By:JOSEPH KELLARD
"It's ironic. Here is a young woman who devoted her life to love, caring, good values and judging people based on their actions, and she was killed by someone who was taught to hate people from the time he was born. That's what hurts me most."
Such thoughts came to Paula Weber's mind Tuesday as she remembered Judith Hayman Greenbaum, her former colleague at the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach.
Known to friends by her Hebrew name Shoshana, Greenbaum was killed along with 15 others last Thursday in a crowded Jerusalem pizza restaurant by a Palestinian suicide bomber. She was visiting Israel for six-week engagement in an Israel Block Fellowship program, working toward a Master's Degree in Jewish Education.
Greenbaum, 31, had taught elementary and junior high girls for the last 10 years at the West Broadway school. Having recently moved with her husband to New Jersey, Greenbaum had said good-bye to the school just a month ago to begin a new job at a Yeshiva closer to her home.
Adding to the tragedy of her death was that Greenbaum, who had married 15 months ago and was expecting her husband to join her in Israel, was pregnant with their first child.
"I went through everything with her. Her dating, her marriage," Weber said. "And the high point of her life would have been to have the baby she was carrying,"
A graduate student at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, Greenbaum started at the Hebrew Academy, an Orthodox Yeshiva day school, as Weber's intern and a second-grade Hebrew studies teacher ten years ago. She went on to teach sixth, seventh and eighth grade classes as well.
"She worked very hard on being an appropriate role model," said Rabbi Heshy Glass, principal of the school's K-8 division. "She was outgoing, engaging with the children, and was always concerned about their well-being. She truly loved all of her students. It's a terrible waste because she had so much to offer. We can't afford to lose anyone like her."
Weber described the reaction of a second-grade student of Greenbaum's this past year upon learning of her death. "But she was so perfect?" the young girl said.
Shira Zinberg of Lawrence, a former student of Greenbaum's, could not believe how someone with so much to give could be taken away so cruelly.
"She was one of the most amazing, inspiring, warm, smart, caring and loving individuals I've ever known. She had given so much and had so much ahead of her, I almost can't comprehend that she's gone, that she's been taken from life so horribly."
On returning from a trip to Scotland, Weber had heard that one American had died among 16 in a terrorist bombing in Israel. Knowing that Greenbaum was in Jerusalem, she thought "it can't be possible" that her friend was the one.
"But not only was it possible, it happened."
Greenbaum is survived by her husband, Shmuel Greenbaum, a programmer and analyst with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The couple lived in Brooklyn prior to moving to Passaic, N.J., earlier this year.
A memorial in Greenbaum's memory is expected to be held at the Hebrew Academy next month.
