and described her ex-husband as the grandson of a Yiddish-speaking socialist farmer.
One group among the hundreds of mourners recalled his roles in the Jerusalem English Speaking Theater’s productions of “The Music Man,” “Pajama Game,” “South Pacific” and “Annie.”
“He was a wonderful, warm, compassionate President Roosevelt,” said Brian Negin, who played Harold Ickes in that “Annie” back in 1998.
“Just like Richard,” added Mr. Negin’s wife, Susan Lazinger.
Shachar Boteach, at 16 the oldest of Mr. Lakin’s eight grandchildren, told the crowd it felt “like the air has been taken out of my lungs.”
“I know you would want me to always try to be a better person and do the right thing. You would want me to spread love and happiness everywhere I go,” she said, speaking directly to his body wrapped in a Jewish prayer shawl. “I think you wouldn’t want me to have not even one ounce of hate in my body, even though what has been done to you.”For American-Israeli Teacher, Death Came on the No. 78 Bus - The New York Times:
Richard Lakin's Thanks2Teachers.com - A Wellspring of Teacher Appreciation and Teacher Inspiration > Home > Home http://bit.ly/1Lly9iQ
Teaching as an Act of Love: Thoughts and Recollections of a Former Teacher ... - Richard Lakin - Google Books http://bit.ly/1LlyimB
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